Happy Friday, March is tomorrow, Daylight Savings is in 9 days — and we’re back with more Hot Bones. Let’s keep it rolling.

Last week was all about how you can shave a couple hundred bucks off your electric bill by unplugging “energy vampires” (and maybe get some distance from work in the process). This week has some easy ideas about what to cook for dinner because honestly how are we expected to figure that out every single night.

This past Sunday felt like the first reminder that spring does in fact exist, and so G and I decided to have an Ivy Provisions picnic in one of those secret gardens at UVA. 

By the time we got to our picnic bench, we’d passed a girlie in a crop top, half a dozen boys in sliders, and two first years whispering sonnets to each other. So obviously all we wanted to talk about was what we were like in college (embarrassing / effortless), what we would do on a Sunday like this (library / hungover), what our favorite college meal was (ramen and stolen cookies from the dining hall / IHOP at 2am and stolen cookies from the dining hall).

I think this is why we started talking about the ultimate college staple: mac and cheese.

For whatever reason, my brother and I didn’t eat a lot of it growing up, and I said goodbye to cheese and milk and all the dairy products that make life worth living around college, because they in fact made my body want to die. So instead of reminiscing about all the late-night mac and cheese meals we’d cook up in our dorm microwaves, our picnic conversation turned into a truly terrible riddle where G tried to explain when and where you’d typically enjoy America's favorite meal.

“So like would you eat mac and cheese at birthday parties?”

“Oh no. Birthday parties?! My god.” She looked at me like I was the one wearing sliders. “But we would eat it at Easter.”

“What.”

“And at Thanksgiving. And church dinners.”

“What about Christmas?” 

“Absolutely not.”

The flashbacks to playing “green glass door” on middle school bus rides were starting to roll in. I can take a kitten but not a cat and a tree but not a leaf I hope you figure this riddle out before it haunts you for the next 20 years of your life Charlotte.

“You’re going to need to visualize this for me.”

With mac and cheese do’s and don’ts organized, there was only one thing left to do: taste test as many options as possible tonight. But make it dairy-free.

I really phoned it in for the last HB experiment (basically me and G eating hot dog nubs on the edge of our plates), so this time I had to blow things out of the water.

Enter: your contestants.

All were purchased at the Harris Teeter in Barracks Row, which being closest to campus has a fantastically well-stocked mac and cheese aisle — vegan, extra cheesy, and every bacon-bit combo in between. Plus something called Goodles that multiple youths picked up while I was unfolding my reading glasses and setting my cane to the side, in order to consult the ingredients list properly.

We really have come a long way with vegan/plant-based cheese. 10 years ago I wouldn’t have dared do this experiment. That was back when food scientists hadn’t cracked the code on what made cheese cheese. I remember that somehow vegan cheese was always wetter. 

But now!

Now we’ve got options on deck. I mean, look at that lineup at Harris Teeter. With all that streamlined branding and retro font, you’d think you were in the steel-cut oatmeal aisle at Whole Foods.

If you haven’t dabbled in vegan cheese recently, I’m going to need you to take a leap of faith with me. It’s like 95% of the way to real cheese. And what’s so great about vegan alternatives is that they’re typically easier on the planet, as well as your large intestine. (That’s right, I see you and I know you have a lactose sensitivity you’re ignoring.)

Of course, plant-based or not, a box of mac and cheese isn’t ever going to be as good for you as a mixing bowl of raw arugula. But by and large the vegan option is better than the Kraft box still in everyone’s childhood pantry (lower sugar, less saturated fat, etc). Plus, there’s even additional protein in some of these recipes.

Honestly, I’m not sure it can? I’m still unclear on how much mac and cheese one eats per meal and how often. The organizational table can only take me so far.

My flawed math here is that if you’re going to a neighborhood potluck and you bring a plant-based mac and cheese dish and some strawberry Jell-O, you’re making out all right (probably don’t invite me to a party though). But if you’re eating this in addition to a full chicken and carrots roast, the vegan options are certainly pricier than $1.24 Kraft.

Annie’s Vegan Mac (top right)

💰$3.79 per box

🍜 Gluten-full straw noodles, just like Kraft

😜 Kraft, this tastes like Kraft

⌛ Cooking time: 8-10 min

🔎 Try this if: “You want to recreate the best afternoons of your childhood” —G

Daiya Deluxe Mac and Cheese (bottom left)

💰$6.49 per box

🍜 Gluten-free elbows that have been pumping at the gym

😜 This is vegan Velveeta, as in, nacho pasta that sticks to the underside of your spoon and the roof of your mouth

⌛ Cooking time: 7-8 min

🔎 Try this if: “You want to relive a fifth Sunday luncheon in a church basement” —G

❗Have scissors or incisors handy because the packaging is nearly impossible

Jovial Vegan Mac (top left)

💰$4.99 per box

🍜 Gluten-free spindly elbows

😜 Classic, lighter taste that doesn’t leave you with pasta thirst at 1am

⌛ Cooking time: 8-9 min

🔎 Try this if: “You want to get fancy and fun at dinner without all the work”  —G

A while back G and I tested out the Yuka app at Wegmans to see how healthy our grocery runs really were (were not). Yuka is a super cool food-scanning app that shows you what in the hell is exactly in your food. It’s color-coded, scored out of 100, and has lots of helpful explainers for incomprehensible words like tocopherol-rich extract.

After running this HB taste-test, I put the three contenders through Yuka, assuming all would score pretty well given they: 1) were fairly expensive, 2) had thoughtful branding, and 3) didn’t have an ingredients list that wrapped around the box.

However 👇

🟢 Jovial: 72/100

🟠 Annie’s: 49/100

🔴 Daiya:  9/100

Annie’s contained 1 high-risk additive (silicon dioxide, used as an anticaking agent) and Daiya got dinged for a high-risk additive (calcium phosphate, used as a texturizing agent) as well as for having a bit too much sodium and saturated fat. 

Harsh vibes.

I’m going to take these ratings with a cubic meter of salt, because Yuka is an app that first took off in France, where life is simply better. Food is better. And words are just a little bit sexier. This puts a European standard on the Big Mac world we’re living in here, where if my food doesn’t have lead paint or fingernails in it, that’s kind of the win I’m looking for.

Anyway, Jovial’s vegan mac and cheese was my favorite anyway, so I’m stoked that I now have a green dot of approval too.