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Mac n Cheese

This year, my family did two different Thanksgiving dinners. We had a small meal with my immediate family, and then one of my cousins hosted a larger meal with the extended family. As is often the case with stuff in my family, this led to more than a few laughs.

The Mild Girlfriend and I always like bringing something whenever we're invited, so we started planning ahead days in advance. Well, actually, let's be real: she started planning days in advance. She just made sure to inform me of these plans so that I knew about them. I wasn't just an innocent bystander in all of this, but I'll give credit where credit is due: she did a lot of the planning. So, a week before the big meals, she suddenly wanted to try out a new macaroni and cheese recipe.

I happen to like macaroni and cheese, so I was all for this. The catch, however, was that this was a much healthier version than usual. It was also a fairly simple recipe, by design, so that we could throw it together quickly if we were cooking at someone else's place. All in all, it made a lot of sense (like I said, she nailed the planning portion of it). So, we made a sample batch for ourselves to see how it tasted.

Let's just say that it was a good thing that we did. The first time we made this, we either screwed up the proportions or something wasn't quite right. It tasted surprisingly sour (in hindsight, I think the Greek yogurt was off), and we ended up having to cover up that taste with a lot other seasonings/spices. The end result was still edible, but it wasn't as super awesome as we would have liked. You could still kind of tell that we'd gone off the rails at some point.

Well, okay. With the first batch jitters out of the way, we could refine the recipe to our liking and perfect our art. So, for the second batch, the one we had on the actual Thanksgiving Day, we toned down some ingredients. It came out a lot better, and all involved were happier about this second batch. It still wasn't perfect, but it wasn't something that I'd be ashamed to bring over to someone's house. I'd started to get the hang of it a little bit, I think.

That knowledge was particularly helpful the next day, because at one point, I was left to my own devices to make the mac and cheese. Remember, I cook well enough to stave off starvation. Now, macaroni and cheese isn't the most complicated item to make in the first place, and I'd already had two attempts to make this dish. I figured I was good, so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

Something like thirty minutes later, I had a nice bowl of mac and cheese. It had the right consistency, it was cheesy, and nothing tasted overly powerful. All was good with it, except for that last part. Nothing tasted overly powerful, so it was actually kind of bland. I should also mention at this point that I have a pretty terrible sense of smell. I was, in fact, the worst possible choice to season this food to other people's liking.

Me being me, I solved this problem by calling in for back up. My brother happened to be around, so I enlisted his help. He has always been more willing to add salt to his steak, or season his food with something on the table. So, he's got experience in the matter. I would have asked the Mild Girlfriend, but she was preoccupied with some other task. Either way, I brought in someone to taste test my food.

And taste test we did. I felt a little bit like a witch standing over a cauldron, trying to make the potions come out right. We added some salt, tasted the food, and tried again. Then we added a different spice, washed, rinsed, and repeated. In the end, after some liberal application of onion powder, paprika, and salt, the macaroni and cheese was tasting really good. In fact, that's precisely how I packaged it up. I just threw the lid on and called it good (my brother threw in a, "you're welcome for the awesome mac n cheese").

He was validated a few hours later, when people complimented the dish. Maybe they were just being nice, but I chose to take them at face value. Either way, the whole process from start to finish made me laugh. If you ever see me bring a healthy looking mac and cheese dish to a meal, know that I probably had a good chuckle prior to serving it.

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