Macaroni and Cheese

It occurred to me that it's been far too long since I posted anything.  While I could say that it's because I've been recovering from recent unpleasantness (which is true), I've actually just been far too busy playing Mass Effect 3.  But, since I beat that the other day (damn you, Bioware!  you'd better have some good DLC planned to fix what you did!), I figured it was time for a new recipe.

One of the things that my loving mother made for me while I was convalescing was her homemade macaroni and cheese.  You know that slogan for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, "it's the cheesiest"?  Yeah, no.  This is.

You'll need: 2 C uncooked elbow macaroni, 1/4 C flour, 1/4 C butter, 1 tsp salt, 2 1/2 C shredded cheese (whatever kind you want; Mom used 1 1/4 C sharp cheddar and 1 1/4 C colby jack), and 2 C milk.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Boil your macaroni in a big pot.  While that's going, in a large pan over low heat, melt the butter and combine it with the flour and salt to make a rue.

This is what a rue looks like.

Now add the milk and heat it up until the sauce thickens, stirring constantly.  Now add your cheese and keeping cooking and stirring until it's completely melted.  (By the way, this is also a really good cheese sauce for something like broccoli or cauliflower.)

CHEESE!!!

All melty!

By now your macaroni is probably cooked nicely.  Drain it and put it in a large oven-safe bowl or casserole dish and pour your cheese sauce over the macaroni.  Stir it all up to get everything nice and coated.  Now, you could be all traditional and put bread crumbs or something on top.  OR, you could ADD MORE CHEESE!

Told you it was the cheesiest.

Put it in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes.  And there you have it; super cheesy, and super delicious, macaroni and cheese!  And if this seems like an awful lot of macaroni and cheese to try and eat up, don't worry; it freezes really well.

Thanks Mom!

Cheesecake

Ah, cheesecake.  Other than Oreo truffles, this is probably the recipe I get asked to make the most often.  It's also another recipe that's easier to make than you might think.  What you'll need are: 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup butter (melted), 2 8-oz. packages of cream cheese, 1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk, 3 eggs, 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1 8-oz. container sour cream.

 

I recommend leaving your cream cheese on the counter for at least a couple of hours to soften it up; it makes it easier to work with.  Now, before you do anything else, put a sheet or two of aluminum foil in the bottom of your oven.  Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees and grease the bejeebus out of a 9-inch springform pan (unless you like having the cheesecake stick horribly to the pan).  In a medium bowl, combine your crumbs, sugar, and butter.  Press this mixture into the bottom of the nicely greased pan and set it aside.

Having a giant dent in your pan is entirely optional

In a large mixer bowl, beat the cream cheese until it's rather fluffy, then beat in the sweetened condensed milk until smooth.  Now beat in the eggs and lemon juice and pour it all into your prepared pan.

There may be a few lumps--that's ok!

Now bake it for 50 minutes, or until the center is set (it's not all goopy).  I'd recommend getting your sour cream out of the fridge about now too, since at the end of 50 minutes, top your cheesecake with the sour cream and bake it for another 5 minutes.  This is why I had you put that foil down way back at the beginning.  As the sour cream cooks, some of it will evaporate, and when your oven cools, it'll all fall right back down to the bottom of your oven.  Then the next time you turn on the oven, guess what fills your kitchen with an incredibly stinky smoke?  Just remember to remove the foil once your oven has cooled off again.

Anyway, now just cool your cheesecake and you're all done!  Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

So delicious.

My Medical Fun

This post is a bit of a departure from tasty recipes, fun vacation pictures, or reviews and delves into the scary world of personal issues, specifically medical ones.  Don't worry; later on this week I'll try to get around to posting something delicious to make up for it.  Maybe a cheesecake recipe.

So it seems over the last couple of years (most likely that long, anyway), one of my ovaries has gotten delusions of grandeur and has waged a campaign to slowly take over my insides by way of a cyst.  Minus any pain, lacking changes in the way certain body functions have always operated, and increases in my gym activity coinciding with it starting to grow, this insidious plot was able to continue unabated until my wily doctor (not to be confused with Dr. Wily) detected something amiss during my yearly physical and sent me off to have an ultrasound. 

Sure enough, a mass that looked suspiciously like a cyst was discovered and I was next sent off to have an MRI (well, actually two MRIs).  I'm really really glad I'm not claustrophobic.  I was about ready to claw my way out of the MRI machine by the end, though, but that's only because I hadn't been allowed to move or breathe very deeply for about an hour and fifteen minutes by the time I was done.  Plus, it was super loud in there.  I'd been warned beforehand about that, but no amount of warning could have prepared me for the reality!  Anyway, a few days later I got a call from the doctor's office telling me that, yup, there's a big ol' cyst there, it needs to go, and I'm being referred to a surgical oncologist for a consult.  At this point I didn't really ask any questions, mostly because I happened to be in the work van with my boss when I got called.  Not really a conversation I felt like having in front of the old man.

 It was at this appointment that I finally thought to ask just how big this thing actually was.  I knew that it was supposedly "very large", but really, how large could that possibly be?  There's only so much room in one's insides, what with all those organs in there, right?  So, maybe like the size of my fist?  Ah, no.  Bigger than that.  Think comically large.  Think football-sized.  Yeaaaahhhhhh.  I was also going to be further referred to a gynecological oncologist.  I had that appointment today.

I'll be having surgery to get the monstrosity removed on March 1 and there's good news and possibly bad news.  Bad news first: there's a possibility that the offending ovary and tube will have to be removed.  This is the only part of this medical saga that's gotten me upset (other than some now-resolved snafus involving insurance).  I do want to have kids someday and that won't help.  But, it's still only a possibility, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, and in the meantime I'll try not to think about it too much.  Now, good news!  I will most likely lose at least ten pounds just from having the surgery!  Plus, this godforsaken beastie has been causing me to retain fluid in my legs, so that'll clear up.  And!  I'll most likely have more energy after this is all over with!  I see some new-pants-shopping in my future.  The amount of time I'll have to be out of work should be less than I'd feared as well; probably only two or three weeks as opposed to the six I was expecting. 

My parents will be coming to take care of me, their favoritest child, the day before the surgery and plan on staying for about a week.  My sister (the least favorite daughter) is coming too, and will stay for a few days.  Plus, a friend will be taking the day off to assist with family-wrangling (specifically mother-wrangling) duties.  Though I think my mother has finally calmed down with regards to all this, thanks at least in part to my own general nonchalance about the whole thing.  We'll see.

So that's what's going on with me.  How've you been?

Galaxy Cookies

Today's recipe is brought to you by my mom's old and falling apart Betty Crocker cookbook.  I remember her making these when my brother, sister, and I were really young and I still think they're just great.  If you've got kids (or steal someone else's kids), this can be a fun recipe to make with them. 

So, get out 1/2 cup butter (softened), 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla, food coloring, 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and a bunch of cherries, chocolate pieces, nuts, of whatever you feel like putting in these cookies.  And while you're at it, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together your butter, sugar and vanilla.  You can do this with a wooden spoon, but I personally recommend using an electric mixer (or your stand mixer for you fancy-shmancy people).  Add in a few drops of your food coloring, too, to make your dough pretty.  Or you can leave it all dull.

Booooring beige

Beautiful blue!

Pretty pink!

Now gradually work in your flour and salt until your dough looks rather like the above pictures.  If the dough is too dry (and mine always is), add in some milk, a tablespoon at a time, until it comes together.  Mold the dough around whatever it is you've decided to put in the middle and roll it into balls.  You're going to have a different number of cookies depending on what you decide to put in them.  I made two batches; one with peanut butter cups inside (blue), the other with maraschino cherries (pink). 

As you can see, I ended up with quite a few more cherry-filled cookies than peanut butter cup ones.  Anyway, put your cookies about an inch or so apart on your cookie sheets and bake them for 12-15 minutes, until they are set but NOT browned.  Really, what would have been the point of making them pretty colors if you turned them brown in the oven?

Once they're cooked, cool them completely and make your icing.  You'll need 1 cup confectioners' sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and food coloring.

And all the sprinkles the grocery store had in stock

Just mix your ingredients until smooth.  Now just slap some icing on your cookies and you're done!  Of course, you can get really fancy here, using all kinds of different colors and piping designs on the cookies.  Or, you can be lazy like me, make one color of icing, and dump all kinds of different sprinkles on the icing before it hardens.  It's your call.  And this is probably the part of the process that those kids you came into possession of at the beginning of this post can really have fun with.  Just put your cookies on a rack over a cookie sheet and let them go nuts!

You, too, can have delicious blurry cookies!!

Chocolate Pudding

Mmmmmm....chocolate pudding.  It's one of those tasty treats that my mom would make every once in a while and something which, for the longest time, I didn't realize most people just bought from the grocery store.  It's a great dessert for a dreary winter day, only takes a few minutes to make, and is very easy.  I once made this right after getting my wisdom teeth out completely high on oxycodone (I didn't realize just how fast it would take effect) and it still came out great AND I didn't burn the apartment down.  You'll need: 3 cups of milk, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 egg, 3 tablespoons of cornstarch, 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder, a pinch of salt, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and 1 tablespoon of butter.

 

Beat the egg slightly and in a large saucepan, combine that, the milk, sugar, cornstarch, cocoa, and salt.  Heat this slowly over low to medium heat, stirring constantly, scraping the bottom of the saucepan.  And I really do mean constantly; if you don't it'll stick to the bottom of the saucepan and you'll end up with some very lumpy pudding.  It'll start out very liquid at first, but once it starts to thicken, it will do so pretty quickly.  Keep it on the heat until it becomes very bubbly; kind of like the Bog of Eternal Stench from Labyrinth, only much better smelling and, presumably, tastier.  

Once it starts bubbling away, turn off the heat and stir in your vanilla and butter.  Once the butter has melted in, pour your pudding into a large glass or metal bowl through a fine mesh strainer.  This will get rid of any errant lumps.

Begone, foul lumps!

Ta-da!  You now have a large, steamy bowl of delicious chocolate pudding!  Now, you should probably put some plastic wrap on top of it; this will keep a skin from forming on your pudding.  Just put the wrap directly onto the pudding, it's fine that you're doing this while it's still hot.

That's pretty steamy

Now, chocolate pudding is fine all on its own.  But you know what makes it really great?  Topping it with homemade whipped cream!  This is another recipe that'll only take a few minutes to make.  You only need: 1/2 pint whipping cream, 3-4 tablespoons of sugar, and a dash of vanilla.

Just this

Pour the whipping cream into a large glass or metal bowl (if you can chill it and a set of beaters in the freezer first this will go faster) and beat it on high until it starts to thicken.  Add in your sugar and vanilla and continue to beat until stiff peaks form.

All done!

Bam!  You're all done!

Caramel Corn

I've posted autumn recipes a couple times before and although fall is well passed, thanks to my parents' generosity and their freezer, I'm still getting to enjoy some fall goodness.  While I was in NY for Christmas, they gave me 1 1/2 gallons of apple cider.  And not that swill you find in the grocery stores.  Oh, no, this is some of the best damn cider you'll ever come across, from the Burrville Cider Mill (luckily they're waaaaay better at making cider than at making web sites).  One of my favorite things to go with this delicious apple cider is my mom's homemade caramel corn, which she'd typically only make for Halloween.  Since I was neither in NY nor even had any apple cider at Halloween, I figured it was a good time to make up for it.

This is a fairly simple and quick recipe; all you need is 1/2 C molasses, 1/2 C light corn syrup, 1 tsp vinegar, 1 tbsp butter, and plain, unbuttered popcorn.  My parents always buy the jar of popcorn and make it on the stove, but I'm lazy and use the microwave kind. 

Go ahead and get your popcorn all popped.  Make sure you get rid of any unpopped kernels since you probably don't want to chomp down on one of those after you get everything covered in caramel.  Now, in a large-ish saucepan, combine your molasses, corn syrup, and vinegar.  Put this on medium-high heat and let it come to a boil, stirring constantly.  Once it starts to boil, it'll bubble up pretty quickly, so keep a close eye on it.  Keep it going until it thickens up a bit, which should only take a couple minutes for a single batch.  You'll know it's ready when you can dribble a bit into a glass of cold water and form a ball with it with your finger.  Once it's ready, turn off the heat and drop in your butter, stirring until it's all melted.  Now pour it over your popcorn and stir it all around until the popcorn is completely coated.  And you're done!  See?  Quick and easy.  And very very tasty (way better than that crunchy stuff in the grocery store).  And sticky.  But no worries on that account; just let your dishes soak for a bit and they'll be extremely easy to clean.  This will keep very well for a few days at room temperature when kept in an airtight container. 

It uses plain popcorn, so it's healthy...right?

Mushroom Puffs

I bet you were thinking all I knew how to make are desserts.  Well guess what?  I can make other things too!  Today's recipe is a tasty little hors d'oeurve that you can make for parties or for a snack when you can't think of anything else for dinner (they freeze really well, too). 

The ingredients you'll need are:

This recipe guest-stars my parents' kitchen!

1 8-oz package of cream cheese (softened), 1 1/2 C plus 2 tbs flour, 1/2 C plus 3 tbs butter (softened), 8 oz mushrooms, 1 large onion, 1/4 C sour cream, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp thyme, 1 egg, beaten.  First up, we'll make the dough for the little puffs.  In a large bowl, beat together your cream cheese, 1 1/2 C flour, and 1/2 C butter until it's smooth.  Then shape it into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate it for about an hour.

I am jealous of my Mom's Kitchen Aid.

Mom has some nice pans, too.

While the dough is sitting in the fridge, you can start on the filling!  Mince your mushrooms and your onion.  If you have a food processor, you can use the shred blade to make this go much, much faster than if you have to cut them up by hand (luckily, Mom got a food processor for Christmas!).  In a 10-inch skillet, melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium heat, then toss in the mushrooms and onion and cook them until it's tender.  Now stir in the sour cream, salt, thyme, and 2 tablespoons of flour.  Turn off the heat and set this aside.

If making the filling took you less than an hour, this might be a good opportunity for some doggie time!!!


D'awwww!  Cute lil' Ndnd! (not a typo)

Martha, Neela, and Grammie!

Well, now that puppy-time is over, the dough should be ready to work with.  Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  On a floured surface, roll out the dough to about 1/8 inch thickness and cut out circles with a 2 3/4-inch round cookie cutter.  Brush your circles with your beaten egg and place about a teaspoon of mushroom mixture into the center of the circles.  Fold the dough over the filling, press the edges together with a fork, and prick holes into the tops.  Brush them with more egg.  Put them on a cookie sheet (which I recommend lining with parchment paper) and bake for 12-14 minutes or until they're golden brown.  This recipe supposedly makes 3 1/2 dozen little puffs, but I've never been able to make that many.  And like I said up top, these freeze really well, just do so before you bake them.  Enjoy!

Mmmmmm.....