Macamoni and Cheese

When you write about kids and food it is easy to get way too cute and brag about the latest mispronunciation as the most hilarious thing your child has ever done. I certainly fall victim to it... frequently. This week is no exception. From calling the bobcat sitting on the driveway (renos have begun!) a pomegranate, to the subject of today: macamoni and cheese.

It might be a not so secret food snob goal of mine to see if I can get my kids to adulthood without a taste of Kraft Dinner. Sure, they'll be tempted along the way, but I can police all their meals at friends' and daycare, right? Okay, but I know Grandma won't give it to her, and neither will Hubby. And so far she loves what Mama and Daddy give her in the way of macaroni and cheese.

For as long as Hubby and I have been together we've engaged in somewhat spirited debates about the best way to make macaroni and cheese. He in the melted cheese with a little bit of milk camp and I in the cheese sauce and baked with bread crumbs on top camp. We will happily eat each other's rendition, while secretly thinking ours would be at least slightly better. All that being said, I may have created a winner for both of us.

Before I go further I need to also get another food snob confession off my chest. I don't believe in hiding vegetables in food. Sure, there are things like zucchini chocolate cake, but that's just plain good. I'm talking about the sneaking in and stalking of vegetables, just for the sake of getting your kids (or partner) to eat vegetables, a la this book.

This recipe for mac and cheese, however, is one that would qualify as sneaky. I had a vague recollection of seeing something similar a few years back, but couldn't find the recipe. So I made one up. And have made it again and again and again. Use whatever cheese you have around, but the strong, aged ones are my favourites. Use whatever kind of squash - aside from a spaghetti squash - or even a pumpkin. The sauce contains more pureed squash (or pumpkin) than milk and cheese. It is creamy without being heavy. It is orange! It can be eaten straight as made or baked without drying out. It is so good, seriously.

Two real mom advantages of this dish are that you can feed your baby and the rest of your family at the same time. Make the puree for baby and use the rest for the mac and cheese. Plus, you can easily freeze it. I bake mine in two small pans. We eat one and I freeze the other for those days when Little Miss Sunshine and the Monster keep me out of the kitchen.

Sneaky Mac and Cheese
(makes one 9 by 13 baking pan or two 8 by 8 pans, or a lot from the pot)

4 cups dry macaroni
2 Tbsp butter
2 cups pureed squash or pumpkin (fresh or canned)
1 cup milk
5-6 ounces finely shredded cheese (your choice)
1 cup bread crumbs (optional)
2 Tbsp olive oil or melted butter

1. Cook your macaroni in boiling, salted water until al dente. Drain and return to pot.
2. While your macaroni is cooking, melt butter in a medium saucepan. When melted, stir in the squash puree and milk.
3. When squash mixture is hot, stir in 5 ounces of cheese until melted. Season well.
4. Stir the squash mixture into the cooked macaroni.
5. If you like your mac and cheese baked, then put it in a buttered pan, and top with 1 ounce of cheese mixed with the breadcrumbs and oil/butter. Bake in a 325 degree oven for 20-25 minutes.

Is there any way to style mac and cheese to look good? I'm not a professional, but I couldn't do it.

Just Orange

Have you been watching Saturday Night Live lately? Sarah Palin and Obama imitations aside (freakin' hilarious!) on Weekend Update they have a new segment called, "Oh My God, Are you Serious?" I've been saying that a lot lately when it comes to the Monster's food preferences.

Orange is one of my favourite colours. It favours heavily in the decorating in our house, I use it liberally in many quilt designs, and my favourite mug and second favourite purse are bold displays of the citrus tone. Apparently it is also one of the Monster's favourite. She, however, displays her propensity for the colour by only eating orange cheese. Oh my God, are you serious?

Our suspicions about this were confirmed a few weeks ago when she boldly stated that the cheddar on her plate for snack would not do because it was not, as she said, "lellow cheese." I knew that she wouldn't eat a hunk of mozza, nor a Babybel round, having defiantly turned her nose at these for months. But that aged cheddar was fantastic, plus she'd already eaten it in a quesadilla.

Still, I thought I would try an unscientific experiment on her, a cheese plate taste test if you will. At the market last week I stocked up on some gouda from Sylvan Star, a whisky cheddar from The Village Cheese Company, and some fantastic Honeycrisp apples and Bartlett pears. Along with some supermarket marble cheese, dried apricots, and a few bagel crisps my mom left behind we had ourselves a snack.

She went straight for the fruit. Okay, so maybe including the fruit skewed the experiment. But just a plate of cheese didn't seem like a good snack, plus I have to groom her for a trip to France...one day. It should be noted that the first fruit she ate were the dried apricots, shockingly orange.

The volume of choices did her excited, not overwhelmed. Everything was picked up, and usually licked. Oh my God, are you serious? And all was put down, except the supermarket marble cheese. She almost took a bite of the crackled whiskey cheddar, but thought better of it. Brown is not orange.

Seeing as this wasn't a formal focus group and I resisted the urge to question her choices I can only come to one conclusion: she's weird. That, or she's just a toddler.

I did leave out her favourite cheese - feta. A salty sheep's feta is her hands down cheese of choice. If that is an option she will eat nothing else. Knowing that, I left it out so as to avoid skewing the results. Feta is white, or at best, cream. Oh my god, are you serious?

Sources:
Sylvan Star Cheese
Village Cheese Company

Taste Adventure - Gorgonzola Cheese

I'll save the suspense - the Monster didn't like it.

She happily stood by me on her chair to help cook dinner. She got rather excited at the prospect of pizza. She ate the end pieces of the pear while I put it together. She was quite curious about the sticky, brown onions. She eagerly took the piece of cheese I handed to her to try. She sucked on it for a second, opened her mouth to let it drop out, and pronounce, "I no like it." Simple and blunt with her declaration and no hissy fit. Fair enough.

So I made part of the pizza with feta, her favourite, instead of gorgonzola. The taste memory must have been imprinted for the night because she wouldn't touch that either. No feta? Then she wouldn't touch the rest of the pizza. She was lucky that her aunt and uncle called with rather exciting news and I was distracted enough to give her some leftovers and raisins.

Oh well, all the more for me, and damn, this was good pizza. Two onions - carmelized while I nursed the Babe - a ripe pear, a blue gorgonzola, and some fresh thyme sprinkled on top. She will learn to like it because I intend to make this a lot over the winter.