Monkey Monday: mac ‘n cheese challenge edition 3 September 2007 8:15 am
Posted by Tracy in : books,cheese,cooking,eating,friends,milk,monkeys,Morning Glory,news,people,travel , trackbackGood morning, sports racers! (Some of you are sports racers; the rest of you really must check out The Show with Ze Frank.) Peter’s on trail in the high Sierras with his dad and brother this week, so I hitched a ride down to Davis, CA with him on Thursday, to hang out with our friends Chris and Kevin and Tessie and my new friend Ella, all of Everything2 fame. The plan was for me to hang out until Sunday night, then ride Amtrak back up north to Eugene and arrive on Monday. Only when I called Morning Glory earlyish on Saturday to make sure I was covered for Labor Day morning, I found out that my would-be substitute had been fired and there was no one left to cover that shift, which in turn meant lots of angsty phone calls and changes in travel plans. Oops. That’s what I get for not making sure my shift coverage arrangements are confirmed in writing, and maybe notarized to be on the safe side. But oh well. By now, you are wondering what any of this has to do with macaroni and cheese, and rightly so; I have digressed. But read on, and I will explain everything.
During many long and delicious conversations on Friday, I’d learned that Ella, for all her being English and quite the globe-trotter, was unfamiliar with good ol’ fashioned American-style mac ‘n cheese, and I knew what I had to do. The problem that Saturday was it looked like I had only twelve hours left to do my thing, if I was returning to Eugene on the Saturday night to Sunday afternoon train. As Ella had been especially horrified by my description of mac ‘n cheese from a box, I was resolved to make at least one batch of Annie’s and maybe one other, maybe generic store-brand extra-sketchy box mac as a control or maybe just a contrast to my Sexy Mac and Cheese, aw yeah. One way or another, I was determined not to leave Davis without an evening of greasy goodness.
After visiting Chris at the Davis Farmers Market, we made a meandering surgical strike on the Davis Food Co-op for ingredients (I couldn’t find any extra-sharp cheddar so I settled for Cabot sharp because it was one of the few non-orange cheddars available and colored cheese is icky). I could not bring myself to buy Kraft box mac ‘n cheese, but had Ella read the label, at which point she nearly had a nervous breakdown right there in the aisle of the store. A friendly passer-by recommended Annie’s as an alternative, but I explained that this was part of an exercise in cross-cultural understanding. We returned triumphant and Chris (hereafter referred to as “Sugar Momma”) very generously solved my change in travel plans dilemma. Before dinner, I referred Ella to Salon’s “The Bunny Versus the Blue Box” from back in January, just to give a bit of cultural context about various box mac ‘n cheeses. And then the game (the delicious game) was on.
I had some technical difficulties of the oven-related persuasion, but eventually solved them with a combination of pulse-with-modulation broiler usage (crank it up to warm the oven for ten minutes, turn the oven back to bake for twenty, and so on) as well as good old-fashioned patience and waiting (go go gadget residual heat!) In the end the sexy mac took over two hours, in which time Sugar Momma cooked up some beets (yum), Ella made a delicious shredded carrot salad (yum, yum), and I made regular old Annie’s shells and white cheddar, a green salad with tomatoes, avocado, and balsamic vinaigrette (I would have never thought to combine avocados with balsamic vinegar, but it turns out to be a pretty winning combination, so mad props to Ella for suggesting it). The wait was worth it, as were all the side salads. Yummity yum yum yum.
The next morning, as we prepared to strengthen ourselves for sweet parting sorrow with a fried (and poached) breakfast of epic proportions, Sugar Momma informed me that the mac ‘n cheese is even better as day-old leftovers. Yay for more positive reviews! We’ve frequently not had enough leftovers to perform this experiment but her result agrees with ours. Now I am home, which is oddly empty without Peter or my parents, but the cats are cute and purry, and life is generally good, if never quite back to normal. I have a mess of random newsy-type articles to share in a more standard Monkey Monday style (if such a thing can said to be exist) but those (and maybe a report on Morning Glory holiday weekend minus a cook pandemonium) can wait until tomorrow, because clearly a long and rambling story about mac ‘n cheese was way more important, of course. Ella, I am looking forward to reading your review of the experience, wherever it may appear (hint hint…. guest post?)
