stovetop mac and cheese

I recently made this recipe out of the Easy Comfort Food issue of Martha's Everyday Food magazine (Oct 2009). Paired with meatballs it was a perfect comfort food meal on a chilly fall night. This is my new go-to recipe when we're craving mac & cheese!

I made just a couple of minor changes. If you'd like the original recipe click the link above.

3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
coarse salt
4 cups whole milk
1 pound small shell pasta
12 oz coarsely grated sharp yellow cheddar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

In a medium saucepan, melt butter over medium; add onion and cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Add flour and 1/2 teaspoon salt; cook, stirring frequently, until mixture is pale golden, has a slightly nutty aroma, and is the texture of cooked oatmeal, about 5 minutes.

Whisking constantly, slowly pour in milk. Whisk until smooth. Cook mixture, stirring constantly along bottom of pan, until boiling, 6 to 7 minutes. Reduce heat to low. Simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens and does not feel grainy when a small amount is rubbed between two finger, about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook pasta until al dente; drain thoroughly and return to pot. Remove sauce from heat. Quickly whisk in cheese, mustard, Worcestershire. Pour cheese sauce over pasta and stir to coat.

Photo credit: marthastewart.com

she's still at it

I haven't posted any of Ava's 'artwork' or big messes for awhile. I wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression and think that she's done with all that. Oh no, quite the contrary. Just today
we've cleaned a little marker out of the carpet after she threw a marker with the lid off. Thomas caught her with it and she took off running when he tried to get it from her. When she knew that was a losing battle she just tossed it.

Last night I found this writing all over a cabinet door. Thankfully it was done in black colored pencil rather than marker. It's impossible to keep these things out of her reach. I've tried.

Her crazy, curly hair matches her personality. She's our wild child!

cowgirl jessie

When I got the camera out to take these pictures Ava said, 'If you take my picture I will close my eyes!' That's her new thing. Oh well, I like the cheesy smile and squishy face.

A month or so ago we rented Toy Story 2 and Ava loved it. I got out Thomas's Woody doll that Scott's parents had given him when he was a toddler and she thought that was really, really cool.

My neighbor sewed this cowgirl outfit for her girls when they were younger and then gave it to Elle and Ava for their dress up box. It is officially the Jessie outfit now. Thomas is more than willing to be Bullseye and give Jessie rides all around the house. I need to get a picture of that!

good bye summer

Well, we took the boat out of the water this morning. It's official now, summer is really over. September ended up being our best month of the summer this year. The water was actually warmer in mid September than it was in July! We spent as much time out there as we could! Such great memories...

legwarmers are back

After getting the Hanna Anderson catalog in the mail Elle was really wanting a pair of legwarmers. While she was at dance a few weeks ago I ran over to my favorite yarn shop and picked up a cute skein of yarn and a pair of little circular needles. They make this project a breeze!

Of course, Ava wanted a pair as soon as she saw Elle's so I'm making her a matching pair now. They are such a fun and easy project that I plan to make a few more pairs. I'd love to figure out how to make the cable knit style like the ones in the catalog. It's so fun to have girls to make stuff for! :)

messing with sasquatch

Scott hit a deer this morning on the way to work. Thankfully he wasn't hurt!

Here is Ava's explanation of how it happened -


By the way, Thomas titled this post! :)

ava mae

Painting on her tip toes in a favorite dress that's way too small.

game day

Go Huskers!

if favre can do it, so can i

Of course, I'm talking about quitting and then coming back. Funny how I find it annoying when Brett Favre does it but for me it's ok?!?! :) Thank you for all of the sweet comments left in my last post and for the ones told to me in person. Each one brought a smile to my face, so thank you! It really meant a lot to me. I've missed this blog! I downloaded the whole thing into Blurb this week and started to work on getting it printed into a book. The maximum number of pages you can have in a blog book is 440 and I'm way over so I'll be printing a couple of different ones. It will be so fun to look through the books year after year!

I do think it was a good thing for me to take a break from it for awhile. I had many reasons for feeling like it was time to shut it down. A couple of big ones were the time it takes to keep up with it and the other is the whole privacy issue. During September we got back into a routine around here and life is feeling much more relaxed than it was a month ago. Moving my laptop out of the kitchen and up to the school area, where it was needed, was a good move too. The temptation to stop and just check a few blogs isn't there. I get so much more done without it in sight! As far as the privacy issue, I am just going to leave things as they are. I had thought that I was going to start blogging privately but I just didn't see that working out well either. So if you visited here during the week and couldn't get to it that is why.

So, now I'll be back here posting more of the same - kids, recipes, & life in Minnesota. I have lots of fun pictures of the kids sitting on the camera to share. Each time something 'blogworthy' happened in the last month I was a little bummed that I wasn't documenting it.

About the pictures, we got our first snowfall last Saturday.....on October 10. Way to early for snow if you ask me. If you ask my kids, they'd disagree. They want more and the sooner, the better.