Second Cousins

I made a terrible mistake yesterday; I forgot to mention that Mary, another second cousin, also absolutely loves mac-n-cheese.  I realized my mistake tonight when I went to look at the blog and nearly fainted when I saw that someone commented on a post, surely the stars were aligned in an odd formation last night, there’s no other explanation for someone posting a comment. 

 I can remember visiting Mary’s house as a kid and discovering that Kraft made a powered cheese shaker, you know, the powered cheese from the blue box but only in a shaker so you could add it to whatever your heart desired.  Mary is a serious mac-n-cheese lover.   I think Mary has even tried to recreate the Wisconsin Mac-N-Cheese from Noodles & Company, she even went so far as to live in Wisconsin for a few years, sadly I don’t know that she was able to replicate it to the perfection that you can get in the restaurant.

I hope Dillon doesn’t mind, but I’m going to post his mac-n-cheese recipe.  If I hear he’s not OK with it, I’ll delete this post and it will forever be sealed in the vault where other blog posts go when I delete them decided they are just too good to post.

           

Dillon’s Mac-N-Cheese

            8 ounces of elbow macaroni

            1 block of sharp cheddar cheese – I was lazy and bought an 8oz bag of shredded

            1 block of Colby jack cheese – again, bought the shredded

            2 cups of milk

            1 teaspoon of onion power

            ¼ cup flower

            Breadcrumbs

Boil pasta according to instruction until tender and strain.
While pasta is cooking, shred the cheese (or open the bag). 
In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, onion powder, and flour.  Add the pasta and mix it together well.   I also added pepper, garlic salt and shallot salt
Add all of the shredded cheddar cheese and a bit of the Colby jack cheese, mix well.
Grease a 9x13 pan and pour mixture into the bowl.  Top with remaining Coly Jack cheese and breadcrumbs (thin layer).
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes

I think you can dress it up, or down, as much as you want.  I added peas, which was tasty, but corn, onions or maybe red pepper would also be delectable.  Another thing that would be pleasing to the pallet would be some chili powder or another spice to kick it up a notch.  I did think about adding some protein, but we didn't have any lobster, yummmm I can taste it now....

There ya go Mary, Dillon’s Mac-n-Cheese, I hope you enjoy it as much as we have. 

1.5hrs

It only took an hour and a half tonight, but she finally fell asleep.

I guess it's an improvement over nap time, although it only took 45 minutes for her to fall asleep then.

Dillon's Mac-n-Cheese

Dillon, Clare’s second cousin, makes a killer mac-n-cheese that we’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy the last few times we’ve been to Joplin.  Dillon and Clare both LOVE mac-n-cheese and would eat it three times a day if they could.  When we were in Joplin last Dillon said he would share his secret recipe, but only with Clare a fellow mac-n-cheese lover. 

Clare and I were on our own all day today, Jeff had both an all day training and had to work late, so I knew I needed some activities to occupy Clare and preserve my sanity, I figured a little baking would be the perfect activity.   When we were at Target I mentioned making Dillon’s mac-n-cheese, from that moment on she wanted to eat it.  We bought our elbow pasta and cheese, among a few other things, and headed home for some mac-n-cheese magic.

I’ve made mac-n-cheese from scratch once before and there were a whole lot more steps involved than this recipe, I was thrilled to see that there were only 7 ingredients.  Clare was a big help; she kept an eye on the pot of boiling water (it takes forever to boil water up here anyway, so watching the pot doesn’t matter) and was eager to mix the ingredients when it was her turn.   We did take it a little further and added a few of our own elements to the recipe, I added some shallot salt, pepper, garlic salt and peas; all were great additions.   The recipe calls for onion powder, which I didn’t see in the spice cabinet, so I called Jeff to ask if we had any; his response to my question, ‘what are you doing!?!’  Yes, I can cook despite what others may think.

Clare doesn't eat many vegetables, but she will eat peas, so we mix them into mac-n-cheese every chance we get. 

 Only a little bit of cheese ended up on the floor during this step. 

 The 45 minute baking time seemed to go slowly, I suppose it seemed that way since we were both hungry, but once it was finished it smelled wonderful and looked even better.  Clare waited patiently for it to cool before diving in to her most favorite meal in the entire world. 

Good things come to those who wait. 

We both enjoyed our purple bowls of mac-n-cheese and I think I’ll be adding this to the regular rotation of dinners for Clare.  

Sweet!

I'm a sucker for all things Sweet, both edible and non.  When we first got married I told Jeff how excited I was to have the last name of Sweet, it was such a fun and positive last name, he told me it would wear off and I'd get used to it.  We're 4 years in and I'm still in love with it.

Any time I see a t-shirt, picture, stationary, sticker or just about anything that says Sweet I buy it, life can't be sweet enough. Of course, when I saw this sweatshirt I didn't even think twice.

You better believe if it came in my size I'd have bought one for me.

I love this picture a lot, not only because of the sweatshirt, but because she's actually smiling for me, with the hundreds of pictures I take, she's hardly ever looking at the camera.

Bunny Is All Better

Clare and I visited the bunny on the carousal today.  The moment I mentioned going to the carousal she began talking about the bunny with an owie and bandaid, and that she wanted to see if he was all better.

Am I a terrible Mother for having her ride the other bunny that didn't have an owie?  You can see the other bunny in the background, and he does still have a bandaid on his ear.  I hope they fix him soon. 

Sleeping Beauty

She has some room to grow in her new bed.

Reading

Clare got a little bored while Jeff and I were working on her bed so she picked up a book.  I'm not sure who she was reading to, but she told the story pretty well.  She also counted aloud to 14 which is the highest we've heard her count.

And yes, she did wear her swimsuit all day. 

Bless You!

Today on my way to Walmart I got stuck in an Elk Jam.  There were maybe 15 or 20 of them, mostly females and their babies.  I'm always surprised how calm they are around the cars, they didn't even stop to look, they just kept eating their lunch and looking for a place to rest.  

I of course, like everyone else, slowed down to take pictures.

This guy sneezed right as I took the picture.  Have you ever heard an elk sneeze?

GG On The Big Screen

Clare likes to talk to GG and Pawpaw on Sunday evenings via FaceTime.  Up until recently the connection was hit or miss, but now that we have our own internet (we've been borrowing from the neighbors) it's clear as a bell.  Tonight we tried something new, hooking the iPad up to the TV.  Clare seemed to really enjoy it and GG said it was a much clearer picture than normal.

Big Girl Bed

Today was a big day at our house; Clare slept her last night in her crib.  She’s attempted to climb both in and out of her crib a few times, but hasn’t ever gotten past throwing one leg over the side.  I remember when Jeff put her crib together, it was the afternoon of my shower and I was 33 weeks pregnant, it seems like a lifetime ago. Today Jeff changed her crib in to a big girl bed.

First I had to find the directions, which weren’t included in the directions that I so carefully saved in the storage bag secured under her crib.  Thankfully the Internet showed us the three easy steps necessary to change from a crib to a full size bed.

It didn’t seem hard, and didn’t take very long, but there sure were a lot of screws involved.  Clare was an excellent supervisor.  Her supervising skills were really tested when we moved the mattress and box spring up from the guest room, it was her job to make sure the steps were clear, she took her job very seriously and began screaming for ‘everyone to get out of the way because there was a big bed coming!'

Clare is cleaning up the water she spilled on the floor in this picture. 

Of course once the bed was finished she had to try it.  She has no trouble climbing up onto our bed, but this seemed a little more difficult, so we moved her step stool from the bathroom to her bed.  She had lots of fun climbing up and down, jumping on the bed and pretending to go night night. 

I knew she’d like her new bed, I guessed she would like having room for her babies and space to spread out, she was getting pretty cramped in her crib.  I also knew the real test would be naptime; I wasn’t so sure she would actually stay in her bed.   After lunch she announced she was tired and wanted to take a nap, we talked about how she needed to stay in bed and that we’d come get her when nap time was over.  I left her room at 12:34, I think it was 12:36 before I checked on her the first time and saw her curled up with her bunny and her eyes still open.  It wasn’t until a little after 1:00 that she was asleep. 

I decided I’d make the most of naptime and went to the store.   When I got home, three hours later, Clare was running around playing and excited to see me.  I asked Jeff how long she’d be up, hours.  What!?!  Naptime typically lasts 2.5-3 hours at our house, apparently not today.   Thankfully she was in a good mood all evening and crashed at a normal time. 

Apparently one change wasn’t enough for today, I had the brilliant idea that tonight would also be the night that we would give Clare the choice of a diaper or underwear for night time, of course she chose underwear.  For the record, she has been potty trained since the second week in July and has only wet her diaper twice in that time.   So after putting on our princess panties, flower pajama bottoms and polka dot pajama top we read a few books and rocked ‘for two minutes’.  She climbed into bed, curled up with her bunny and new Rapunzel doll and said goodnight.  We’d told her that if she needed to go potty then she needed to get up out of bed and go to the bathroom.  Anyone want to guess how long before she got up and went potty?  Let’s just say I hadn’t made it out of the laundry room next door before she was in the bathroom.  It only took one more trip to the bathroom before she was asleep for good in her big girl bed.

So, we officially have no more baby gear in operation, it’s all packed up and ready for the next kid.  It’s a little bitter sweet to close the door on this chapter of her life, but I’m excited for the next.  She’s no longer a little baby, she's a little girl.

Now, the next test will be what time she wakes up in the morning.  I guess we’ll see when she walks in and announces the day; I just hope it’s not too early.