Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Rigatoni and Cheese

Well, today I kept my day fairly free from obligations and trips out and about. Or rather, Gabe did. He was so incredibly grumpy that I wasn't able to do much of anything this morning. I did get a lot of emails done and rewrote the schedule for the cafe for about the 7th time. After Gabe fell asleep I was able to eat something (finally) and got Matt's request for dinner: Baked Mac and Cheese. Once Gabe was awake and fed I packed him up and took him to the grocery store. On the way home (from two blocks away) I decided that I wanted some Starbucks (on the other side of town). I wanted to get something I don't normally order so I decided to try out their Salted Hot Chocolate. I must say, I had higher expectations. The problem was, and always is with Starbucks, that they use chocolate syrup instead of chocolate milk. You can taste that it's separate... it doesn't meld well. It also has a definite rich chocolatey taste, but it's too heavy. I had an epiphany. I am changing out from chocolate syrup at the church to chocolate milk. Of course, before I can do this I need to convince a panel of people that the chocolate milk is much better than chocolate syrup. And by "need to" I mean that I "need to" for my own peace of mind. So, this Sunday morning I think I'm going to bring in my own jug of chocolate milk and set up a taste test for a few people - mostly cafe volunteers but perhaps a few staff members who would be most likely to order hot chocolate at the cafe. I also spent some time thinking up new ideas for the cafe today. For example, I'm planning on serving a Chocolate Covered Cherry Mocha in November and a Candy Cane Latte in December. I might also approach a few missions teams about fundraising things - offer the cafe up for events, maybe have proceed days where everything earned on a certain Sunday goes to a mission, or get people to knit reuseable coffee sleeves and sell them for the teams in the cafe.
Anyway, I started making dinner for Matt at around 3:30 which was a bit of a mistake since Matt was about an hour late coming home from work. Dinner was still good though. It was actually some of the best Mac and Cheese (or rather, rigatoni and cheese) that I've ever made. I had some asiago in the fridge and grated some on top which I think helped. I was a bit worried at first since the white sauce I was making for the cheese sauce wasn't thickening - at all. And even after I added the cheese it wasn't thickening much, however, I had about 1/3 c. cheez whiz left in the fridge so I threw that in and it made a great sauce. For dessert I whipped up a Brandy Apple Crisp with some apples from my in-laws' tree. I soaked the sliced apples in brandy and added cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and a bit of sugar, then I did my usually crisp topping of oats, brown sugar, flour, a touch of salt and melted butter to hold it all together. It was really good and it made the house smell amazing.
Well, now I think I'm going to have a quick bath before bed. I've been aching all day and I'm not sure why but the weather can't be helping. Maybe I'll have more tea and start another Jane Austen novel too... Sounds like a nice way to end a day!

Mrs. Vander Leek ;)

No comments:

Post a Comment

I would love to know what you think of my recipes, or even of my antics! Let me know!