Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Dwindling Pantry - Day 2

Sorry there is no pic today. Posts without pics aren't as fun but I just didn't feel like dealing with the camera.

We started out day yesterday with oatmeal once again. Then a friend and her baby girl came over for lunch. Landon ate leftover Pasta Primavera (a note about Landon: if I give him the veggies from the pasta first, and don't let him see the pasta noodles, he'll eat the veggies. But, if he sees the noodles than there is no way to get the vegetables in his mouth!). I made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for the adults.

The lack of milk, eggs, and vegetables made dinner a challenge. I had just enough stuff to make a small salad, and tons of rice pasta but nothing to put on top of it. Except cheese.

There were remnants of three types of cheese in the fridge: parmesan, cheddar and gouda. Plus a bunch of butter and some half-and-half. Sounds like Mac n' Cheese to me. Looking up a few recipes in my cookbooks I figured out how to make it myself.

First I cooked 1 pound of brown rice pasta spirals.

Then I made the cheese sauce:

I melted a 1/4 c. butter in a sauce pan (way too much! - next time I'll use half of that)
Once the butter was melted I slowly whisked in a generous 1/4 c. of flour.
You should then have a thick mixture know as roux.

Since I needed about 4 c. of milk but only had 2 c. half-and-half I watered down the half-and-half with 2 c. water (one of the reasons I used so much butter).

Then I slowly added the "milk" to the roux. Let it boil until thick and then added salt, pepper, dry mustard, a dash of nutmeg and Worcestershire sauce. About 1/2 tsp of each except a bit more salt and I should have added more Worcestershire. Finally I added 4 c. of shredded cheese - a mixture of all three types.

I mixed the cheese sauce and noodles together. Put them in a casserole dish and baked at 350 degrees of 20 minutes. YUM!


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