my mother is going to call me in twenty minutes, and she's going to ask me how my day went. then she'll ask me about my macaroni and cheese. i am debating telling her the truth.
this blog is the truth.
remember that blog i had in my june go! challenge where i said i liked to bake but sucked at it? this is almost the same except for one thing: i DON'T like to cook. and i suck at it.
i got home from mi clase de espanol at approximately three oh eight in the afternoon. i had until three forty-four to mix up homemade macaroni and cheese and time bake it in the oven for my dinner. it would be easy. it was a simple recipe that's been in my family for what seems like centuries. the oven will do the dirty work while i went to physical therapy and got back stability. this seemed flawless.
i could not for the life of me find the macaroni and cheese dish. see, my mother is one of those people who uses specific dishes for specific entrees, so this is what i'm used to. macaroni is baked in the macaroni dish. that's how it had to be. but i couldn't find the damn thing. i opened every single cupboard and drawer in the kitchen and it was gone! so i grabbed a dish that looked kind of like it and sprayed it with pam because nobody wants to be like that unfortunate lady in the pam commercial.
i then could not find macaroni noodles. i settled for mini shells, but that didn't equate to two and a half cups. so i rooted through the pantry and found lasagna. and more lasagna. and you guessed it, MORE LASAGNA! so i settled for some multicolored bow tie noodles.
from there i sprayed them with butter spray because we don't do stick butter in my house. then i poured out a bunch of salt because my mother never measures things like that. then i dumped in my entire bag of cheese and poured my four cups of milk.
halfway through pouring the milk, i realized that my dish was too small. oops.
i dumped my soggy, cheesey noodley mess into another dish (the lasagna dish, of course) and finished pouring the milk. i then stuck the dish into the oven and spent ten minutes figuring out how to set the oven to bake my creation for an hour and a half starting at four fifteen.
then i left for physical therapy.
on the way home from physical therapy, i was listening to the lion king sountrack (what else?!) and thinking about how awesome my macaroni and cheese was going to be. i was still slightly in spanish mode, so i kept saying "macaroni y queso!" in an excited, spanish voice. it was fun.
until i realized that i had left the dish in the wicker basket. that wicker basket was now sitting in the oven and had been baking for almost an hour.
i turned onto my street in a full blown panic, expecting my house to be in ruins, or at least to have smoke pouring out of the kitchen window. i ran into the kitchen expecting smoke and the wrath of god, but the wicker basket was a survivor. i grabbed the one oven mit i could find and got that macaroni out of the oven.
the cheese was melting. the milk was bubbling. that dish was hot. i'm afraid of ovens. and hot things. i'm not sure how i got it out of there.
i then spent ten minutes with that damn dish on my counter trying to get it out of the protective wicker basket. i tried using a knife. i used a variety of oven mits. i burned myself. i said something i never ever allow myself to say. i slopped half boiling milk and a few noodles onto the counter.
but i got the dish out after ten minutes of cursing, swearing, and sweating.
i put that dish back into the oven and let it bake for the rest of the time. then i gave it another ten minutes. because that's how long it took me to get that damn dish out of the damn wicker basket. i've said that three times. TEN MINUTES.
my story has a happy ending, thank goodness. my macaroni and cheese (macaroni y queso!) was absolutely delicious. it was fully cooked and extra cheesey. it was so beautiful i took a picture on my phone because i cannot find my real camera. i ate happily.
i am seriously debating telling my mother this when she calls in the next ten-ish minutes. it's a very funny story (those are never funny at the time though, are they?) and i enjoy telling it. but i can see the absolutely horrified expression on her face when i say, "oh yeah, and then i left the dish in the wicker basket and it baked for an hour."
she will say, "YOU ALMOST BURNED DOWN THE HOUSE."
baking really isn't my thing. but it's so much more my thing than cooking.
to my future husband: will bake you cakes every day if you ask me to. but you better make me dinner.
long live macaroni and cheese. the homemade kind.
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| one of these days, my meals will look like this. |
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