My cousin, Brian, is lactose intolerant. This was fascinating to me when we were growing up. He couldn't have ice cream...milk...yogurt...it was mind blowing! In particular, I remember that he couldn't have macaroni and cheese.
During summers, Brian and I spent a lot of time at our Nana and Grampa's house. When I was about seven and he was five, one of our favorite activities was "swimming laps" in our kiddie pool. We would get the water swirling in one direction and then pull up our arms, letting the force sweep us around the pool in circles. Many happy summer afternoons were spent lathering on sunscreen and splashing in the water. And there were many stinging instances of water-up-the-nose, causing us to cough and try to convince each other we weren't crying, it was just the water.
For dinner, Nana let us eat outside at the patio table. One of my favorite meals was macaroni and cheese with cut-up hot dogs. But Brian couldn't eat that. He had to have his mac and cheese prepared without the cheese. I was always curious about this, and once I decided I wanted mine that way too. I can't remember what Nana added to the pasta instead of cheese...I know she didn't just give us plain pasta. Maybe it was Parmesan cheese? For some reason that was better tolerated by my cousin's digestive system. It might have been ketchup...but I don't think so. Anyway, it wasn't very tasty, but I wanted to be like Brian, so I said it was delicious.
Thankfully, Nana took some macaroni out of the pot for us, but mixed the rest of it with cheese for later. She was the best.
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