a99kitten's Musings

Husband brought home some lobster macaroni & cheese for me from a business dinner. He knows I LOVE mac&cheese.

It was ok. I mean even a “bad” mac&cheese is a good mac & cheese :)

Mac & cheese is like risotto it seems. Many chefs feel they need to fancify it for their foodie tastes. So they add all sorts of weird stuff that has no business in either of them.

I’ve had risotto that some people might rave about that I was pretty turned off by. But it’s the simple that I like – pea risotto made using the Cipriani recipe is better than any gross seafood risotto made by some stupid, self-important chef in SF.

And a simple baked, rich cheesy mac&cheese is way better than some over the top version looking to be less “middle-class”. I’ll be making a yummy one for my Superbowl party that’s much yummier…in my opinion. But truthfully…I prefer the Kraft blue box or Stouffer’s to most foodies desperate attempts to not be so middle class or regular. Meh.

Obviously this is a personal choice. Some people want the exotic. They choose the exotic or different when the simple is so much better.

So in the end, I had a couple bites but the huskies were pretty stoked on the doggie bag of fancy food. :)

My first week of football was all crazy! I had 3 players in my Fantasy team playing in Thursday’s game. I HATE that! Because then I have to stress going into Sunday’s games that I didn’t build up enough of a cushion. I also hate when all of my players finish up on Sunday but my opponent has a player left in the MNF game. Stress!!

Yahoo Sports projected 51 points for my 3 players (DEF, K and WR) and I got 62.75. Although I was stressing going into overtime as Ward got his 100yd bonus in OT! Whew..although Santonio Holmes stole some of my points! :) Yahoo! also projected 62 points for Brees which I felt was optimistic of them even against the DET defense. Turns out – Drew rules again this year :) 100 points! I needed that since a lot of my other players didn’t do as well as projected. I ended up with 273.05 in total points. The person I am playing has 211.40 at the half. I just need Aaron Rodgers to throw the ball and not run it with Ryan Grant to win my week since neither of us has players in tomorrow’s games!!

Also made it through week 1 of Survivor Football. First week I generally take a “sure thing” as I haven’t seen what the teams are playing like (pre-season games simply don’t count.) So I chose New Orleans at home over Detroit. Big gambler eh? :) Hey! Anything can happen, right? Any Given Sunday…But yes… I survived Week 1! Whew…

My weekly pool picks choked. I decided to get a little crazy and pick TB and CAR who were both underdogs…and they played like it. Although TB did a MUCH better job against DAL than CAR against PHI. What the heck happened to Jake Delhomme?? And the dominating CAR D from a couple years ago?? Whoa..Although they did take McNabb out. Not good though. I actually like him (even though my FF opponent was playing him!) so do not want to see him hurt. Especially with Vick salivating in the wings for Week 3.

So I won my FF week and survived Survivor week 1. Tanked on my weekly picks. Not so bad for Week 1. And now on to stressing about week 2!! :)

In honor of the first NFL weekend, I decided to make some homemade mac & cheese to go with a grilled ribeye! I chose an easier one – “Today’s Macaroni and Cheese” by Rick Bayless (chef and owner of Chicago’s Frontera Grill and Topolobampo.)

It’s actually a fairly simple recipe. All basic ingredients:

Ingredients

Just a few add this, stir in that’s for the cheese mixture:

Cheese mixture

And it has some spice so that’s different for mac&cheese! Once you finish boiling the pasta till al dente you mix it all together and then put in baking dish and top with a melted butter and bread crumb mixture. I used a bit more butter than called for in this part of recipe but cut it back on buttering the dish. I was channeling my inner Julia!

Ready to bake and brown!

And voila! Baked, yummy “Today’s Macaroni and Cheese” brought to you by Rick Bayless and me :) The cheese and butter are bubbling…oh yeah baby…

bayless mac&cheese

Husband grilled the ribeye. Yum. Along with a glass of bubbly…a perfect dinner :)

Yum

My mac&cheese cookbook was quite a purchase for me. Very happy with it. If you are a fan of macaroni and cheese, I highly recommend it:

Angelus wondered where his was…

Don't I get some?

and Storm was attempting the Jedi mind trick…

This is the puppy you want to feed...

It’s a gorgeous night out. After dinner the sun has set but not dark yet. The sky has some dark clouds, and blue sky and these create a great color mixture. It’s chilly out which reminds me of fall. You can smell forest and maybe a hint of fireplace (?) in the air. I LOVE that. Autumn technically doesn’t start until 9/22 but between chilly weather and football, it makes a nice start to fall for me! Maybe I’ll break out the pumpkin/fall/Halloween stuff…

All in all, a good first NFL Sunday :)

I love macaroni & cheese.  Like, I love, love, love it. In any form – fancy restaurant multi cheese, baked, infused with truffle oil, weird cheeses, whatever or simple Kraft blue box mac and cheese. Love it.

I have boxes of mac & cheese in my cupboard (Velveeta, Kraft and Safeway’s Organic brand) and a few frozen entrees from Stouffer’s, Lean Cuisine and Trader Joe’s in the freezer. I don’t eat it very often though…I guess maybe just saving up for the Apocalypse when I no longer care about a bikini-ready tummy ;-)

Then one of the foodie people that I follow on twitter mentioned a delicious cookbook about mac & cheese. WHAT? So I searched for it on Amazon. Found it. Ordered it. Bad news for the low-carb diet plan :)  (the book is “Macaroni & Cheese 52 Recipes, from Simple to Sublime” by Joan Schwartz.

So tonight is my first try and a recipe from the cookbook.  I am trying the “Comfort Diner Mac and Cheese” Page 30. I *think* it’s the same one on the cover of the book. But I couldn’t find any reference to the cover photo.

This one seemed like a simple enough recipe so I thought a good start :)

mac-and-cheese-ingredients

Had to grate the american and fontina cheese. So have you ever tried to grate american cheese? Umm…not so easy. The reason it is so awesome for grilled cheese, etc is because it’s nice and soft. And this great fact makes grating it a PAIN! But that’s ok :) Grated half of it and then chopped the rest into teeny, tiny bits.  The Fontina grating was a breeze after that since it even had a skin to hold as I did it.  Thankfully you could use shredded Cheddar which means pre-packaged!

Cheese!

Once you mix all the ingredients, blend, whisk, etc. you bake. And I am making a boneless ribeye with it (using a rub I got at the Charles Krug winery!) so I am not consuming ALL carbs :)

And VOILA! Out of the oven baked goodness:

mac&cheese!!

I just took a bite…it is frackin’ delicious…I am keeping this recipe for sure!! But trying the other 51 in the recipe book :)