Mac n’ Cheese, Safer Please

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Despite being somewhat lactose-intolerant, I have a weakness for the occasional Kraft blue-box of Macaroni & Cheese. It’s fast, it’s easy, and you can make it with soy milk even though it makes it taste a little funky. But I now hear that Europe has a better version of this American dish than we do in the States. The European version has no artificial colors or chemical sweeteners (aspartame, anyone?) because European food standards require a warning label for products that contain them.

The dangers of some of the ingredients in the US version were apparently covered in a book called The Unhealthy Truth. Now that the word’s out, MomsRising.org is encouraging people to e-mail their Congressional representatives to get the European version on US store shelves. No word on whether the eye-catching box will change as well: in Canada it’s called “Kraft Dinner.”

Of course one way to avoid the whole debacle is to make macaroni and cheese yourself from scratch. In my experience, it takes about an hour and a half with prep and baking time, but is so worth it. If you have the time, which many busy moms do not. And if your kids will eat it. And if you just happen to have 1 lb of sharp cheddar in your fridge. Now that I think of it, simply changing the US version is sounding better and better. If they can make a lactose-free version, I’m with them all the way.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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