Civil War Mac & Cheese

I'll admit to not being the best at blogging on a regular basis. However, I have been keeping my promise of preparing one vegetarian meal a week. I'm a bit behind, so I'll start where I left off: Civil War Macaroni and Cheese.


I stumbled upon the recipe for Civil War Mac & Cheese by accident. It can be found on Simply Recipes: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/civil_war_macaroni_and_cheese/



I was intrigued because I had never made a recipe from the Civil War before. Frankly, it didn't seem that difficult (and it wasn't). The dish is very simple to make. I normally cook macaroni in water. It's a lot better if you cook it in milk.



However, I was stunned when it came time to make the cheese sauce. I followed the directions exactly and discovered that my cheese to macaroni ratio was waaaay off. Based on the directions, there just isn't enough cheese sauce given the amount of macaroni. I did my best and made more, but it still wasn't enough. In the end, my macaroni looked like this:







Ok....so it doesn't look like the picture that goes with the recipe. But really, it didn't look THAT bad in person. The problem is it's not very creamy. This is a personal preference I think. So, at the end of the day I've learned to cook my macaroni in milk from here on out and that I adore creamy, gooey mac and cheese.

Spaghetti with Green Garlic & Olive Oil

We had a second vegetarian dinner this week - spaghetti with green garlic and olive oil. The recipe came from fine cooking. You can get it here: http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/spaghetti-green-garlic-olive-oil.aspx I was excited to have a recipe for green garlic. My farm share (Brinkley Farms: http://www.brinkleyfarms.com/) just started up again and they had green garlic available. As you might guess, this recipe was simple to do. It took 30 minutes from start to finish. You begin by making the pasta

As it's cooking you saute the green garlic in olive oil

Then mix it all together!

I mixed some parmesean in there too. I was worried when I took my first bite. The dish did not look as pretty as it does in Fine Cooking. I thought it looked rather bland, but I was wrong. The dish was very flavorful. The garlic gave it just the right bite. My only criticism is that it was a very rich dish. There is a decent amount of olive oil used and it resulted in the dish feeling a bit heavy. Overall, it was good. If you have access to green garlic (espicially from a farmer) try it out.

Salad & Focaccia

We had some computer problems last week which led to me getting behind in my blogging. However, I did keep up with my vegetarian cooking! In the last two weeks we had creamy tomato soup and risotto. I'm not going to write about them now. I eat those two things a lot so I'll catch'em when they come back around. This week we're having at least two vegetarian dishes. The first one we had today was a salad. Very simple. It had chick peas, red onions, and hard-boiled eggs on it.

But something was missing from this salad. Something very, very important. Yes - baked goat cheese.

I don't know if you can see the cheese or not, but I've got three little rounds of it in the center of my plate. Baked goat cheese is simple. Take a log, and cut it into rounds. The goat cheese will crumble so just pick it up and mush it together into a circle. Brush olive oil on it, add salt and pepper, and then any herbs you want. I used chives. I then tossed the left over chives into the salad. It bakes at 350 for 8-10 minutes (I got this from Everything Vegetarian by Mark Brittman). When it comes out, let it cool for a couple of minutes and the toss it onto your salad. Sooooo very yummy.

As you can also tell we had bread. Mark made focaccia. I thought to take a picture to it after we had eaten some of it. It was fantastic.

Overall this was a great meal. Very simple to put together and not overly filling.