2024, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Travel

Macaroni Conundrum

39 Comments

The last time I was with my whole family for the holidays was 1978.  Some years they gather without me, some years they don’t gather at all.  So when I announced that I was visiting Nonny two weeks ago, they decided that January Christmas festivities would be a grand gesture.  By the time I got the first text the week before my trip – the plans were so far down the road there was no turning back.

It was a potluck at Nonny’s little condo (truly the best choice considering the options) and all the obligatory dishes had been claimed.  My baby sister had three things on her list and since I knew she would be starting a new second job that week, I volunteered to do the macaroni and cheese.  She immediately sent me a recipe that is apparently my nephew’s favorite. 

Now I’ve made many a dish of mac & cheese over the years, using many different recipes, but looking at this one made me put my head in my hands.  It was two fully-typed pages and included four kinds of cheese, two kinds of pasta, garlic, green onion and quite a few spices.  In addition to the fact that Nonny has next to nothing in the way of kitchen utensils or baking dishes, I wasn’t even sure if she had the spices.  (I mentioned this last week when I was thinking of taking the spices in a bag in my luggage.)  I confirmed my suspicions – no big pot for pasta, no casserole dish to bake or serve it in, no grater for the four kinds of cheese.  In a funny turn of events, she DID have all the spices.  We could purchase an aluminum casserole, a grater and all the ingredients, but unless we also sprang for a big pot, I’d have to make two batches to have enough for everybody.  Not to mention the cost.

That’s when I remembered that YA had purchased macaroni and cheese from Costco for our Thanksgiving gathering and it had been pretty good.  I know there is a Costco about 5 minutes from Nonny’s place so the day before the party, we headed over there and picked up a pan of the stuff.  I doctored it up with some garlic powder, onion powder and paprika.  Via text that morning YA kept asking me if I had told my sister I was buying instead of making the mac & cheese.  I know my audience.  If I had fessed up that I was going to get it from Costco, my sister would have thrown up her hands in exasperation and said “Fine… I’ll just do it.”   One of my mottos has always been “it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission” so that’s the route I decided to take.

Turns out my sister didn’t care at all…. but my nephew did.  He kind of made a big deal about the fact that I should have let them know so HE could have made it. Of course, when we were divvying up the leftovers, I noticed that he heaped quite a bit into their Tupperware!  But I was happy to have not gone to too much trouble and Nonny was happy to not have more utensils in her teeny weeny kitchen.  And truth be told, the macaroni and cheese was really good.

I expect it will have to be another gathering for us to buy it again – it’s way too much for two folks, even folks who like macaroni and cheese as much as YA and I do.  But now I aware it’s there, you never know!

Do you have a favorite pasta dish?  (Either made or bought…)

39 thoughts on “Macaroni Conundrum”

  1. Oh, pasta! Anything with .Marcella Hazan’s bolognese sauce, or her garlic and olive oil sauce my children call invisible sauce, are wonderful. I also like fregula, a small round pasta from Sardinia that goes great with shell fish.

    When I get the chance I like to order obscure pasta shapes from Sogno Toscano, an Italian mail order business, or from Papparadelle Pasta, another ma8l order store. For Mac and cheese I rely on the old Better Homes and Garden casserole cookbook.

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  2. Is anything served with or over noodles considered pasta?

    I have a couple of standby recipes—fusilli with vodka sauce, to which I add mushrooms and pancetta, and a recipe for a simple tomato sauce in which you actually cook the meatballs. That typically goes over linguini.

    In the summer, when I have an abundance of tarragon, there’s a chicken tarragon salad I like to make, with farfalle (bowtie) pasta.

    I have a hamburger stroganoff I serve over wide pappardelle noodles. Does that qualify as pasta?

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  3. I like macaroni and cheese (who doesn’t?) but never make it because it seems excessively caloric while being nutritionally incomplete. Adding a lot of vegetables to it, as I would be inclined to do, would make it another recipe altogether.

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  4. There is a German filled pasta called maultaschen that I have long been tempted to try. It is traditionally filled with butternut squash. It would involve making my own sheets of pasta, which I have done before but it is a lot of work. We recently made bolognese sauce from some of our ground goat. It was really good.

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  5. Stuffed shells, the jumbo size – the stuffing is usually ricotta (et al.) mixed with egg… with or without meat in the sauce. This reminds me I should get some shells…

    I also love my dad’s very basic mac and cheese recipe, and I vary the cheeses quite a bit. Might try it with the garlic etc. – what were some of the spices, VS?

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  7. Twice a week for decades, it’s whole wheat spaghetti with my homemade red sauce. That could be my deserted-island-only-meal-for-the-rest-of-my-life food and I’d die happy . . . well, contented anyway. 🙂

    But I love pasta in any form with any sauce. Good quality ravioli is tough to beat, as is quality lasagna. Bolognese? Bring it on. We used to scarf down fettucine Alfredo like it was popcorn, but as someone mentioned above, it and mac & cheese are nutritionally incomplete calorie bombs, so we don’t partake anymore. Our first serious exposure to the dish was up in Duluth in the early 1980s at a place called the Flame restaurant, which was quite upscale for Duluth back then. It was down near the harbor west of the William Irving museum ship and the DECC. Sort of off by itself in that big flat area near where the coal mountains are stored. Rent must have been pretty cheap there.

    It didn’t last of course, as most restaurants don’t, but we went 5-10 times before we learned to make the dish ourselves and saved the restaurant tab.

    Chris in Owatonna

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. I remember The Flame. When my sister graduated from UMD back in 1972 we had her graduation dinner there. I don’t remember much about the food but I do remember that the lighting was quite dim because my dad hated eating “In the dark” and he complained about it.

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Can there be one favorite pasta dish? I have a few I return to over and over, starting with good old spaghetti and meatballs. But then there is Shrimp Diablo with Penne, Lynn Rosetto Kaspar’s Spiral Noodles with tuna and white beans, and Angel Hair Carbonara. Pesto Pasta can be an entire list of its own. Alot of this is made from summer garden produce and saved for the winter meals.

    I don’t know if gnocchi qualifies as pasta or dumplings. But gnocchi tossed with sage leaves fried in butter until crisp is delicious. That recipe came from a novel I read years ago. Frozen gnocchi from Pauly’s Meat Market in Eveleth is much better than the dried stuff from the grocery store, but that is a rare treat. Broders on Penn has frozen gnocchi, too.

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    1. aldis has good gnocchi moist in a vacuum pack that’s shelf stable forever
      scary when i type that out but it’s good
      my favorite with pesto
      all pasta recipes are better in pesto for me
      i like red sauce
      i like white sauce
      i like brown butter with garlic but i love pesto

      my x used to make a macaroni with condensed milk and black olives but it’s been 30 years
      i can still taste it ummm

      spinach roulade
      cheesecake and
      maccaroni and cheese
      devin and tara

      the 5 things she did right

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    2. About a week ago I made a chicken vegetable soup that used gnocchi as dumplings of sorts. It’s supposedly a copycat of an Olive Garden soup but I wouldn’t know about that. From a purist standpoint it’s probably a gnocchi sacrilege but it was good and very comforting.

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  9. I used to make pasta with grandkids when they were small. Flat spaghetti. Cannot remember what it is called. None of us could tell any difference in the taste. I also made my own gnocchi. A long and tedious but satisfying process. Now there we could taste a difference. James Beard recipe, used several ways. Baked with butter and parm and couple spices was family favorite. Don’t think I would be up to the task anymore.
    Clyde

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  10. i made a monster batch of lasagna a couple days after i broke my leg and ate it regularly till it was gone
    my drummer had an italian trumpet player that shared his mamas lasagna recipe
    secret is the white sauce with spinach
    1/3 each
    mozzarella , cottage cheese and ricotta
    1 more egg tan you think
    milk and whip it up
    noodle
    red sauce
    noodle
    white sauce with shining added
    repeat

    always better the second day but 1st day is killer too

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  12. One of my aunts had a terrific recipe for a red meat sauce. It simmered for hours and made our house smell divine. Her “Italian Spaghetti” became our Christmas Eve tradition for many years.

    OT – Good news on the ankle front. I saw the surgeon yesterday and he said my Xrays look great so now I am supposed to walk as much as possible (still wearing the boot for another week). I use a walker part of the time though I can also wall shorter distances unaided. I am also supposed to try to stretch out the joint and do some massage a bunch of times each day because the ankle is VERY stiff. I guess 9 weeks of immobilization will do that. I start PT tomorrow and have 5 sessions scheduled before I depart on my long awaited trip to Oman and the UAE on the 11th. Of course, all the weight bearing and stretching have left my ankle quite sore. I’m hoping to be back at the wheel pretty soon, too. My chauffeurs have been wonderful but I am looking forward to having my independence back.

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  13. I love pasta but I don’t eat it as often anymore. I try to eat more nutritious grains instead, like quinoa. I just don’t need the extra carbs. I rarely eat mac and cheese for the same reasons given by others. It sounds really yummy.

    I’d have to say that my favorite is homemade pesto with orzo pasta and ripe, homegrown tomatoes, lots of garlic and fresh Parmesan cheese.

    I make a pretty good spinach lasagna with homemade sauce. I love making it but I also love eating it, so I’ve been avoiding that too.

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  14. Today I made a vegetarian dish. It would have been vegan but I added butter. I sauteed onions and minced ginger, sliced carrots and kale in olive oil. I added plenty of curry powder (didn’t measure, just poured until I liked the color). The curry powder took up the moisture so I added some butter. I curried and baked a block of tofu cut into 1” pieces and added that to the veggies. I also steamed half quinoa and half barley with a big piece of ginger in it, and added that to the mixture. It’s not too bad. I considered adding coconut milk but decided against it. It worked out pretty well. I only cook for myself so it doesn’t have to be fancy.

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  15. Husband wants lasagna this weekend from the roasted red pepper lasagna noodles we have. The lasagna noodles are red. We will have fresh mozzarella, ricotta, and roasted red peppers (from a jar) between the layers along with bolognese sauce and bechemal sauce, and parmesan and grated mozzarella on the top and in the layers.

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  16. I have a recipe for “One-pot Spinach-Artichoke Super Shells” – need to try it because I hate the process of cooking and draining the pasta, etc. Will let you know if it works. Would love to find a slow-cooker version…

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  19. Pretty much any pastagoes over well with me. I used to make a bolognese sauce that was really mouth-watering. Slowly simmered on the stove with red wine in the sauce. Haven’t done that for a long time.

    The simplest pasta sauce, one I make often, is just a can of diced tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, and half a stick of butter. Add some onion salt, minced garlic, basil, and oregano. Serve over whatever.

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