Pepper Jack Cheesy Mac

Happy Easter Everyone!


While trying to figure out what recipe to try this week, I started thinking about the first Good Friday meal I hosted for my new husband's family.  I had been married for less than two years. I'm an only child from a small family (i.e. mom,dad, me, and a big chocolate Easter bunny).  Family holidays were very informal and causal.  On the other hand, my husband is one of four and comes from a large, Catholic family. Family holidays were more formal get-togethers than mine and actually involved religion. Since my husband was the first of his siblings to be married, the family pressure was on for us to start hosting family holiday get-togethers (in addition to birthing their first grandchild).


Well, I've never hosted before, I wanted to get it right.  I know I wasn't ready to take on Easter so the compromise was to start out smaller.  I would host Good Friday with the main family (minus the first cousins once remove...whatever that is).  As much as I didn't want to be like many new wives; nervous about impressing my mother-in-law; showing that I was taking good care of her son, I secretly was.  I wanted to be that great wifey and graious host.  If June Cleaver could do it, so could I, right?


Alright! I can do pull this off.  Let's see. What meal should I cook?  Chicken Parm.  Who doesn't like Chicken Parm, right?  Can't go wrong there.  Two days before Good Friday, I picked up all the ingredents.  The nightbefore my husband calls me up from works and tells me we can't have Chicken Parm. Why?  Was someone allergic?  Nope.  Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays.  What?!?!? Doh! Why?!?! Not being a Catholic and being a researcher, I couldn't understand why and how this was practical.  I must find out. Turns out all the Catholics I polled wasn't sure either; just that they usually were told to eat fish.  Isn't that meat too? :P  Well, my husband doesn't like fish.  **Sigh**.  I think I ended up making Baked Ziti that year June Clever I was not.


So this year, while I would not be hosting Good Friday dinner, it got me thinking what meatless meal could I make that didn't involve fish.  So I started digging through my "Recipes to Try" and pulled out a few recipes.  Not sure which one to go with, I asked my husband to pick out which one I should try this week.  Being a fan of pepper jack everything, this is what he selected.


This recipes comes from the Chambersbridge Residence Newsletter. Chambersbridge Residence is the affordable senior housing that my mom lives in; one of several that a not-for-profit organization called National Church Residences runs.

• 2 cups (8 oz) dry elbow macaroni
• 2 cups (8 oz) shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 cups (8 oz) shredded pepper jack, divided
• 1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 to 1 cup broken tortilla chips
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon chrushed red pepper (optional)

Preheat over to 350F. Lightly grease a 2 1/2 quart casserole dish. Cook macaroni in a large saucepan according to package directions; drain. Return to saucepan.


Add cheddar cheese, 1 1/2 cups of pepper jack cheese, evaporated milk and black pepper to macaroni.  Stir until combined.  Pour into prepared casserole dish.  Combine the remaining 1/2 cup of pepper jack cheese, tortilla chips and red pepper flakes in a small bowl.  Sprinkle over top. Cover tightly with foil.


Bake for 20 minutes. Uncover and back for an additional 10 minutes or until lightly browned.

For this recipe, I employed several taste testers in addition to my husband (aka the guys in our new Gaming group) Results:  A hit!  Everyone felt it was the right consistancy for cheese to pasta ratio.  The only suggestion that everyone made is that the cheddar cheese could have been strong to balance out the pepper jack cheese (I had used mild cheddar).  Next time I will use a sharp cheddar and see if that improves it. 

Conclusion: This recipe will become a "staple" in the Lee household.  I can see this being a good "comfort food" dish.  Enjoy!

Louisiana Red Bean & Rice

For my first recipe to try, I decided to go with the first recipe I ever collected.  It was one that my father jotted down for me while watching a TV program one day. To give you an idea on how long I have been collection recipes but never getting around to trying them, this recipe is at least 10 years old.  My dad passed away 9 1/2 years ago.  The recipe is in my dad's handwriting, which you may be able to see in the picture, is somewhat haphazardly written down.  It is also missing some key information; oh, like how long to cook it for.  Unfortunately, it is difficult to ask a dead man to fill in the blanks. This is one of the reasons why the blog is named what it is.

Once I figured out that notes like "cantonsauce" meant can of tomato sauce, and "cyane pod" meant cayenne pepper, I realized I had most of the ingredients already.  Alright!  Don't have to do a lot of running around with a 4 month old.  All I just needed to find "salted piece of pork" and we should be good to go...right?  Nope.  Apparently, this is not a common item. Long story short, not being able to find a salted piece of pork, the last butcher recommended that I use chucks of bacon instead.  This way it would still give the flavor as the salted pork, but not be as salty and the bacon could be eaten with the meal.  So with a $1.80 worth of butcher type bacon, I was on my way back home to start.

I started chopping, mixing, etc.  Then I got to the part of the recipe that read "2 1/2 QT cold".  Was not sure what that meant.  After a short bit, I thought it probably meant cold water.  So I added 2 1/2 quarts of cold water to the crock pot.  Now my yummy-to-be meal looked more like soup [insert puzzled look on face here].  Well, I already mixed it together. No going back now. 

My dad's note said to cook on "low".  As I go to look at the clock to figure out my answer to my husband's daily question of "what time will dinner be ready?", I gasped at the fact that it was already 3:00 p.m.  We have now changed that cook on low to high (or better know as fast as you can).  Heck, maybe some of that "extra" water will boil off (yeah right..I do know better).

Fast forward three and half hours later, the kitchen smells nice.  My first official taster (a.k.a my husband) and I were ready to try Recipe Roulette's first recipe.  Well, I had to use a slotted spoon to get the goodies out as it still looked like soup.  Once that was done, it started to resemble what I thought the dish should look like. Side note, as I went to make the rice in the rice maker, it broke.  My first recipe roulette is off to such a good start.

Anywho, chow down time!  Review: It wasn't bad but very bland; not very Louisiana style.  It wouldn't happen to be all that water now would it? :P  After going back for seconds, I started to think that my dad's note of "2 1/2 QT cold" had not a thing to do with water and more to do with what size crock pot it should have been cooked in.  Not sure, but again, hard to ask a dead man about that.  I think that I will be doing a "take two" on this recipe minus the water as I think it has potential.  Here is the "reworked" recipe if you want to try it in the meantime:

• 1 pound of red beans; soaked overnight (I used a can of Goya red beans)
• Piece of Salted Pork (I used butcher's bacon; next time I think I might use Canadian bacon)
• 2 onions, chopped (I used frozed chopped onions)
• 1 bell pepper, chopped (that I did use fresh)
• 3 ribs of celeray
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced (that is what the jar of miced garlic is for)
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 2 teaspoons of vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/8 teaspoon of all spice
• 1/8 teaspoon of cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon of chili powder
• 1/8 teaspoon of pepper
• 1 8 oz can of tomato sauce

Place all ingredents in crock pot.  Cook on low for 7-8 hours.  Serve over rice. Serve with corn bread.

And so it begins....

From magazines, TV shows, back of packages, and those ever abundant cooking websites, I have been collecting recipes...and collecting...and collecting.  However, I haven't gotten around to actually trying them.  Most of them just have been stuck behind a tab labeled "Recipes to Try" in my cooking binder for that "someday" to come around to where I would make them. 

So here we are about 10 years later from when I created that cooking binder and that ever so soon to be much "documented" tab. My husband and I welcomed a beautiful baby girl into our lives four months ago this day.  With that *big* joy came *big* expenses.  What *they* say is super true; kids are *not* cheap.  Now more than ever, it was important for us to really cut back on going out to eat and to start cooking at home more.  So I went to my cooking binder to dig out recipes to see what we could make as staples in our house.

Well, I got a look at that tab.  It was so stuffed, it started to make the plastic insert crack.  I started to feel a little overwhelmed.  I started thinking that I would just throw them out.  I haven't made them in the last 10 years; what could I really be missing?  But then the vicious cycle started.  I started to actually read them to decide which to throw out.  All of a sudden, we were back to "oh, that looks yummy to try" and the purging didn't happen. 

Here are just some of the recipes that I need to go through and finally ....

It was time to break this cycle.  However, I knew that I would just make excuses why I didn't make them and those half ass excuses would be good enough because I only would have to convince myself.  So how to break that cycle?  Well, being a person of my word has always been important to me.  If I went ahead and publicly declared that I was doing this, then there was no going back.  If I didn't follow through, I'd have to explain it to the world.  They are not as easy to convince as myself :P

And so it begins.....

I am going to aim to try to make one recipe a week from this tab. Because I also still want to keep this fun for myself and not make it a hated chore I will end up loathing, if I miss a week, so long as I don't make it a habit, it will not be the end of the world.

I hope you find the blog interesting, useful, or just right down entertaining.  Who knows, you might actually end up with a recipe to fall in love with (or just laugh your ass off reading about my goofy mistakes).