Sorry to say, but this site has been so depressing for a few days. I thought I'd ask an average, everyday question....to make us all feel a little more normal today.
I made Eggplant Lasagna, and my BIL and SIL are coming for dinner. They leave for Cali tomorrow to see their beautiful grand daughter.
Sorry, sometimes we just need some REGULAR conversation.......or at least THIS caregiver does.
The pressure cooker has finished the meat early.
My recipe is going to be bass ackwards.
She switched to bartending because the tips were great, especially during football season at LSU.
I am a coffee lover. I do drink tea too.
We had a simple dinner tonight, an omelette and toast.
Had to use it up because it was in the freezer since May.
Looking for the potatoes, carrots, celery and onion.
What am I missing?
Ewwwww. that’s pretty gross too! Maybe for weird pregnancy cravings! LOL 😆
Great choice!
Okay, I am a food snob and definitely a music snob! I refuse to listen to crappy music or eat crappy food. I live in New Orleans! We have an abundance of good food and music! If you make me choose between food and hearing ‘live’ music in my city and I will pick music! I will stick a granola bar in my purse to tide me over! LOL
Yes, sickening is right! And I don’t get the ‘deep fried’ mac and cheese, either! Ewwwww! mac and cheese should not be deep fried!
Did you see my posting that told about an ice cream company that teamed up with Kraft to make mac and cheese ice cream for mac and cheese day? 🤮 Yuck!
I love mac and cheese! I love ice cream! BUT not together!!! 🤮 Gross!
What is your favorite side dish? I make everything from scratch or I order at my favorite restaurant or eat at someone’s house that has a great cook! Now that’s a treat! We do get tired of cooking sometimes, don’t we?
Cook a one pound box of pasta, your choice of elbow macaroni, penne or rigatoni.
I always undercook the pasta by a minute or two. The pasta should be slightly firm. If you overcook the pasta it will be mushy after it bakes in the oven.
The béchamel sauce - 4 cups of whole milk
I stick of unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour
Add salt to taste. (optional)
Please remember that cheese has salt.
Melt butter, add flour. Stir and cook just until blended. Do not brown! Add in milk, stir mixture constantly, cook over low heat until thickened. It is ready when sauce coats the back of the spoon. You can use a whisk when stirring to eliminate lumps.
If you cook your béchamel sauce in a double boiler you will never burn it. Cook at a higher heat, because the sauce isn’t over direct heat. Put a few cups of water in bottom pan and add more if needed during cooking the sauce.
When sauce is done immediately turn off heat.
Now you will prepare the cheese to be added to the sauce. I only use blocks of cheese. I NEVER buy shredded cheese in packages. They contain additives that interfere with proper melting. I shred my own cheese using a box grater.
If my daughters are home and helping, they ALWAYS want more cheese! I don’t know what your daughters are like. Take as much liberty as you want regarding the cheese! If I am making it just for my husband and I, I don’t add as much cheese.
Grate one block of 8 oz white cheddar, one block of 8 oz yellow cheddar and 6 to 8 ounces of Gouda.
Add cheese to taste in your béchamel sauce.
Place half of the cooked pasta in a casserole dish. Pour sauce on top and mix thoroughly with the pasta. For the best mac and cheese, make sure that you have a generous amount of sauce. So, this is why I start off with putting only half of the pasta in the casserole dish. You can add more pasta if there is enough sauce. You should see the sauce in the dish. It may look like too much sauce but it will bake up creamy and delicious!
Do not forget to put lots of grated cheese on top of casserole. Bake for thirty minutes @ 350 degrees. My family likes the cheese slightly browned on top, so before removing casserole from oven, I zap it under the broiler for a couple of minutes.
I hope I explained this recipe clearly enough. Please private message me if you have further questions. I will be happy to help you.
Enjoy your mac and cheese! I am like you. I don’t like the ‘box’ kind. It is sentimental for lots of people though because they grew up with that kind.
Yes. Most kids and adults adore mac and cheese! My daughters certainly do! My kids have fairly sophisticated taste compared to other kids, because I didn’t serve them fast food or processed foods. I still laugh about the first time my oldest daughter went to Taco Bell with her friend and her friend’s mom. She came home and said that she didn’t know what to order! LOL She had never seen the menu before!
I started making mac and cheese with only extra sharp yellow cheddar, which is good, but I tweaked it over the years. Once I had mac and cheese in a restaurant that added in Gouda into the mix and I fell in love with it! So, I add Gouda too now. I love extra sharp white cheddar also.
I do a béchamel sauce, then add my special blend of cheeses! I am an eclectic cook so I switch up the types of cheese occasionally. As I stated, I love a blend of white and yellow cheddar (extra sharp) and I add Gouda cheese because I love it! I don’t measure though. I go by taste.
So my recipe is sort of ‘dump and pour’ style. Lots of my recipes are that way! Hahaha, but I have come up with great tasting dishes that everyone loves. It’s the way grandma and mom cooked too 😊. They were fabulous cooks.
I will try to give approximate measurements and you can ‘experiment’ unless you are the type of cook that prefers ‘exact’ measurements. Then, I am afraid that I won’t be of much help.
When I was cooking ginormous amounts of food for holiday meals I spent a fortune because I only buy top notch ingredients. Oh my gosh, I won’t even tell you how much money I have spent on gourmet cheeses!
Will have to go look in my fridge to see how many ounces are in the cheese that I use. Will post in a bit because I am also going to make a cup of coffee.
I hardly ever make it now. It’s too much for just hubby and I to eat alone. It’s more of a ‘treat’ food for us now, unless we have company.
Anyway, I just saw where an ice cream company teamed up with Kraft to make mac and ice cream! 🤮 Yuck! Gross, disgusting 🤢!!!
I understand how you feel about that situation.
The saga continues, right? I keep seeing articles and commercials on television about the controversy continuing whether or not, Subway has ‘tuna’ in their tuna sandwich!
I love Tuna sushi. I like salmon, eel and yellowtail too. I am not driving over to Subway to eat their tuna. 😆 LOL
editing to add - OK I've been googling dutch apple pie recipes and what the heck, I've never seen so many dry, bland looking pies in my life. Our pies had cream in them (or more often evaporated milk because it was cheaper) and were a wonderful blend of tender apples and custard with just a sprinkling of sweet and crunchy brown sugar/flour/butter/cinnamon crumb topping, they were not the dense oatmeal crusted things I've been finding online. 🤯