I just realized I never actually posted anything about our vacation. The vacation was great, and I'll return to share some words and pictures about crabbing and fresh seafood. But I'm going to use this post to focus on Savannah, Georgia and our trip to The Lady & Sons restaurant, owned by Paula Deen of the Food Network.

I haven't had macaroni and cheese in a while, so I decided to make some last night. I wanted to take another run at a baked mac and cheese because our previous attempt turned into an egg souffle. I'll never understand what Delia was thinking in the Mac & Cheese throwdown. 12 eggs? Ridiculous.

I don't know what you call this exactly. My intent was to make pizza bread like my mom makes it, but it really didn't turn out that way. I think it could have, but I made one giant loaf rather than two smaller ones. What she always did when I was younger was make them two at a time, cook one and freeze the other. Hers always fit nicely into a loaf pan, a much more manageable size for freezer storage. Mine did not.

Earlier this week I saw an episode of Good Eats about salmon and the various ways to prepare it. When it comes to salmon Lauren and I pretty regularly (twice a month on average) make the blackened salmon burgers I've posted here before. I'm not a big fish eater, especially when it comes to fishy fish like salmon, but those salmon burgers are unbelievable.

2 out of 3 isn't bad. Friday night I got around to making the ribs I had been eyeing all week. Actually Thursday night I gave them a dry rub and stuck them in the fridge and Friday we cooked them. First off, I can't put enough emphasis on how much the dry rub helps, or how much I think it does. By Friday evening the 13 x 9 dish they were resting in had filled to the top with the excess water that had been pulled out of the meat by the salt in the rub. I'd definitely recommend preparing these ribs at least 6-8 hours in advance, or overnight.

I've wanted to make this recipe for a couple of weeks, but had a hard time lining up the fresh tilapia and the opportunity to make this. It seems as though Meijer gets it freshest seafood in preparation for the weekend. I say that because I went there on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (I am a terribly inefficient grocery shopper) and the first two days they had a very limited selection of some very odd types of fish. Then Thursday night rolls around and they've got fresh cod, tilapia, tuna and quite a few other varieties I've actually heard of.

So I think from this point forward I'm only going to buy fresh fish Thursday through Sunday. For this recipe I used a package of frozen tilapia fillets. They worked out pretty well as far as taste was concerned, but they stuck to the grill and had pretty much fallen apart by the time they were cooked through. I'm sure I flipped them too much. I have a habit of doing that on the grill in an attempt to get perfectly brown grill marks on all sides.

One final note. Amazingly this recipe is probably the one Paula Deen recipe that doesn't use butter or heavy cream:

Peach BBQ sauce:

• 3/4 cup ketchup
• 3 tablespoons prepared mustard
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• Pinch garlic salt
• 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup onions, finely chopped
• 2 cups fresh or canned peaches
• 4 (7-ounce) tilapia fillets
• House seasoning
• 1 lime, juiced

Directions Mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan, excluding the peaches and simmer over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes. While the sauce is simmering, puree 2 cups of canned or fresh peaches. Once the sauce is cooked, add the pureed peaches to the sauce and stir together. Preheat the grill to medium heat. Season the tilapia with house seasoning. Cook the fish on each side for 3 to 4 minutes. During the last few minutes of cooking, brush the fish with some barbecue sauce. Once cooked and plated, ladle a nice spoonful of the Peach barbecue sauce on top of the fillets.

The sandwiches were very good, but the Food Network really needs to learn how to post better sauce recipes. The flavor was great, but the recipe made more than a quart of sauce. The four sandwiches didn't make a dent in that. So there are about 30 oz of peach bbq sauce in the refrigerator right now. Also, the sauce doesn't reduce during the simmer. I thought it might reduce and turn into a glaze, but that didn't really happen. I think in order to make that happen you'd have to up the brown sugar tremendously. Like upwards of 1/3 cup. But for starters I'd recommend you cut everything in half or more so you end up with a manageable amount of sauce. Lastly, "prepared mustard" = "not dry mustard". It doesn't matter if you use dijon, spicy brown or just yellow mustard. Choose according to your own tastes.

Friday night we took the easy way out and ordered a pizza. Lauren was sick, we received a couple of dvds in the mail and decided that was enough. Saturday was a little different. After running a few errands we happened to catch the chicken pot pie episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay. Knowing that its getting warmer by the day, we decided to take one last run at winter comfort food with chicken pot pie. However, Bobby Flay's chicken pot pie recipe from Throwdown is not available on the Food Network website, because its a recipe he serves at one of his restaurants. So we got online to research what Good Eats had on the topic, which is how we came to the Curry Chicken Pot Pie:

• 4 cups frozen vegetable mix, peas, carrots
• 1 to 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 1/2 cups low sodium chicken broth
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 2 tablespoons dried parsley
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 2 cups cubed cooked chicken
• 1 package puff pastry

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Toss frozen vegetables with canola oil and spread evenly onto a sheet pan. Place into oven and cook until golden brown.

In a saute pan heat 1 tablespoon of butter and sweat the onion and celery. In another saucepan, heat the broth and milk. Add 2 more tablespoons of butter to the celery mix and cook out the water. Add the flour and curry and cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in the hot milk mixture and cook until thickened. Add the parsley, salt and pepper. Toss the browned vegetables and the chicken. Pour into a shallow baking pan, or a large terra cotta pot base, lined with foil, and top with 6 to 8 circles of puff pastry. Place into the oven and cook until puff pastry has browned and the mixture is hot and bubbly, about 25 minutes.

We made two changes to the recipe. First, we didn't roast the vegetables. We used frozen peas and canned corn, fresh carrots and potatoes (blanched, about 1.5 cups of each) and mushrooms. If you're going to do this though, you'll probably really want to consider adding at least 50% more liquid (milk/cream or chicken stock) than the recipe is calling for. Our potatoes sucked up all the extra moisture immediately and made the filling less of a thick soup and more of an actual pie filling. The filling made enough to fill a 13 x 9 pan, so plan on that. For the chicken we just picked up rotisserie chicken from the deli section at Meijer, then shredded it by hand.

Our second alteration was that we didn't use puff pastry because of our experience with the last pot pie. We instead made some sweet potato biscuits from scratch, an idea stolen from Bobby Flay but again not listed on the Food Network website (which makes us think he serves this at one of his restaurants). Luckily Paula Deen bailed us out with a recipe for her own sweet potato biscuits:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 heaping tablespoons sugar
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup mashed cooked sweet potatoes
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) softened butter
• 2 to 4 tablespoons milk (depending on the moisture of the potatoes)

Directions Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate, large bowl, mix the sweet potatoes and butter. Add the flour mixture to the potato mixture and mix to make a soft dough. Then add milk a tablespoon at a time to mixture and continue to cut in. Turn the dough out onto a floured board and toss lightly until the outside of the dough looks smooth. Roll the dough out to 1/2-inch thick and cut with a biscuit cutter. Place the biscuits on a greased pan and coat tops with melted butter. Bake for about 15 minutes. (Watch your oven: If the biscuits are browning too fast, lower the temperature.)

Rather than lay the sheet of dough flat over the entire casserole we cut the biscuits into rounds and hoped they would expand. They didn't they grew up way more than they grew out, so we ended up with a 12 piece chicken pot pie, each with its own sweet potato biscuit yarmulka. Given that the filling was already cooked, we baked the dish per the biscuit instructions (450 for 15 minutes).

As far as the taste, it was surprising how far a teaspoon of curry powder goes for flavor. I figured that with all the milk, cream/butter and potatoes it would kind of get washed out but it didn't. So definitely don't add any more curry powder than it calls for. The pot pie was very good and a nice contrast to the cream heavy pot pie we made earlier from Paula Deen. The biscuits stole the show though. They were awesome. I can't wait to make something else we can use them in.

By the way, the picture above is not ours. I forgot to take a picture of it. But, it is a picture of the same curry chicken pot pie recipe that another food blog made.

This is another recipe I saw on Food Network during the past weekend. We made it last night. It was very simple and very delicious.

Turkey and Bean Burrito Burgers

1 cup cold leftover white or brown rice
1 pound ground turkey
1 (15-ounce) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained 3 teaspoons chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander
1 tablespoon grill seasoning, (recommended: Montreal Seasoning by McCormick)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 ripe avocado
1 clove garlic, grated or finely chopped
1 lime, zested and juiced
1 jalapeno or serrano pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup sour cream
4 red leaf lettuce leaves
1 ripe tomato, sliced
4 crusty rolls, split

Combine rice, meat and beans with spices and grill seasoning. Form 4 big patties from the meat and bean mixture then heat 1 tablespoon oil, a turn of the pan, in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook patties 7 to 8 minutes on each side.

While burgers cook, combine avocado with garlic, lime zest and juice, jalapeno and red onion. Mash to roughly combine, then stir in the sour cream.

Place burgers on buns with lettuce and tomato and top with sour cream guacamole.

We made quite a few changes. We seasoned it with what we had and what we liked. So we reduced some of the chili powder and went with some cayenne pepper and garlic powder. We didn't have coriander so we used thyme. Those sorts of things. The one significant addition we made was that we added the diced red onion to the turkey mixture rather than the guacamole, figuring it would not overpower the burger the way we figured it could with the guacamole.

For the guacamole we skipped the ripe avocado and just picked up a container of guac from the dairy section. Then we added the sour cream and lime juice. We also left out the serrano/jalapeno pepper, and just used dried cayenne pepper.

The final result came out to be 5 patties rather than 4. Cooking was very simple, 7-8 minutes per side was pretty accurate, even though it doesn't look like it will cook all the way through when you go to flip it.

Lauren left the kaiser buns from the salmon sandwiches at work, so we used some sourdough foccacia rolls instead, which may have been a blessing in disguise.

About twice a year I get a craving for a fish sandwich. This weekend I was watching Food Network and was basically forced to have one of them. I don't know if it was related to Lent or what, but every show I watched seemed to be preparing fish or some type of seafood.

Along the way I saw Paula Deen making blackened tilapia with cilantro lime mayonnaise. So I took that recipe to the grocery store and wound up making Blackened Salmon Sandwiches with Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise. Fresh salmon fillet was on sale for $6.49/lb, and much to my surprise 1 lb of salmon goes about twice as far as the same amount of chicken. So for about $9 we got 1.32 lbs salmon and made four blackened fillets, with a side of Zatarain's Yellow Rice and some steamed asparagus. As I recall from the show, Paula said her main reason for choosing tilapia was that it is relatively inexpensive, so we figured salmon we be an acceptable substitution. We also couldn't find fresh tilapia and were wary of defrosting frozen fish.

On to the recipe:

1/4 cup sweet paprika
2 tablespoons ground thyme
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
4 (10-ounce) tilapia (or salmon) fillets
4 Kaiser buns, split, buttered and toasted

Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup freshly chopped cilantro leaves
1 tablespoon fresh lime

In a shallow dish, combine first 6 ingredients.

Pour melted butter into another shallow dish. Dip fish fillets in melted butter and coat with seasoning mixture.

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Cook prepared fish, in batches if necessary, 3 to 4 minutes per side, or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Spread Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise evenly over toasted buns. Place blackened fish on bottom half of bun, top with mango salsa, and cover with top half of bun.

Now I don't know what sweet paprika is, but I couldn't find it at the store so I used paprika. The rest of the recipe is solid. We didn't bother with the mango salsa, though it would have been awesome. My best suggestion is that if you aren't using cast iron, which we weren't, you may want to consider either pouring the seasoning mixture into an empty spice jar and shaking it on your fillets or taking a pastry/basting brush and lightly brushing away any extra spice mixture that isn't adhering to the butter after you dredge it through the seasoning. Dredging the fish as though the seasoning is flour is a bit of overkill, and I don't think a normal skillet has enough heat to completely blacken it without burning the fish.

Twice this week and once about three weeks ago I saw an episode of Good Eats about how to make chicken wings. Tonight Lauren and I decided to make it happen. The picture you see here is the finished product. The rest are a photo blog of how the chicken wings came to be. At the bottom of this entry is the chicken wings episode of Good Eats, which we followed pretty much step for step.

I haven't been doing a whole lot of cooking this past week. At least not new cooking. We did French Toast and Macaroni & Cheese for some easily stored on the go meals but that was about it. Part of our Valentine's Day weekend was to avoid cooking. So we went out for dinner Friday and Saturday night, but Saturday morning I managed to squeeze in a MacGyver breakfast in part because Lauren never brought her waffle iron back from work.

The result was cheese omelets:

2 eggs
1 tbsp butter
1 8 or 10 inch non-stick skillet
salt & pepper

Add butter to the skillet and heat until slightly brown. crack 2 eggs, beat with a fork, add salt & pepper to taste, then add to skillet. While the egg begins to form to take your fork and stir the eggs without scraping the bottom of the skillet. With your other hand shake the pan back and forth. It is somewhat like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. To get comfortable with this you may need to remove the skillet from the heat. Thats not problem just periodically put it back on to keep the egg cooking. After about a minute, take your fork and run it around the edge of your egg to set the boundary. After another 30 seconds, lift one edge of the egg and tilt the pan towards the opening to let some excess egg run off. Why? I don't really know. I'll let Alton Brown explain below. But once you've run off some of the excess egg, let it cook on medium heat for 10-20 seconds (depending on your preference), then add your toppings, cook for and additional 10-20 seconds, fold and serve.

For my omelette I used Mozzarrella, Parmesan and Provolone. Thats the cheese we had on hand from the lasagna. Lauren didn't care for her because of the Parmesan, so I got to eat mine plus a half of hers.

As far as how you cook them, if the instructions were not clear enough, here is the Good Eats episode that will show you how it's done. For what its worth I didn't bother with warming the eggs before I started, so my omelet may not have been as delicate as Alton Browns, but it wasn't scrambled eggs either. I also didn't bother with all the nonsense about what kind of spatula is best. I used a fork for everything. To see the important omelet related stuff for Alton Brown, skip to about the 9 minute mark of the video above.

A couple of months ago when Lauren and I were messing around with yeast and dough for cinnamon rolls I mentioned to her that I really wanted to make soft-baked pretzels. Just this month I happened to catch an episode of Good Eats that explained exactly how to do just that. Unfortunately I don't see how you get this done without an electric mixer unless you've got some seriously muscular forearms. There is a lot of kneading required to get the smooth consistency required for the pretzels to have awesome chewiness.

* 1 1/2 cups warm (110 to 115 degrees F) water
* 1 tablespoon sugar
* 2 teaspoons kosher salt
* 1 package active dry yeast
* 22 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups
* 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
* Vegetable oil, for pan
* 10 cups water
* 2/3 cup baking soda
* 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
* Pretzel salt

Directions Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam. Add the flour and butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined. Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl, clean the bowl and then oil it well with vegetable oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and sit in a warm place for approximately 50 to 55 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper and lightly brush with the vegetable oil. Set aside. Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in an 8-quart saucepan or roasting pan. In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24-inch rope. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the parchment-lined half sheet pan. Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula.

Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the pretzel salt. Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes, rotating the pans(s) half way through. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.

These pretzels are excellent. You can use coarse sea salt instead of pretzel salt if you have a sea salt grinder at home. On the episode, Alton Brown said the primary benefit of pretzel salt was that it gives you the classic pretzel look. Table salt gives you a little too much coverage on the pretzel.

Aside from the one hour proofing time, the recipe was quick and easy. Once the dough was ready it took about 10 minutes to roll them out, shape them and get them ready to bake.

Last week I came across an episode of Good Eats on macaroni and cheese. More than half the episode was spent on your typical fancy baked macaroni and cheese casserole, which is wonderful but ultimately not very practical for someone that typical cooks for one or two.

But just before the episode ended, Alton Brown talked about how to make a quick homemade stove top mac and cheese to compete with the powdered Kraft Mac N Cheese and Velveeta Shells N Cheese. It is ridiculously simple and really only requires one or two oddball ingredients, but you can buy and store those ingredients at room temperature almost indefinitely.

Alton Brown's Stove Top Macaroni and Cheese:

• 1/2 pound elbow macaroni (2 cups dry)
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 eggs
• 6 ounces evaporated milk
• 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• Fresh black pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 10 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the pasta to al dente (6 minutes) and drain, then rinse with cold water. Return to the pot and melt in the butter. Toss to coat.

Whisk together the eggs, milk, hot sauce, salt, pepper, and mustard. Stir into the pasta and add the cheese in 3-4 separate handfuls. Over low heat continue to stir for 3-5 minutes or until creamy.

I used mild cheddar rather sharp and I just bought bag of shredded Meijer brand. I didn't feel the need to be fancy by buying a block of cheese and shredding it myself, and some of the reviews I had read weren't so keen on the sharp cheddar flavor. I tried to limit my ingredients to whole containers (where possible) so I could get a read on how easy everything would be to buy, store and then make on demand, similar to the boxed macaroni and cheese. Evaporated milk comes in 5 oz containers (not 6 oz) and shredded cheese is sold in 8 oz bags (not 10 oz) so those were the amounts I used. I also skipped the hot sauce because all we had was habanero hot sauce and I didn't feel like taking that risk.

As far as the ingredients are concerned if you are in the habit of weekly grocery shopping, butter and eggs should be staple ingredients that you'll have on hand for your other needs. Here is a complete price break down. A "serving" in this case means the amount of ingredients you'll need to make one batch of mac and cheese.

Elbow macaroni - $0.46 per serving (servings per box)
Butter - $0.25 per serving (2 servings per stick)
Evaporated milk - $0.69 per 5 oz
Shredded cheese - $2 per 8 oz
Eggs - $1-$3 per dozen ($0.10-$0.25 per egg)
Dry mustard - $0.35 per serving ($2.35 per oz, 6 teaspoons in one oz)

Give or take some sale prices this comes out around $4 per batch. The difference is that when its all said and done this 8 0z of mac and cheese can easily feed four adults. My experience with the 7.25 oz Kraft mac and cheese and the 12 oz Velveeta shells n cheese is that you're looking at feeding about 1.5-2.5 people if you're lucky. So in the end when you weigh all the pros and cons of the various macaroni and cheese preparations, they all come out pretty close to even in price per meal. Which means the winner should be decided on taste, and nothing comes close to the home made stove top macaroni and cheese.

In my opinion this is the kind of mac and cheese you're going to want to put out at family gatherings/work parties/potluck dinners as a side dish. A little bit goes a long way, people will love the taste and then you can impress them by telling them how simple it is to make.

Lastly, I didn't take a picture of my mac and cheese because its hard for a picture to capture how it tastes any different than any other mac and cheese.

Also worth noting is that if you refrigerate it and heat it up later (like I did for lunch today) the cheese doesn't get all clumpy and oily and the noodles don't get weird and rubbery. I'll stop short the hyperbole of saying "I'll never buy mac and cheese again" and just say that I don't see any reason why I shouldn't make a habit of keeping all the ingredients on hand so I can have it on demand.

In the new year Food Network has changed their schedule around just a little bit with certain shows in their off-season and other shows, like Ace Of Cakes, starting their new season. That seems to have opened up the 11pm time slot for a new set of reruns, which is currently being filled by Good Eats. I never used to watch it, but lately Good Eats has turned into my nightcap. Of course that makes it a little more difficult not to go to bed hungry or have weird dreams where I'm in charge of preparing dinner for crazy medieval feasts. But Good Eats is so fascinating and informative that I just can't turn it off. I also like that it doesn't really center on recipes, but instead gives you a better understanding of how to make minor procedural adjustments that improve the quality of your food.

This episode (Season 5, Episode 4: Celebrity Roast) is the one that really turned me on to the show.


I am sure I might regret this because I'd never watch or re-watch them (like my Sopranos DVDs), but right now I want the complete set of Good Eats on DVD, just not at that price.

I finally managed to catch a replay of the Iron Chef America: Thanksgiving Showdown from a week ago. The thing about Iron Chef is that I always hate the judges. They're always so pretentious. Cady Huffman annoys me not only because she spells her name stupidly, but because they believe I am supposed to be impressed if they refer to her as an actress. Her IMDB profile shows a few episodes of Law & Order and not much else. Is she related to somebody famous? If you're going to give me borderline celebrity, give me someone that probably resents the way their cookie crumbled. Give me Frank Stallone, Eric Roberts or a pre-Desperate Housewives Terri Hatcher type. Someone that needs the Iron Chef camera time to reinvigorate their career, not some goofy attention whore that is just happy to be invited back.

The judges for Thanksgiving Showdown were Tiki Barber, some food critic I don't know and Lou Diamond Philips. Possibly the least qualified panel to judge a rare 2v2 Iron Chef partner battle. Don't believe me, listen to Tiki Barber. "I like bacon", "I just keep going for the bacon" and "I'm just eating". Followed up in the second dish with the question "how did you make this?". Tiki, I don't know if you realized this but you were sitting inside Kitchen Stadium 15 feet away while they made your entire meal. What have you been doing for the last 60 minutes?

I don't know what to say about Lou Diamond Philips. He tried. He gave his best attempt to play the "acting is in my past, I'm a savvy restaurateur these days" role like Arnold Schwarzenegger at a Republican Governor's conference.

The one thing I would like to know is how I can audition to replace The Chairman? That seems like a pretty cushy job. You pace around Kitchen Stadium wearing hideous color combinations, occasionally stopping to shout the name of the secret ingredient. I wonder how much he makes.

Last night we had a special Wednesday edition of FoodLab. Lauren has a Thanksgiving potluck lunch at work on Friday and everyone has been asked to bring a side dish. So she thought this would be a good chance to make Delilah's 7 Cheese Mac & Cheese from Throwdown with Bobby Flay.

The recipe:

• 2 pounds elbow macaroni
• 12 eggs
• 1 cup cubed Velveeta cheese
• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, melted
• 6 cups half-and-half, divided
• 4 cups grated sharp yellow Cheddar, divided
• 2 cups grated extra-sharp white Cheddar
• 1 1/2 cups grated mozzarella
• 1 cup grated Asiago
• 1 cup grated Gruyere
• 1 cup grated Monterey Jack
• 1 cup grated Muenster
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon black pepper

The first thing we did was head to grocery store to check out these cheeses. Its a good thing I wasn't buying, because cheese is expensive. Gruyere is $8 a block. Block Asiago cheese is almost $6. Extra-sharp white cheddar was $5. You can see how this is going to turn out, and so could we. So we dumped the Gruyere, found store brand block cheese at 3-for-$5 for the sharp cheddar and monterey (pepperjack), found a small block of Muesnter for less than $4, used a bag of shredded mozzarella rather than the block. The only truly expensive cheeses we needed were the Asiago and Extra-Sharp White Cheddar.

Next we halved all of the ingredients because this was supposed to be dinner for two. In addition to that we figured out that we didn't want an egg souffle, so we used a quarter of the 12 eggs to make our half batch. Lastly we used milk instead of half-and-half, because we're not gross.

Half of that recipe filled a 13x9 baking dish to the hilt. It seemed as though it was going to be a little runny, but after baking it for an hour, the eggs did their job and firmed everything right up. In fact one more egg would have been too dry, and I probably would preferred a little more creamy balance in the cheese. So we probably need to adjust the milk or butter. I would never use 12 eggs for this recipe unless you'd rather end up with some kind of weird scrambled egg macaroni bake for dinner and breakfast. What it comes down to is that if you're used to eating Velveeta shells and cheese, this recipe isn't going to deliver a high-end version of that. This mac and cheese is more of a casserole you cut with a fork. In terms of price, if you make the original recipe you're going to end up with a $50 mac & cheese that serves 15-20 people. If you halve the recipe and catch a break on some sales, you can get two $16-20 meals that will feed a large and hungry family.

The half recipe make more than enough to feed 6 adults. I was disappointed and disgusted to see how much mac & cheese we had left last night. I'll enjoy it for lunch today and then swear off mac & cheese for a few months. This recipe is pretty good, but I can easily see why Delilah lost the Throwdown.

Saturday morning I woke up at 8:45am, drove down to the YMCA and took part in my very first spin class. It was tough, sometimes annoying and definitely challenging but overall it was a good experience. Chances are I'll go again next Saturday. The only problem I found with going to spin class (I can, and will, refer to this way as though its something I've been doing for years) is that it gives me a false sense of accomplishment. So I spend the rest of the day going *stretch* "I need to go to the grocery store, but boy am I sore from spin class. I'll just finish watching this show and then I'll go."

Well "this show" turned into the Michigan game, a small nap and then about 3 hours of Food Network. After all of that I helped Lauren get some laundry done and made plans for dinner. We've gotten in to the idea of making at least one new dinner or lunch each week or so and slowly increasing the degree of difficulty. The last new one we did was chicken salad, which was followed by a really good egg salad. This time around we settled on homemade chicken pot pie. We used Paula Dean's "Lady & Sons Chicken Pot Pie" recipe as the base and then improvised from there (changes in bold):

Did I mention we started about 9:45pm? Thanks alot spin class.

Chicken Pot Pie (Degree of Difficulty: 6)

4 sheets frozen puff pastry
2-3 cups diced chicken (cooked)
1 egg, beaten
Seasoned salt and pepper
1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups milk
1/4 cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 small yellow onion, minced
1 cup frozen green peas, cooked
1 cup chopped cooked carrots
1 can (15 oz) corn
1 cup sliced mushrooms

The first step for this recipe is to take the puff pastry out of the freezer and let it sit at room temperature. For the chicken we used four thighs and one breast skinned, boned and cubed. I did a quick Italian dressing marinade before sauteing the chicken and onions in a skillet.

While I was doing that Lauren started the pie filling by melting the butter and then slowly adding flour until the mixture reached the consistency of peanut butter. When she dropped off to chop mushrooms and carrots I added the cream and milk to the butter/flour mixture. We've basically watched way too much Iron Chef America. I think secretly we both think that is what this is all building to even though we don't really have the necessary training. You'll notice later (the crust) that our timing kind of sucks.

The original recipe called for four cups of heavy cream, but we had some reservations about that amount making things too creamy. So we used half the amount and made up the difference with milk.

At this point Lauren steamed the carrots and then sauteed them in chicken stock with the mushroom and garlic for about five minutes, adding the peas and corn for the final two.

When that was finished we added the chicken and vegetables to the sauce, brought it to a high simmer and then moved on to crust. For the crust what you need to do is roll out the puff pastry, brush it with egg and butter and set it inside a pie plate or casserole dish. Place the bottom crust in your baking dish and bake it at 350 for at least 10-12 minutes (or until golden brown or flaky). The bottom crust will NOT cook substantially once you've added the filling. Add the top layer of puff pastry to cover your pie and cook for 15-20 minutes (or until golden brown).

This recipe makes enough filling for two 9 inch pies. We used an 8x8 baking dish. Any unused pie filling freezes easily, so you can store it for a future meal.

We finally finished around 10:45pm, but it was worth the wait. Overall this recipe cost us almost $40, but that includes a number of questionable and "bad luck" purchases of things we should have had but happened to be out of. Flour, $2.50 organic peas, $5 organic butter, $9 of puff pastry when we could have used two $1.50 frozen pie shells or made our own dough with the flour we just bought.

In case you were wondering, this was the highlight of my weekend. Doubly so since it started snowing last night, because that means I'm going to make the backup pie tonight or tomorrow while I lament the arrival of winter.