Broccoli rice'n'cheese

Here's a quick post because I'm on my phone and suffering from caffeine-induced insomnia.  I've been sick for about 2 months now with some horrible sinus infection that morphed into the flu and then back into a sinus infection.  It's been the definition of not fun.  Apparently this isn't "normal" and after going to three different doctors to try to get antibiotics to treat it, one decided that I should get a blood panel to see if there was something wrong.  It turns out that I have a crazy huge vitamin D deficiency, which is bad for a host of reasons.  I also found out that I'm glucose intolerant.  This means that my body can't properly deal with sugars in blood after I eat something that is carb-heavy.  From what I've gathered, this is a pre-insulin resistant state, which is pre-diabetic.  I guess this means that I'm pre-pre-diabetic, which is kind of scary to think about.

What does this mean for my food blogs?  Well, nothing really.  I need to eat smaller meals more often and when I do eat carbs, I need to make sure that they're always paired with protein.  In an effort to make sure that I do eat properly, I've been trying to incorporate a whole lot more vegetables and fruits into my diet.  And tomorrow, for dinner, we're going to have broccoli, rice, and cheese casserole as a stand in for the carb-heavy mac'n'cheese. Brown rice is a vast improvement over normal macaroni and bulking up the dish with broccoli adds nutrients, fiber, and lets me use up some stuff in my refrigerator.

Broccoli, rice, and cheese casserole

1 c brown rice

2 c stock (or 2 c water + 2 T bouillon), I used chicken

1 T butter

1 T flour

1 c milk

s+p to taste

1 c mozzarella cheese, shredded

2 oz chevre.

3 c broccoli, cut into bite sized pieces, cooked (broccoli stems work well here)

Cook the rice with the chicken stock.  In a small sauce pan, heat butter until melted.  Whisk in flour and stir until it turns tan.  Add in milk and stir again until smooth.  Bring to a simmer and let thicken.  Add in cheeses, lower heat, and stir until the cheese is melted and well combined.  Combine the rice, broccoli, and cheese sauce and eat up.

Easy Shrimp Pasta

I've spent most of this summer working from home, which means that I get to dictate my own hours. At first, it starts out by me getting up at 10 and going to bed at 2 or 3, but then it evolves into the get-up-at-4PM-go-to-bed-at-8AM. This leads to three things:

1) I am out of sync with the rest of Central Time
a) incidentally, that means I'm in perfect sync with Chris, who's in Hawaii.
2) Colby doesn't get nearly as much sleep as he's used to
3) I watch a lot of late night television, with laptop enlapped.

Late night tele usually involves police procedurals (oh Bobby Goren, you are, by far, my *favorite*) and whatever's on Food Network that doesn't involve Paula Deen, Mark Summers, or Bobby Flay. This leads to an enhancement in Alton Brown in my TV diet and lately he's talked a lot about crustaceans and how they're very closely related to roaches in the animal kingdom. This hasn't really helped my appreciation for lobster as I found one of their animal kingdom cousins wandering around my bathroom (which involved quite a bit of screaming and frantic searches for things to throw); however, I am able to ignore the roach-shrimp dichotomy in my head because phobias are nothing, if not irrational, which had left me craving shrimp.

Rewind to a week ago, and I found myself at the downtown farmers market with basil, brussels sprouts, pan sausage, and okra. Basil presented a myriad of possibilities, so I decided to make a cheesy tomato sauce with shrimp and linguine for dinner (in part, because I always wondered what canned tomato sauce actually was.). Nom. Nom. Nom.

1/2 c ricotta cheese
1/3 c grated parmasean cheese
1/4 c basil, chiffonade
8 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 14.5 oz can tomato sauce (note: this is what I used... in the future, I'm using crushed tomatoes)
1 lb frozen shrimp, thawed in water and boiled for 3ish minutes, then shelled
1 lb linguine, boiled in heavily salted water
s+p to taste

combine ricotta, parm, basil and about 1/3 of the garlic and add salt+pepper to taste. The parm is salty enough, so it probably won't need a lot of salt and the pepper depends on your tolerance for heat. set aside. In a sauce pan, add olive oil and garlic and stir around until fragrant. Add in tomato sauce (or crushed tomatoes) and cook for a few minutes. Add cheese mix and cook some more until it's completely integrated into the tomato sauce and heated. Toss with linguine and shrimp.

Stuffed, as in schedule and tomatoes

So I haven't updated with a meaningful post in awhile. At one point, I actually thought that people read this, but I think I sort of lost all of that steam. Also, I think that commenting on someone else's blog helped. Oh well. Maybe this will devolve back to my dumping ground for recipes to Kyle. Anywho.

Grad school is harder and easier at the same time. The classes are more difficult, but they cover things that are closer to what I'm interested in, as opposed to all of my horrible undergrad physics classes. Right now I'm taking Radiative Processes and Gaseous Nebulae (aka "gasbags"). Gasbags is an awesome class; radiative... not so much, but I'm getting by with a little help from my fellow grad students. In addition to classes, I'm doing research, TAing an intro astronomy class, and running the observatory open house on Friday and Saturday nights for the Painter Hall telescope. Needless to say, I'm busy. This, unfortunately, leaves me little time to cook; however, I have come up with some tasty concoctions in the past month or so.

Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes + Mushrooms

7ish oz ricotta
1/3 c grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbs minced basil
s+p to taste
some amount of cherry tomatoes
some amount of whole button mushrooms, stemmed
EVOO
handful of shredded mozzarella

combine the ricotta,parm,basil,s+p. cut a small hole at the top of the cherry tomato and squeeze to get the rest of the innards out. take out the entire stem from the mushrooms. toss the tomatoes and the mushrooms in the EVOO. stuff them with the mixture. sprinkle with mozzarella. bake in a 350 deg oven for 25-30 minutes. yay.

I think that I want to have a tapas party. Except that's not really Spanish, so we could really call it an appetizer party. Except that's not a catchy name. Anywho, I'd make those and maybe put a piece of pasta in the tomato one and call it a "bite sized lasagna". Except that this requires me to have time. That's probably the worst bit of all.

Goulash

The essence of certain dishes is patience. These are not ideal for me. Also, we got the internets today! Yay internets! More on goulash later, though (i.e. expect an edit on this later). I'm preparing myself for a washer/dryer set tomorrow. Onto discount shopping, for now.

-->addendum<--

that probably looks way cuter in ascii.

So, back from the discount (but NOT Evil-Mart) shopping, I've acquired laundry materials, a coffee maker, and coffee from Caribou!! The coffee was, sadly, not discounted, but it's still going to be super tasty (and probably a big regret when I'm totally wired after drinking it!)

Dinner tonight was a feeble attempt at my Dad's goulash, which was just given to me in email form like... about 45 seconds ago:

Gram K would be proud of you, that was one of her standard dishes. We had it home, we had it at Barton City, we had it at the campground in Tawas when I was a kid. My recipe is 1lb sirloin hamburg chopped and browned with fine-cut onions, 2 cups macaroni noodles slightly undercooked (like 20% reduction in recommended time), 1 large can diced stewed tomatos, 1 small can sliced mushrooms, 5 1/2" thick slices of Velveeta cheese. Brown burger with onions, drain. Add tomatos, mushrooms, macaroni and Velveeta on lowest heat, cover, stir occasionally until Velveeta melts into a thin sauce, serve hot, salt and pepper to taste...

my version was slightly different:

2 medium portabella mushroom caps, roughly chopped
1/2 onion chopped
3/4 lb ground chuck
1 sm can diced tomatoes
2 tbs flour
2 tbs butter
3/4 c milk
handfuls of cheese
olive oil
chili powder/paprika/oregano/garlic salt/onion powder
s+p

sautee onions and mushrooms... and by "sautee", I mean turn on the wrong burner and wonder why the hell the pan isn't getting hot. Then sautee. Add in the GB and then after it browns, drain some of the fat (because, yuck) and then add in the tomatoes. In a different pot, make a roux (butter+flour+salt...+milk) add cheese after it thickens and then add the cheese to the pot. Then taste it and be all like.. hm.. this is missing something and add in the spices at random.

Also, Jon and Kate plus 8 is like a ridiculously adorable show and makes me want my future hapa babies like.. yesterday.

Arrivals

It's extremely possible to drive from Michigan to Texas in one day; however, it's extremely unpleasant to do so. Colby and I left Stockbridge, MI at 5:00 AM on Friday morning and arrived in New Boston, TX at 10:00 PM, a mere eighteen hours on the road later. (No, that's not a miscalculation: Texas is on central time.) We got up bright and early the next day to finish the trip. I got to drive from Dallas to Austin, which was only slightly terrifying. I only thought we were going to die about 10% of the time, though, so that's a plus.

Since then, we've acquired an apartment (okay, we sort of had that one in the bag), a couch, television (like the last CRT TV available in all of Texas), washer/dryer set, a rice cooker, and a new-found independence that's really frickin' weird. I'd describe it if I could, but it's almost straight from that pool scene in Garden State (when your home is not really your home), but different. I guess this is the beginning of the terrible ordeal known as "growing up".

The kitchen in my new apartment isn't by any means spectacular, but it's a major upgrade from my old apartment. I've finally got counter space. It's amazing how much simpler everything becomes when there is room to work. The inaugural meal was stir-fry with rice noodles and after that we've been good about trying to cook every day and whatnot.

The other night, Kyle came over and we had mustard chicken with pasta dish, which went as such:

marinate chicken (aka let it thaw in the fridge) in spicy brown mustard+olive oil+honey+lemon juice mixture with some salt and pepper. It should probably be 2:1:1:1, but that's mostly a guess on my part. Pan fry. Eat. The pasta sauce was just a roux with cheese+sauteed mushrooms, garlic, s+p which was poured over 1/2 lb of penne with some steamed broccoli. Yay for fake attempts at being healthy!

Today, we're going to the farmer's market in Triangle Park and later on, I'm making dinner. I'm thinking risotto with tomatoes, spinach, and yellow squash, with fresh corn. Yay summer!

tacos + jurassic park

The scores of people milling around campus should make me feel incredibly jealous. Should being the key operative word because who could be jealous of people outside where it's warm and sunny when I'm in the physics building on a Saturday working on a group project about lithium abundances in stars. Oh wait... I suppose the *amazing* slurpee I'm currently consuming can ease the blatant jealousy. Maybe. Fun fact: apparently, the state of Michigan consumes more slurpees in the month of January than California does all year. I'm not sure if I believe that, but some hipster kid told me that on a date once in high school.

We made tacos last night. I say "we" because the only thing that freaks me out more than raw, ground meat is fire. And grease+heat == fire returns true. Colby was draining the pan of the grease and he sort of spilled some on one of the burners. Scary! Oh well. At least it wasn't like that one time I tried making elephant ears in my apartment. How many ways can you say mistake?

I tried making "Mexican rice" (good lord, that sounds vaguely racist), but it didn't turn out so well. Mostly I added salsa and corn to the water and it kind of sort of flavored it. I added half a squeeze of lime as a last ditch effort, so whatever. I'm not too heartbroken over it, though. I guess I'll try again next time, though it probably won't be in this apartment. *sniffles* Actually, no, not sniffles, this kitchen sucks, I have half a refrigerator, and it gets to be like 5777 K in my apartment when I use the oven... so screw you DTN, I'm moving to Texas!

Okay. Yeah, so tonight is curry soup because I need to clean out my pantry and use that potato before it rots. Also the chicken. Also, what does one do with leftover taco meat besides make more tacos? We already made "omelets".

This has no recipe, but thought I should share

I made the "alfredo" sauce, which turned out really well. Added some broccoli as well. Yummy! Also it definitely was a one bowl meal which is for sure my favorite kind. :) I hope that we're not one of those couples that make people sick to watch. Anywho:

(01:10:40 AM) Julie: I am the master of cooking things I can't eat.
(01:10:47 AM) Chris: :)
(01:10:50 AM) Julie: oh my god
(01:10:51 AM) Chris: what did you make?
(01:10:52 AM) Julie: so much pain.
(01:10:58 AM) Julie: like an alfredo sauce
(01:11:10 AM) Chris: yeah, that is like the very definition of "Not for you"
(01:11:42 AM) Julie: which was 1 c cream, 1/2 c whole milk, camembert, mozzarella, a bit of parm, some s+p and garlic
(01:12:26 AM) Chris: wow...so the s+p+garlic then?
(01:12:29 AM) Chris: parm is probably ok
(01:12:39 AM) Chris: but milk/cream/soft cheese/soft cheese?
(01:12:43 AM) Julie: lol
(01:12:43 AM) Julie: yes
(01:13:05 AM) Chris: it's like you're new at this
(01:13:20 AM) Julie: but it was *so tasty*

Refrigerator Pie: Part Doo

I'm pretty sure that quiche is a very amazing breakfast food, even if it is 2:40 PM. I set out last night to do laundry and make a spinach-artichoke quiche, but it turns out that artichokes are a) hard to deal with and b) fucking spiny, screw that. It became a spinach+mushroom+garlic quiche. It should be noted that Julie + wilted spinach == bff returns true.

two large handfuls of flat leaf spinach destemmed and washed
2 tsp? of olive oil
2 tbs butter
1/2 thing of roughly chopped mushrooms
mozzarella
colby jack
3 big CLOVES of garlic
s/p/garlic salt

put a little bit of olive oil (like 1 tsp?) into a pan and make sure that you coat the entire bottom. put in spinach... turn turn wilt wilt. season with salt. Try not to eat all of that spinach whilst you're cooking because seriously... you <3 spinach. Add in the 2 tbs butter (this may be excessive and it was kind of like I was boiling the mushrooms in butter) and when it melts, add in the mushrooms and season with garlic salt + a bit of kosher s/p at the end. More on that later. Anywho, take out the mushrooms when they're done. Add in a bit more olive oil, put in the minced garlic and fry until they start to look light brown. add the spin+mush+garlic to a pie crust making sure it's well-mixed and there is space for cheese+royale mixture. Add in handfuls of cheese at your own discretion. Pour in the royale (2 eggs + 1 c heavy cream beaten together) making sure the mixture sinks to the bottom. Sprinkle some kosher salt over top of the pie. Into the oven at 350 for ~45 minutes.

So the quiche came out pretty okay. The garlic didn't come out exactly as I had hoped because apparently Chris' stove runs at 5778 K. Still... if you heat up the garlic slower, it should be better, not bitter. Also, this is the thing about garlic salt. I like using it with mushrooms because I feel like mushrooms pick up the flavor better with garlic salt because it's super concentrated granular garlic. Also salty. Anywho, tonight looks like a good night to try to make the poor man's alfredo sauce, since i have lots of leftover cream and Colby's back in town. Yay heart disease!

Also, the next time, I'm going to look for either a better pie crust or a crust recipe because the crust, I feel, is too sweet. Puff pastry would make this kind of excellent, but again with the heart disease.

Burgerama

So my new "experiment" is with ground beef, which I can't touch without gloves because obsessive compulsive disorder is an interesting phenomenon when it meets raw meat. Anywho. So I've been making various cheeseburgers with varying degrees of success. My latest is mixing in minced shallots, garlic, cheese, and bbq sauce. I used colby-jack the last time because *someone* doesn't like cheddar. Also, I find it ironic that Colby doesn't like Colby cheese. Just a thought. Anywho, Chris is donating some Gorgonzola to me, so maybe that will become a beef-y burgery meal. Or maybe it'll make Colby sick. We shall see.

Burgers! (this is mostly for you, Kyle. Also, I'd rather be writing this than doing homework, or other homework or wedding planning or other homework. Gah.)

makes 2 burgers.. but kind of small burgers because I don't have a black hole for a tummy.

1/2 lb ground beef (I use chuck)
2-3 cloves minced garlic (also, for the love of jebus, kyle, buy actual garlic and mince it yourself)
1/2 shallot minced
olive oil
salt, pepper
bbq sauce (sweet baby ray's was totally on sale at meijer)

heat oil in pan, add in garlic+shallots. when the garlic is starting to brown and the shallots are translucent-y take these out and put them in the GB... which is defrosted and stuff. Also, add in a squirt or two of bbq sauce and some cheese and mix thoroughly and put back in pan and make sure you watch to not start a grease fire. w00t. I should really get ketchup.

I'm thinking about making this a for-realsies blog as opposed to just a place for me to dump recipes to kyle.

Mushroom Stuffing+Mushroom Pasta

Hokay. So what I'm supposed to be doing right now is a literature search on the observed radii of white dwarfs, but it turns out that that's boring and even though they were stars, they're dead and therefore dead to me. Anywho, Easter was an interesting weekend beginning with horribleness, but ending with a lovely pot-luck dinner party which required some sort of dish. Yay for mushrooms.

I made a mushroom stuffing that turned out *okay*. I think there were too many bread crumbs. Also, I would have liked stronger notes of garlic, shallots and something to "freshen" the taste. Anywho recipe:

portabello mushrooms, roughly chopped
shiitake mushrooms, de-stemmed, roughly chopped
1c bread crumbs (next time, I'd probably use like.. 2/3 c, maybe even less)
6 cloves garlic
1/2 shallot
lemon
butter
olive oil
oregano
Parmesan
fresh basil
salt, pepper

mince 3 of the cloves of garlic, all of the shallots and sautee them in oil. Add in the mushrooms, about 2 tbs butter, and some salt. cook cook cook. when it's almost done, add in the ripped up basil to wilt+flavor and some oregano. Add in a bit of lemon as well also, pepper and more salt. Remove from heat

put in 3 tbs butter + bread crumbs + remaining garlic in the pan + olive oil (because fat is tasty). This is to "toast" the bread crumbs, and is probably ill-advised. Maybe you don't want to do this step and maybe you want to put in all the garlic and butter at once and double the amount of shallots. So combine all this in a bowl, as well as a good dusting of grated parm cheez and mix. yay? Squeeze on some more lemon to make it a brighter flavor. I know that this could be really tasty, but I don't know how. I actually think that this would actually be pretty awesome with couscous instead. Maybe I have my answer.

Anywho, what was kind of interesting about this is that I made something super similar on Thursday night. Chris suggested the mushroom dish. I decided that it was going to be a stuffing. Sometimes I'm afraid that all my food tastes the same. Woo hoo insecurities creeping into my cooking. So yeah, on Thursday:

2/3 box pasta (not long noodles, I used rotelle)
1/2 tray pre-washed, cut white mushrooms roughly chopped (yes, I'm lazy)
3 cloves garlic
1/2 poblano pepper, roasted, skinned, chopped
1/2 shallot
some amount of lemon
parm cheese
mozzarella cheese
butter, oil
fresh basil, torn
salt/pepper/garlic salt

boil boil boil pasta. sautee garlic, shallots in oil. Add in butter, mushrooms. Add in pepper, lemon, salt+pepper, garlic salt. stir stir stir. Add in mixture to hot, drained pasta. Add in cheese... mix mix mix. I think that one turned out better. Also, it turned into a one bowl dinner which is pretty much amazing and my favorite thing ever

So I guess I was inspired by the pasta dish and is probably the reason why it'd work better with couscous. Also, the reason why i used 1/2 a shallot for the second dish is because I used the other half earlier. Heh. I usually have them on hand because i hate hate hate onions, so they're nicer (for me) to have to eat around.

semi-home made ravioli (but way the hell more home made than sandra lee)

So after traveling around over spring break, I came home to a bag of rotten potatoes, some frozen broccoli (because I actually have a refreezerator), and the sad, sad remnants of mire poix fixings. Suffice it to say, I needed to go to el supermercado (which, sadly, does not sound as cool as el gran mercado, but has a helluva lot more food in it). Anywho! I ended up buying a bunch of "random" things, which I thought were random, but apparently make for a fairly standard shopping trip which included wonton wrappers and ricotta.

So tonight, I'm going to attempt to make garlic+mushroom+basil ravioli with the leftover bolognese sauce. Go me!

This is how I think it'll work: (also, someone slap me. I got the sudden urge to do this in LaTeX in math mode... la la la physics is eating my brain)

Drain the ricotta (via magic).

sautee mushrooms + garlic in butter
add M+G, B to the cheese+more (mozzarella) cheese (slap me again. I'm thinking of trying to do this in terms of nuclear reactions... like, you know... MushroomGarlic(Butter, tasty)sauteedmushroomgarlic)...)
put a bit on a wonton wrapper
brush edges with egg wash (and more magic)
put another one on top
boil boil boil

eat eat eat

We'll see how it goes. And I've shamelessly stolen the idea from my new favorite food blog the delicious life.

Refrigerator Pie

So I went to DC over New Years to visit Kate, and during one of my hangover recovery periods, I watched a whole bunch of Good Eats on my computer. One of the episodes was Egg Files II - Man with a Flan and Alton made quiche, which he dubbed refrigerator pie. It was super easy. I took a store-bought pie crust (yes, I know, I'm lazy) and then put a royale mixture in it and then stuff.

1 pie crust

royale mixture:

2 eggs
1 c heavy cream
2 pinches salt

fillings

Preheat oven to 350. Beat eggs and cream and then beat in the salt. Put your fillings in, but leave open spaces for the royale mixture to go. I used mushrooms sauteed in butter and garlic salt (I ran out of garlic. :( ), broccoli that I had pre-cooked a bit, and some white cheddar cheese with herbs. It has a name. I don't really remember it, though.

Don't fill everything up to the top. Bake for ~45 minutes, or until the filling is set to the consistency of jello.

It turned out really well. I was surprised by that. I had enough stuff left over to make flan, which actually seemed rather easy to make, but I don't own ramekins and upon further reflection hate flan, so I decided against it.

Graduate applications are a pain

So in the past month, I've made risotto, chicken, some sort of dip, cheese straws, holiday cookies, milk chocolate (by accident), more bread, cream biscuits with cheese, roast lemon chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes. Also a couple drop biscuits here and there. I've also been working on my application to grad school and that's kind of awful... so more updates once those are done.

Also

http://loltonbrown.blogspot.com

Spinach Tomato Pasta

Since my Thanksgivings are usually a lot more brief than everyone else's, I spent a lot of time staring at the TV. We were watching when Giada De Laurentis came on and she made this pasta which seemed super simple... and now that I've stolen my dad's huge ass pan (or what I've been calling a wok), I had something to make it in and it was yummy. Even Colby (who I made eat it) thought it was good.


1 lb pasta

1 clove minced garlic
1/4 c olive oil
8 oz cherry tomatoes, halved
1 bag pre-washed fresh spinach coarsely chopped

1/2 c Asiago + Parmesan or some other hard, salty cheese
salt and pepper to taste


boil the pasta until al dente in heavily salted water. Save 1/2 c of the boiling liquid. Drain. Cook the garlic in the olive oil until you can smell it, then add the spinach and tomatoes until the spinach starts to really wilt. Add in pasta, pasta water, cheese and toss. Season with salt+pepper to taste.

It was super simple and really good. I was going to add chicken, but my refreezerator got to the chicken before I could. :( Damn freezer burn.

Kyle, you should make this.

Mac'n'Cheese remix

So in the past month, I've made mac'n'cheese twice. I still have one lonely blue box sitting in my apartment, but I have a feeling that that's going to be sitting there for quite some time. Go me!

The roux that I had made in my previous attempts had never been that great until I was prompted (thank you Joe) to add salt. This made things *way* better. Also, the inclusion of non-skim milk probably helped. So my final mac'n'cheese sauce base looks like this:

2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 c milk
1/3 bag of cheese

And basically the only instructions are to add those things in the aforementioned order and keep stirring. The first time I made the mac'n'cheese, the cheese mix that I got turned out to be reduced fat and I didn't realize this until I tasted it and was so so sad. Salt is amazing and I used that to cover it all up. The second time I did this, it was with the intention of feeding it to someone else without poisoning them, so I made extra super sure that it wasn't low fat. I also added in almost an entire block of edam. It was really good, but it's mostly going to waste now because I can't eat it without getting pretty sick. Yay lactose intolerance. I learned my lesson from the first time and I now have a can of plain bread crumbs too. So it's add, stir, put cheese sauce over pasta, add more cheese to pasta, sprinkle LIGHTLY (I had issues with this once) with bread crumbs, and place into a 500 degree oven for 7-8 minutes.

I think I'm finally learning how to cook...

Pretentious Mac'n'Cheese

This one may make me sick. It has so much dairy in it, I'm apt to explode, but it's okay because I learned what a roux is *actually* supposed to look like so... go me!

I've been buying random cheeses at will at the grocery store lately and then trying to incorporate them into my cooking. It's been somewhat amusing, although I have to admit that a lot of the cheese is put on crackers and then into my tummy which is way easier than cooking. The last time I got fontinella cheese, which is fairly strong.

I've also taken to not really measuring things for cooking anymore. Mostly I've been eye-ing things and then tasting, but that only really works when you're not cooking for anyone else... but lo and behold, I'm not.

2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
2 c. warm milk
Fontinella cheese (or any cheese, really)
elbow macaroni

Boil water, add mac, clean up the sink whilst you're waiting for things to boil. Melt butter and then add flour and stir so things don't burn. Add milk a little bit at a time and let it heat until the mixture thickens. Add mixture to the drained noodles and then add cheese.

It came out tasty. I assume I didn't use enough cheese, though. It was okay, because I added breadcrumbs and pepper... so it was less bland. Given that this occurred several hours before, I also ate the leftovers and added tomato sauce to make it a palomino. Mm mm good. Or something. I guess the next time I'll use a higher moisture cheese.

Cheesy Smashed Potatoes

So given that I had this corn bread (which is pretty much the heaviest bread I've ever eaten and almost a meal in itself, but not quite), I needed something to go with it, so I made mashed potatoes with baby Yukon gold potatoes, garlic (fried in olive oil), basil, and brie. The brie was creamy enough such that I didn't need to add butter or anything else, really. And I found out that my metal spatula is perfect for smashing potatoes. The basil was left over from the MSU Organic Farm club (which is AWESOME and I can't wait to buy more stuff from them).

So my new favorite game is typing in things I have in my refrigerator and "pantry" in google and seeing what kinds of recipes I get. This was one of the first hits I got with "potato brie basil garlic". Yay dinner!