Macaroni & Cheese

         I figured that I’d stick with this for a while. After all, I have a long list of topics to write about, so I should be able to write, shouldn’t I? Nope. It’s been less than a week and already I’ve missed 2 days.

And about that list. . .

Today I received a message from my son’s girlfriend. It seems that lately he’s been ordering mac and cheese when they go out to eat, but always complains that it’s not as good as mine. She asked for my recipe so that she could make it for him. A very sweet request.

Unfortunately, I don’t think he misses my macaroni and cheese. The version I make is usually adequate — but not delicious.

The real macaroni and cheese whiz in our family is my mom. It wasn’t always that way: for years she made adequate mac and cheese and Gammy, her mother-in-law, made the best in the world. But somehow over the years, my mom’s version has changed.

Ok, back to the recipe request. I decided that I’d call my mom and ask her about it. I placed the call, she answered, and I explained the request.

Peep:

Oops, better explain that. My mom’s name is Faye, but no one ever calls her that. To everyone — and I do mean everyone — she is known as Peep. I don’t know where she got the name, but she had it before I was born.

On with the story.

Peep: I don’t really have a recipe. I just dump everything in.

Me: I figured that it was more in the method. I know that you don’t melt the cheese to make a sauce. . .

Peep: Yes I do.

Really? I can remember watching her make this years ago. She’d cook the noodles, mix it up in a pan with chunks of cheese (at that time she used muenster) and pour in enough milk to cover it all. That’s it. Cook and done. I watched her do this and that’s how I’ve always done it.

*cue light bulb clicking on*

For years she made adequate mac and cheese. I follow her lead and make adequate mac and cheese. Somewhere along the line her recipe improved. There may still be hope for me. 

And. . . could it be that eventually Gammy gave up the secret of her outstanding mac and cheese?

At any rate, it’s time to share the recipe — complete with commentary concerning the phone call.

Peep’s Macaroni & Cheese

1 lb. elbow macaroni

Cook to package directions for al dente and drain.

(Actual direction she gave: Cook the macaroni and drain it. You don’t have to cook it too soft because it’ll be in the oven).

Spray a 9X13 pan with cooking oil.

4 cups milk

Pour into a large pan and place on the stove on medium heat

(Peep actually said, dump some milk in the pan. Don’t worry if it’s not enough, you can add more later. I eventually got her to estimate the 4 cups to start. I had to ask about the burner temp as well.)

1 ½ -- 2 lb. cheese

Cut up the cheese into pieces.

(Peep usually uses part cheddar, part longhorn, but occasionally adds a third type of cheese. Small chunks so that they’ll melt easily)

Add the cheese to the milk and stir until the cheese is pretty well melted.

Add the macaroni to the milk mixture. If there is not enough to cover the macaroni, add more milk and stir to blend. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking pan. Top with shredded cheese (whatever kind you happen to have around the house) and then with bread crumbs.

(Peep said cracker crumbs but the only kind I could find in an image search was graham cracker crumbs: WRONG! I’d try panko). 

Place in a 350° oven until golden brown.

(Peep told me 30-45 minutes but added “for a square pan.” These directions were given with several interjections of “if she’s just making it for the two of them” or “she’ll probably want to use less.”)

A few notes about baking pans:

1) For years Peep made this in a metal pan and we scraped to get the yummy baked-on bottom coating. This year for Easter dinner she made two smaller glass pans: all of the coating came out much more easily and there was very little left for anyone to take home because we all ate seconds and thirds.

2) Peep usually plans ahead and fills a few small aluminum pie pans (think frozen meat pies) with the uncooked mixture, covers with aluminum foil, and pops into the freezer for later or to give to me since she knows I don’t do much cooking.

Another note:

I was sure I remembered her dotting this with butter after the bread crumbs, so you could do that or melt some and drizzle over the mixture. Then again, I didn’t remember her melting the cheese so maybe the butter isn’t necessary.

My niece blogs regularly and often shares her recipes. She can’t imagine cooking without her camera. I don’t cook very often, let alone photograph what I’m cooking. However, what’s a blog recipe without pictures?

 I just popped these out of the freezer to show: Mom gave them to me on Easter Sunday.

This is what’s under the foil of one of them.

And here’s the view of the casserole before it goes into the oven.

Ok, enough of that: both of those babies are re-wrapped and back in the freezer. It’s very tempting to bake and eat them now but it’s 10 p.m. and I’ve already eaten supper.

By the way — if anyone is reading this, don’t tell my son about this: it’s a surprise!

Update to this: The macaroni turned out good but "not like Mom's." Apparently the secret is longhorn cheese. They couldn't find that and used just cheddar. If you can't find longhorn, look for colby (a type of longhorn) or -- in a pinch -- monterey jack.

A flowery past

         So many of my memories involve family. Not surprising, is it? Especially since I grew up in the presence of a large extended family. The whole Seven Degrees of Separation theory could have been formulated in my home town: if you lived in Middletown and weren’t my cousin, then you were related to my cousin’s cousin or my cousin’s cousin’s cousin. That’s just the way it was.

Today I’m thinking about three of my relatives. Of course, since I said that, many more have come to mind. But let’s stick to the three: my grandmothers. They were actually two grandmothers and a great-grandmother. There were more great-grandmothers — theoretically speaking — but I remember only the one, since the others had died before I was born.

Back to the three grandmothers. I have many memories of them, but for now I’ll concentrate on something they all had in common: flowers. They had different sizes of yards, different sizes of gardens, but all three grew flowers.

They all had roses. 

Granny (my mother’s mother) had one large rose bush. She may have had more roses, but I remember that particular one because she was tending it one day and after getting scratched up by the thorns had some sort of allergic reaction to it.

Gammy (my father’s mother) had rose bushes alternating with tulips around her patio. She also had a rose arbor that framed the path that led from her back door to the garage and back gate. And she had a trellis full of roses next to the garage. Of course, those belonged to Pap (my grandfather) as much as to her.

Mom-mom (my father’s grandmother) lived right next door to us. Behind our houses there was a strip of dirt that separated our yard from hers, and in that there were rose bushes.

Aside from Granny’s allergic reaction, the only thing I clearly remember about roses is picking Japanese beetles from them. Ick.

However, each of these women had a particular flower, each has one flower that I see and remember something.

Granny’s flower is the hydrangea. There were at least two hydrangea bushes — possibly more — between her yard and her neighbor’s. Granny was not a “fancy” type of person; she wore her hair braided and twisted around her head, no make-up, and very simple clothing. But at least once, I saw here walk over to those hydrangea bushes and reach out and touch one of the flowers, gently, looking down at it quietly. That’s all. A simple memory, but when I see hydrangeas, I think of her.

 

Gammy had extensive outdoor gardens, but the flower that reminds me of her is an indoor one: the African violet. The windowsills in her kitchen were lined with pots of purple flowers. She also usually had a jar of water with a couple leaves stuck in it, rooting them. I know, that’s not the recommended way to propagate flowers but it worked for her. I’ve tried it but no luck. In fact, I currently have a pot of violets that I’ve managed to keep alive for about a year and I’m still not sure how they’re surviving. Of course, they haven’t bloomed since they lost the flowers they had when I brought them home, but the plant itself is alive. Even without flowers, I look at it and think of Gammy.

 The snapdragon belongs to Mom-mom. She was the keeper of the garden in our shared backyard, but I was her assistant. Besides looking for the dreaded Japanese beetles on the roses, we tended the snapdragons. Our task was to find the spent flowers, the blossoms that had withered and then dried, leaving behind brown seed pods. The two of us carefully picked those from the stems and then rubbed them between our fingers and released the tiny black seeds onto the dirt of the small garden. Yes, snapdragons are annuals, but somehow these kept growing. Those seeds were the source of the next year’s flowers and the two of us took the responsibility of planting them quite seriously. However, Mom-mom also taught me about the still colorful blooms as well. I learned to watch for movement, to observe the flowers to be sure that I didn’t touch a plant that held a bee. I watched fat bumble bees work their way into the mouth of the flower, setting the bloom to vibrating and waving, and then saw them re-emerge, crawling into the air with their bodies yellow with pollen. And after they left the flowers, when we were sure that there were no bees nearby to sting us, Mom-mom and I would squeeze the bottoms of the flowers, making their mouths open and close as we helped them have conversations with each other.

Special flowers, special people. The smallest item can evoke a memory.

I wonder if there is any thing, any small thing, that reminds others of me?

What's in a name?

What’s in a Name?

I’ve always had a tough time with titles. When I was writing in fandom (yes, I wrote Pern and Harry Potter, but more on that some other time), I usually passed that task to a co-poster or at the last minute scanned through a finished story and chose a random phrase. That mental block has continued: I’m hoping to submit a book for my first rejection but the title page still reads, “Whatever I Finally Decide to Call It.” I have ten NaNoWriMo certificates on my wall and the titles read, “Whatever,” “Untitled,” “???,” etc. Yep. That’s me and my aversion to titles. 

With my mind made up, with the decision made to start a blog, I had to overcome that aversion. I needed a title and the urge to write these memories was so strong that the choice could not be put off. 

I thought about it as I made breakfast.

I thought about it as I prepared my bath water.

I thought about it as I dressed and throughout the day.

Finally an idea came to me, just a hint at first, and then more fully formed: I would choose one of the songs that I remembered from my childhood and take the name from that. This involved some free association: memories, preserving them, catching them.

That was it: Catch a Falling Star. I had listened to that so often, mostly when I was nine or ten years old, staying with Aunt Goldie and Uncle Pete in Browns Mills, New Jersey, playing it over and over again, much to their annoyance. I could still remember the words — most of them — and the crooning of Perry Como.

      Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket,

      Never let it fade away.

      Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket,

      Save it for a rainy day.

      For love may come and tap you on the shoulder,

      Some star-less night.

      Just in case you feel you want to hold her,

      You’ll have a pocketful of starlight.

      Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket,

      Never let it fade away. . .

      For when your troubles start multiplying,

      And they just might.

      It’s easy to forget them without trying

      With just a pocketful of starlight.

Perfect! I could just take a phrase from that. “Save it for a rainy day” fit the idea — but was definitely cliche. “Catch a falling star” and “pocketful of starlight” were equally over-used. However, “Never let it fade away” was perfect for my needs.

I spent the rest of the day happily contemplating what I would include in my first entry, confident that I could do this now that the first hurdle had been cleared.

Right.

After some starts and restarts (at the last moment I decided to set up a new email account to use with the blog), I finally reached the “create blog” page and entered my wonderful title. . . Only to find that it had already been taken. I went to the site that had taken my name, my title, and glared at it, but the title remained. 

Ok, time to drop back and punt. The blog was intended to record memories, or to overcome the loss of memories, so I went to Merriam-Webster Online (one of my essential sites!) and searched for synonyms and antonyms and tried another title. And another. And another. 

I don’t recall how many times I clicked the “check availability” button before I finally came up with one that I could use. And then, I stalled, uncertain whether I really wanted it. 

In the end, I ended up with a title that was completely different from the URL and a URL that really makes little sense.

But I slapped together a title and made my first post.

So there. I had become a blogger.

And my blog even had a name.

Why?

Why? 
Why start a blog?
Why should I write my memories? 

Why would anyone want to read about my memories?

I won't attempt to answer the first one, the simple "Why?" That's far too broad and I have no idea what to reply.

The second, however, is valid. I like to write but seldom have long periods of time to do so. Blogging seems to be a way to write without committing hours each day. I may be wrong about that. Give me a week or two to decide. Maybe I'll continue, adding several entries. Maybe I'll stop after today. Who knows? (another question but I definitely won't reply to that one)

Question number three: I do have an answer for that one. I remember bits and pieces from when I was young, sitting with one of my grandmothers or my great-grandmother. They told me so much of when they were young, family stories. None of that was ever written down and now it's pretty much lost. I can't remember which told me what, who was involved, where it happened. There are just micro-memories, disconnected and bland. I wish that I could remember them. I'm also finding that as I age (yes, like it or not, I am growing older), memories of events in my own life are starting to get fuzzy around the edges. Perhaps it's time to preserve them before I forget altogether.

As to the final question, chances are that no one really wants to read this. My life isn't exciting or important. I'm not famous or rich or powerful. But I grew up in a time that is far different than today. I remember things and events that are alien to many now alive. I have a list -- currently not extremely long, but since starting it last evening I've thought of several items to add to it -- and some of what is on that list might, just might, nudge someone else to remember.

A few weeks ago I attended a conference and the keynote speaker suggested that those of us who are "of an age" should start telling, start writing, start remembering while we can. That idea has been tickling the back of my brain ever since. The sensation won't go away, so I suppose I'll engage in some Memory Therapy.