Tuesday, September 9, 2008

My Friday Adventure and what's kept me from here

Friday I made Mac and Cheese, you know the good stuff, the stuff that you make the sauce, bake it in the oven and it's full of gooey goodness.

Well, here are my ingredients

Whole wheat elbow noodles (cavatappi is good too), 3 Tbsp each butter and flour, 4 c soy milk, about a pound of cheese, now I usually use extra sharp cheddar, swiss, and some parmesan or provolone but I didn't have any so I used the Mexican shredded and parmesan that I had on hand.

The first thing you do is put water on for the noodles, you can actually put them in too, but I have a 4 yo who didn't want to leave his friend's house so I started the cheese sauce while the water was boiling.

For the sauce, the first thing is to make a roux, if you don't know what that is, you just melt the butter and flour together until it comes to a boil, you can let it cook until it's brown for a gumbo, but for something light like mac & cheese you just let it go until it starts to smell nutty.

I forgot to take a picture of the roux before I added the milk so this is what it looks like when I first put it in the pan. Next, you add the milk and bring it up to temperature, or if you're like me and realized you needed to switch burners for the water for the noodles, you turn the burner back on and hope for the best. Once the milk starts to bubble you add your cheese.

Once that melts, hopefully your noodles are cooked and you pour it over top of the noodles in a casserole dish, I think mine is 3 qts.

You bake it for about 20-25 minutes and ...

The verdict as usual was yummy for all, though the cheesy flavor was a little lacking since I used milder cheeses.

So, you may ask, if I did this on Friday why am I posting today, Tuesday? Well, my son started preschool yesterday and our preschool didn't tell you what you needed, but they sent out this cute little book that tells about a little girl starting school there, and in it she needs to bring a smock and a change of clothes, so I decided to pull out my sewing machine (which I have been itching to do) and make this...

This is what it looks like on...

So on Saturday and Sunday everyone had to fend for themselves, well we had leftover mac and cheese and nuggets (none for me) and yesterday we went to Chuck E Cheese after school and the little guy had nuggets, the big guy had a wrap, and I couldn't tell you what I had, I just went to bed at 9:00 and am still exhausted today, but that may have to do with having to run around Dick's today to get a soccer setup for this Saturday. I did bake some chocolate chip cookies today and will post that tonight.

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