Comfort Food

Anne loves to cook. And to bake. And to eat cooking and baking. And to leave nice big messes for Mom to clean up afterwards. She loves macaroni and cheese. She loves homemade macaroni and cheese. Usually when she asks if I will make macaroni and cheese I answer, "If you'll help me make it!" I thought about letting Anne make a batch all by herself. I only thought for a minute about the cake she recently made that she forgot to put flour in. And I only thought for 2 or 3 minutes about the microwavable macaroni and cheese that Anne left the water out of.



Yummy. Smelled that one for over a week.

Needless to say, I helped Anne with her homemade macaroni and cheese. I let her start the sauce of butter and flour and spices while I worked on the noodles and cheese. When it was time to add Anne's sauce to my noodles and cheese, I was having a hard time combining everything. It was just seperating so much. I thought it was because we were in a hurry and didn't cook the sauce long enough to get it thick. Oh, well, gotta hurry. Popped the really soggy dish in the oven, only to pull it out and grab the paper towels to swab up all the grease off the top. I mean, I know this is a comfort food dish but sheesh, I should feel a little more guilty about enjoying this one, it's just so greasy! After blotting and blotting and blotting and blotting with only more grease flowing up to the top, I started getting suspicious and asked Anne about the butter. She replied she put in a cup just like the recipe said. So I looked at the recipe. Yep, half a cup is called for.

My solution: let it stand for about an hour, stir like crazy and keep heaping it on my 37-pound 3rd-grader's plate. Hmmmmm, commmmmfort.

I love Anne.

(Go ahead, click on the picture to get the FULL effect):