Macaroni & Cheese

The macaroni & cheese of my childhood looms large. It did not come in a box. But, it was close: Velveeta cheese and milk. Boiled elbow noodles. Ritz crackers sprinkled on top. Even now, my mouth waters when I think about it. Macaroni and cheese was my sister’s favorite childhood food. She would sit, eating it with her playdate. And they would count each noodle that they put in their mouth. It was agony for me, sitting across from them with a simple PB & J.

I would beg my sister for a bite, she would always comply. I would sneak a spoonful from the pot. I craved Mac & Cheese. I was diagnosed with a milk allergy (they first thought it was a lactose intolerance) at a young age. Actually, I was diagnosed and re-diagnosed. The diagnosis was official in 6th grade, although I didn’t officially go off all dairy products until last year. My parents were lax with my milk allergy. I did not drink milk. But, I would have ice cream or frozen yogurt. And until high school, I was able to digest the yogurt. They continued to feed me cheese. Living in Wisconsin, we ate a lot of cheese. But I was not allowed, often, to eat macaroni and cheese, most definitely not after an unfortunate incident in kindergarten.

I’ve had mac and cheese envy for most of my life. Last year, I tried Road’s End Organics Mac & Chreese. It was ok. It was better doctored with ketchup and chili powder. But, it did not satisfy my mac and cheese envy.

Last weekend, I was finally satisfied, although admittedly, there’s nothing like the taste of Velveeta.

I’ve been on an experimental gluten-free diet the past two weeks (more on that in another post) and, typically, I’ve been reading numerous gluten free cooking blogs, scouring for recipes. On the Gluten Free Goddess Blog I discovered a recipe for “The Best Cheesy Uncheese Sauce”. I decided to try it out.  This is the adult, non-dairy answer to my mac and cheese craving. It can double as a cream sauce (and if you know me, you know how much I abhor cream sauces). The white wine added a perfect dimension. And the texture was incredible. I had the best non-dairy mac and cheese yet.

I popped some frozen veggies into it to make it a little more healthy and used some incredible corn pasta as the macaroni. Doesn’t it look delish?

Baking potting soil

When I returned from winter break, I discovered a gnat attack in my apartment. At first, I thought that I had inadvertently created a fruit fly infestation, but on further inspection I found no fruit fly sources. I realized that the source was my houseplant, Ernie. After the trip to Florida, when Ernie had become extraordinarily dry, I over-watered it. I wanted the plant to survive 2 weeks in an over-heated apartment. So, I called my all-knowing dad to ask him how to get rid of gnats at the source (I already had numerous gnat traps around the apartment). And he told me that I needed to sterilize the soil by baking it.

Saturday turned out to be soil-baking day. I discovered that the potting soil (see pic below) was FULL of gnats inside the bag. I didn’t take a photo because it was gross. Bugs don’t bother me but it’s unpleasant to see them crawling all over the inside of this bag.

I put the soil in my 9 x 11 pyrex, turned my oven to 200 and baked.

After the soil was done baking for 30 minutes, I repotted the plant. Everything looks so much healthier. The gnat problem has basically disappeared. (I threw out the bag of potting soil). It was kind of funny to bake potting soil, but it worked out.  Thank goodness for an easy solution!

Bits and Pieces

Yesterday, desperately needing something creative to read before I went to sleep, I pulled The Apple That Astonished Paris off the shelf to read a couple of Billy Collins poems. I turned to one and it spoke to me. If you know me well, you know I love books. And if you read my facebook, you know that I just posted the first stanza on there. But I would like to share it here as well. What I love about this poem: The romantic notion of graduate school in the first stanza. Even though I know that this is not a true depiction. My experience is much more painful than romantic. The feeling of reading as a child, either having a parent read to you or reading to yourself. There’s nothing like it. And finally, the idea of reading ourselves away from ourselves. I love that image, because that’s why I read. To escape to another person’s world, to engage in their thoughts and ideas instead of mine. For me, it’s like sleeping and dreaming.

Books

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus

I can hear the library humming in the night,

a choir of authors murmuring inside their books

along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,

Giovani Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,

each one stitched into his own private coat,

together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

I picture a figure in the act of reading,

shoes on a desk, head tilted into the wind of a book,

a man in two worlds, holding the rope of his tie

as the suicide of lovers saturates a page,

or lighting a cigarette in the middle of a theorem.

He moves from paragraph to paragraph as if touring a house of endless, panelled rooms.

I hear the voice of my mother reading to me

from a chair facing the bed, books about horses and dogs,

and inside her voice lie other distant sounds,

the horrors of a stable ablaze in the night,

a bark that is moving toward the brink of speech.

I watch myself building bookshelves in college,

walls within walls, as rain soaks New England,

or standing in a bookstore in a trench coat.

I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves,

straining in circles of light to find more light

until the line of words becomes a trail of  crumbs

that we follow across a page of fresh snow;

when evening is shadowing the forest

and small birds flutter down to consume the crumbs,

we have to listen hard to hear the voices

of the boy and his sister receding into the woods.

New Years Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions are tough. Most of the time, people don’t follow through. So, this year, mine are simple and few.

1. I realized at the end of last quarter that I never went into the loop this fall. It’s so easy, a simple bus ride. But, I missed out. It’s good for me to leave Hyde Park and get out into a different crowd/mindset, even if for an afternoon or evening. I resolve to take advantage of the #6 bus and visit the loop (and maybe check out the Art Institute’s Modern Wing!)
2. Exercise. This is a typical NYE resolution. Grave’s Disease wiped me out. And it’s taken all summer/fall to get my stamina back. But, I can do this again. And I need to. Exercise is going to be part of my day once again. Or my week, on lots of days.
3. fun. I haven’t been having lots of fun, hopefully I can have more this quarter…going to the loop more often may help with this cause.