Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Dinner with Mom got postponed because of the weather, so I went looking for dinner ideas in my kitchen. I decided that I was sortakinda in the mood for macaroni & cheese, but not quite ... but adding other things to it would make it right.

Macaroni and cheese and ... Cheese and broccoli works. And onions and cheese go together in quesadillas. Hot red peppers and cheese go together on pizza. So macaroni and broccoli and hot peppers and onions and cheese should work, right? Then I stopped and listened to myself think, and wondered, "Just how far can I take that?"

That particular combination does, of course, work, but I'm not sure it's because "goes with" is transitive. (Okay, the red peppers were a "gimme" because, like blue jeans and t-shirts, each goes with nearly everything else.) Of course, in this particular case we might really be talking about the distributive property of cheese instead of the transitive property of "goes with", so it might not be a good example to use anyhow.

The next "huh!" thought to cross my mind was how many things go with cheese, which led me to recall that on Tuesday, after I had answered a question by confirming that I am an ovo-lacto-vegetarian, not a vegan, someone (the Sheepie, I think) blurted out, "Gosh, can you imagine Glenn giving up cheese?"

The pepper in question, by the way, was one of the ones from the Huge Decorative Bundle O' Peppers that anniemal gave me. The thing that I'm not sure whether it's intended (by whomever tied 'em into bundles and shipped 'em to stores) as food or as decorations. I have no idea what kind of peppers they are, but they give off hungrysmell (that is, a scent that induces hunger, most noticeable when they've been enclosed in a container for a while and then the container is opened), they have some of that sun-dried tomato flavour, they're rather hot -- more so than they look like, especially given their size -- and they're a pain to cook with because they don't crumble worth a darn despite being rattly-dry, and when they get wet they're a little tough. So what I did was to soften one up under hot water (had to rinse the dust off anyhow), including filling it with water and pouring it out again a few times, then I sliced it into strips with a big knife and put it in the pot of boiling water a few minutes before the macaroni. The results were still chewy, but not annoyingly so, and the small strips made for pieces of manageable size despite the texture. What it added to the flavour of the dish was perfect -- worth the trouble.

And yes, I know that mac&cheese, especially if one starts with the stuff in a box, is supposed to be no-effort/no-fuss food, but y'all know the trouble I have letting plain food just be. Since I was nearly coordinated enough to handle a knife safely (no mishaps, just a couple of nervous moments) (I'm feeling a bit shaky, not as well as I felt at the time of my previous entry), I had to at least chop up some garlic, right? And once I had the knife and the cutting board out, anything that could be completed while waiting for the water to boil didn't count as "extra work", right? Isn't that the rule?

I guess I'd better go ahead and shovel the walk pretty soon.