Thanksgiving 2013

I was really ready to not care at all about thanksgiving this year, and in the end I only really made stuff we normally would eat. The recipe I wanted to share from this, though, is my mac and cheese recipe. I have experimented with mac and cheese for years. I think its like one of those recipes like chili or tomato sauce that you have to try a lot of recipes and experiment with them in order to find what your preference is. My trouble with mac and cheese up until now is that most of the recipes use a bachamel sauce, and I can't help it but bachamel sauce tastes like gravy to me. gravy with cheese added. cause it is gravy with cheese added. lets be honest. So I have been working around that this whole time. Meanwhile some time ago I found this recipe that was roasted potatoes with cheese on top. So I would fry up some fake ground sausage with garlic and fennel seeds added and I would add it to the potatoes and roast it with cheese and serve it with steamed kale. Then I thought: wouldn't this be great in a soft taco shell as a taco? Well it was. but I had to go one step further. The step further was based off of my pasta sauce. I was making a red marinara sauce and an alfredo sauce and adding them together, because red sauce alone is kind of hard on me cause of my acid reflux. I simplified the alfredo sauce by just heating up heavy cream, adding a little vegetable bullion cube, and parm cheese. So I decided to try this with sharp white cheddar cheese. It was delicious and tasted so so good on the potato/sausage tacos. Recipe about 1/2 cup of heavy cream Sharp white cheddar cheese, maybe about half a block, added in after the cream gets hot. DON'T BOIL CREAM add about 1/4 piece of vegetable bullion cube pepper. Mix until cheese melts. Experiment with cheese and cream amounts. I just decide how much to put in of each when I make it. So back to the original point, I thought: Wouldn't this work for my mac and cheese too? So I doubled what you see up there, boiled some macaroni noodles, cut up some shiitaki mushrooms and broccoli, mixed it together and baked it on 350 for about 1/2 an hour. clyde lovvvves it. the shiitakes are really important, they give it really good flavor. make sure you don't add too many noodles for how much cheese sauce you make. I make the whole box, and add them in slowly to figure out a good ratio. This was the highlight of thanksgiving this year.