MAC FOR A MOB

Several people have asked for my Mac & Cheese recipe, so here it is. I have to warn you, it feeds 50 hungry people. But if you need comfort food for a frat house, this is your recipe!

Mac for a Mob

5 pounds macaroni, uncooked. (I use a mix of rotini, farfalle, and radiatori, but elbow macaroni
will work just fine.

1 3/4 pound (7 sticks) butter
3 cups flour
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon hot curry powder
1 teaspoon dry mustard
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 ½ gallon whole milk, heated almost to the boil
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
3 ½ pounds grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 large bag potato chips (or more -- you can always eat the rest, right?)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two full-size aluminum hotel pans and set aside.

Cook macaroni in plenty of rapidly boiling salted water to al dente as directed on the pasta packaging. Drain, rinse, and drain again thoroughly. Divide between 2 prepared pans.

In a large pot, melt 1 ½ pound (six sticks) butter. Add the flour and salt and cook over medium high heat, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes. Add the curry, mustard, cayenne, and pepper and stir for 30 seconds or until fragrant. Add the milk in a steady stream, whisking constantly to avoid lumps. Add the Worcestershire sauce and bring to the boil, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat and let the sauce cook at a slow boil for 3 minutes to fully cook out the starchy taste of the flour. Taste for seasonings.

Add 3 pounds of shredded cheddar. Stir until cheese is melted and incorporated. Pour half over each pan of pasta, stirring to make sure pasta is throughly coated. Don’t worry if the sauce seems thin. It will thicken.

Melt remaining stick of butter. Sprinkle each pan with 1/4 pound shredded cheddar. Crush the potato chips and sprinkle generously over the top. Drizzle each tray with half of the butter. Sprinkle with paprika to garnish. Bake at for 45 minutes until heated through.

Bon Appetite!

Note: I often make this up all the way up to sprinkling on the extra cheese on top, then refrigerate or freeze. When I am ready to bake it off I top the (defrosted) mac and cheese with the potatoe chips and butter and bake in the oven. From a refrigerated state it will take at least an hour, maybe even 1 1/2 hours to heat.

I've Been to A Marvelous Party...

With Nunu and Nada and Nell...


(I hope Dolores liked the Coward reference!) Anyway -- MARVELOUS party! A party which will be talked about for some time to come!

The occasion? Franklin's Knit In to benefit the Dulaan project! And everybody who is anybody was there! (Except for Kwiky, who had to work selling yarn, poor dear.)

Anyway, in addition to my beloved Dolores, there were scads of people...approaching 1oo..knitting and laughing and eating and talking and eating and knitting and laughing and eating!


Jonathon & Meg brought a pumpkin cake with yummy icing. J&M: Norbert asked me to ask for your recipe...he'd very much like me to make it for him. (High praise.)

Majors Domo for the day were Buzz KnitNot and Sean. (Sean, who manages a lovely yarnshop in Boston, came out for the weekend! Now that is a great friend!) My lovely Myfanwe worked keeping the kitchen and dining room running smoothly and looking good. (Patting myself on the back, my huge tray of mac and cheese was all gone after only an hour!!) Norbert accompanied us, making him the youngest knitter there!

Norbert won Franklin's "Sheep on a Plane" drawing in the door prizes...we are shopping later today for a frame so we can hang it in his room! I won alovely handmade shawl pin, which means I probably have to start work on another lace shawl to go with it!

Bonne Marie of ChicKnits was there -- we got to sit and talk about her patterns and her website. I like her site because I can download a pattern for like a very reasonable (small) price, I don't have to pay tax, shipping, handling, and I don't have to wait a week for it to be delivered. (And, since I loose things very easilly, I always -- first thing -- e-mail the pattern to my personal computer where the pattern resides in archive but from which I can pull it up and whenever I want.

When I wasn't eating or knitting, I was talking...having an absolutely great time! Such nice friends Franklin has!

Karen, a very thorough blog reader, was there -- despite having to negotiate a neck brace! And she donated 10 balls of CashMerino to the door prizes! Now THAT's generosity!?



I want to do a special shout out to Amandacellist! Hey! Amanda (wink, wink) lives in Printers Row with her husband. She has a great sense of humor, and except for her trapsing off into tech geek speak with a few others for a few minutes, there is little she said that didn't have me laughing! (I think her first conversation with Jonathon will go down in knit-in history as the equivalent of "Who's on First". And Meg stepped in to end it with the polite equivalent of "Please don't mind him...he's special." My sides still hurt from laughing.

I was working (and ripping...and working..and ripping) my second Baby Surprise Sweater for the Dulaan project. The pattern is Elizabeth Zimmerman's, which I am knitting in a claret colored Lamb's Pride worsted weight. It is knit in one piece and, for the majority of the process just looks like a placenta strung on needles. I could not, for the life of me, understand how the pattern worked and how it could ever actually become a sweater. I had a love/hate relationship with the pattern for the first three quarters of the way through...it was both an adventure and an exercize in self doubt...but when I finally just let go and just knit, without needing to control it and without allowing myself to doubt it, I had an epiphanal moment and viola! There it was -- a baby sweater! Pictures later when the finishing is complete.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

I know...I know. I haven't updated in a while. And there are several reasons...some better than others.


First, I am still a bit disabled. The booboo finger turned out to be a fracture right by where a ligament attaches. It's going to be slow healing...at least another 4 weeks. And I'm not able to knit at all -- at least not for a couple of weeks. Arrgh! (But when I do return to knitting, I'm planning to finish Socky and to start a Baby Surprise Sweater for the Dulaan project.) Do you have any idea how much you use your index finger when you knit? I didn't.

Secondly, I'm been swamped at work. High stress, lots of pressure, and when I leave the office, the last thing I'm thinking about is tapping at a keyboard. (Don't for a second take this as a complaint about my job. I am the luckiest guy in America. My boss is first rate. I'd crawl through broken glass for the man.)

Thirdly, we are only 1/3 through the Jewish High Holidays...or at least we will be after Yom Kippur, which starts at sundown. "Now how can that be an excuse?" someone out there is asking. And the answer would be because the dominant Christian culture makes countless accommodations automatically for the Christian holidays. Off at noon on Good Friday, off early on Christmas Eve, always off on Christmas, and an almost empty office for the week after Christmas. But nobody would ever contemplate closing early on Eruv Rosh Hashanah, let alone Sukkot or Simchat Torah. And I have to use vacation time for my holidays. I'd love to see the look on my smarmy, smug, fat-ass co-worker who always acts like taking time off for the High Holidays is some kind of perk I don't deserve yet have somehow managed to slip by the partners if she suddenly had to take vacation time to get Christmas off. I'd like to see HER -- the woman who Christmas shops for a month -- leave the office at 5:00 and have a holiday dinner on the table at 6:00 and be finished in time to be at shul by the time services start at 8:00. Bitch.

I'd really better change the subject before I say something about her I'll need to atone for.

THE BENEFITS OF BLOGGING

So SARAHHB! What a woman! What a GENEROUS woman. What a SEWING generous woman!


Everybody, this is the bag Sarah made for me and for Socky.

Bag, meet Everybody.

I think everyone knows Socky already.

And guess what! It's reversible! Sarah -- thank you. Thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart. I can't wait to get knitting again. Socky is already comfortably ensconced and awaiting my return!

GARAGE SALE FINDS

1) Nifty folk-art planter with a naked screaming bearded man. $2.00. Looks a lot like my old Rabbi, Doug, except that my Rabbi wore clothes and didn't scream. Since I couldn't keep a plant alive if you paid me, I've put this to use by the kitchen sink to hold all the things I never know what to do with. (I mean, wher DO you put the aquarium net?)

Thai Bird Angel sculpture. Free! (It was a friend's garage sale...she insisted I take it.) I love it.

3) A large, heavy, solid wood cutting board. $5.00. And a bargain at that. This thing will last me the rest of my life. I'll pass it on to grandchildren. I can imagine my family gathered around my deathbed, arguing about who gets this cutting board. (If they don't watch out, I'm going to leave it to charity...the ungrateful bastards.) For perspective, the marble slab in the foreground is 1 inch thick.


I hope to have more interesting stuff to report next time. Keep your fingers crossed for the finger.

She's ALIVE!

...and well, and living in Colorado!

Julie and I exchanged e-mails today. She is happilly employed doing what she loves -- working in a yarn shop and teaching people to knit! (I'm not saying which yarn shop, since I didn't ask her permission.) Best news, though, is that she's coming to Chicago at the end of October and I am going to make good on my promise of a Moroccan feast! (I'm thinking couscous with a lamb tagine! My Moroccan carrots. Olives. Homemade pita. And I don't know what for dessert. With tea.)

E-mailing felt just like the old days when we would talk and talk and talk. And laugh. Myfanwe's going to laugh at us...again... 'cuz it's just like old times.

Oh, happy day.

EUREKA!

Many of you, Dear Readers, will recall my quest to reconnect with a dear friend, Julie, who had become lost to us for several years.

Imagine my happiness, shock, and tears when this morning these words appeared in the comments to a blog entry from last February:

"Aidan! It's me! Julie! Julie Pack. The one and only. (not the other 51) No, not the cattle roping Julie Pack. No, I would never do those things... but you might be surprised at what I AM doing... I've missed you too!! You have a son??!! Let's catch up! How do I get ahold of you? This is crazy- I thought of you also and wondered what you are up to... I feel very lucky to have found your blog! I'm trying to think of a way to contact you, I don't have any of your info... I'll keep watching your blog for an update! I love you! I'm hearing Tchaikovsky themes in slow motion right now! What a day this has been for me. The planets are really linin' up big time!"

I am so very, very happy. I can't find words. Except possibly...

JULIE: aidanknits AT gmail.com. (You probably know the spam-bustin' score -- replace AT with @) E-mail me RIGHT NOW!

Today is going to be a great day.

And to those of you out there -- Brenda Dayne not the least among them -- who assisted me in my search, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

YOU'LL HAVE TO SETTLE FOR SAUSAGE...

...CUZ MY FLIPPIN'-FLAPPIN' FINGER IS STILL ON THE FRIGGIN' FRITZ!

I've tried knitting. I can knit about a row of my lace or two rows of a sock before my finger starts hurting. I'm supposed to keep it taped to the next finger to give it support and protection, and when I do that, knitting is slow and tedious. I'm going to see an orthopedic physician who specializes in hands in about 10 days. He's supposed to be the best in the world, so I'm sure he'll get things in order. Until then I'm doing more or less what he told me to do...buddy tape, regular ice packs, and anti-inflammatory drugs.


In the absence of knitting to help maintain my sanity, I've been making more sausage. Today I put up 6 pounds of chicken sausage with chipotle pepper, cilantro, and dried cranberries. Delicious! Norbert helped my by cranking the grinder/stuffer, and it really turned out to be the best job I've achieved to date. Not overstuffed so that it bursts, yet firm enough to hold its shape and have a nice firm texture. What you see in the picture is approximately 5 pounds -- we had a little bit for lunch -- which I have frozen in anticipation of a trip to my brother's in a couple of weeks. I figure a fry-up is a nice treat.



Isn't this pretty? I saw these toadstools growing outside Norbert's school. They were so beautiful, I had to snap a pic.

Myfanwe has found the easiest route to getting me to do a little extra around the house. Bribery. She made a deal that if I cleaned out and organized the family room closet, she'd take us out for Korean. The closet is clean, and there are fried mandoo in my future.

I JUST CAN'T HELP MYSELF

I just can't. Every time I hear the name or see a picture of Iranian President Mahmoud Amadinejad I start to hear Patsy Cline singing "Crazy" in my head. Over and over. Every. Single. Time. Sometimes I hum along. Sometimes I sing backup.

By the end of Mike Wallace's 60 Minutes interview I was doing a full-fledged drag number in the family room, complete with choreography. (Does anyone have any size 12 white cowboy/gogo boots I could borrow?)

Worry, why do I let myself worry?
Wond'ring what in the world did I do?
Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you,
I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying
And I'm crazy for loving you.

Do you think they make medicine for this?

SAUSAGE.

My booboo finger is still quite unable to knit -- bending it really hurts, so I'm still not knitting. So you'll have to hear about sausage -- one of my other obsessions!

When we got back from New York I wanted to try to make a nobblewurst sausage like that they serve at Katz's on 2nd Avenue -- full of garlic, moist, full-flavored beef.

So I made a nice beef sausage, using a moderate amount of suet, plenty of chuck I ground coursely with the fat, cayenne, curing salts, lots of black pepper, and a whole head of garlic. I'm still not good at the stuffing and twisting part, but it all tastes good.



I let the sausage mature at room temperature (cool -- in front of the air conditioner) for 3 days, then moved it to the refrigerator. I think this might have a different effect in winter, when the room can be cool but more humid. The air conditioner drys out the casing, which I think makes a difference. If I have to do it again in the summer, I'll probably mist the sausages down once a day.

Anyway, Friday evening I poached the sausage, then crisped it on the grill and served it with the best sauerkraut I've ever had. I made the saurekraut Julia Child's way -- soaked it in water, squeezed it dry, sauted some onions, carrot, and (beef) bacon in oil, then added the saurkraut and chicken broth au fleur -- until almost covered -- and let it braise for a couple of hours. Man, it was good. I served it for my friends Ben and Nancy and their two boys.

Today we were at Costco, and I was looking at the chicken sausage, which is delicious, but is $13.85 for 3 pounds. Right across the aisle was boneless, skinless chicken thigh meat, 6 pounds for $15. So I decided to make my own.


When we got home I put up a small (2 pound) batch of chicken and apple sausage, trying out a trick I had picked up using ice cubes to keep the sausage moise instead of additional fat. Not only is it beautiful, but it was among the best sausage I've ever had. (Tho you can see the unfortunate air bubbles. Oi!) It was so good, I decided to makie it for Rosh Hashanah dinner. (The apple thing makes it work.) I'm thinking with a gratin of vegetable maybe and a waldorf salad? Suggestions, anyone?

A HELLUVA TOWN!

Sometimes there are posts that just seem too big to blog -- so I'm going to take a cue from my more clever, funnier, thinner, and better looking friend, Franklin, and start writing and the beginning. I will stop where I need to and continue on next time from where I leave off. (Let me add yet another reason for my slow posting. I was in an auto accident on Tuesday and injured my right index finger. You can't imagine how slowly I type with only 9 fingers!)

LET'S START AT THE VERY BEGINNING...

We flew to New York towards the end of the most restrictive of the new carry-on guidelines, so we were well prepared and had absolutely no problem getting through securityin a timely manner. Of course it was 5:30 in the blessed morning, so there weren't any people around.

So -- uneventful flight, arrive in Newark, AirTrain, New Jersey Transit, and Boom! We are in Penn Station. The cab ride ($15 with generous tip -- oh, I feel just like Andy Warhol) to the hotel was a bit slow because of noontime traffic and because the cabbie took 44th St. instead of taking 42nd to 1st...anyway, we got there, checked our bags, and dove right into our first day in New York. Unfortunately, we did it sans camera, as I had forgotten to retrieve it from a bag we left at the hotel.

Even without the camera, though, we still had a great time. We had a slice of NY pizza at Pizza Rustica, a block from the hotel, then walked to the NY Public Library, which isn't, we found out, open on Mondays. We went down to the Empire State Building, then to Habu Textiles, which had been one of the top things I wanted to do.

I've got to say, Habu was a major disappointment. I had apartments in New York that were bigger, and I lived in studios. The yarn was hung on rods in a sort of walk-in closet (maybe walk-thru is better?) and I seriously had a bit of claustraphobia set in. And their yarn just didn't feel as softr and luxurious as I had expected. The bamboo and silk yarns all felt a bit like butcher's twine to me. Oh -- and the teensy-tinesy showroom was hot...something I can't excuse. Myfanwe and Norbert ended up laying down in the hallway outside the shop. There was a lovely group of women visiting from California who were shopping at the same time as I was -- they were so nice to refill our water bottle in the ladies' room for me-- and they didn't buy any yarn either.

I'm sure I am forgetting something, but the next thing I know, we are back at the hotel.

So -- our hotel was located directly across the street from the United Nations. Which, if I might remind you, was still up to its ears in the situation in Southern Lebanon. There were a lot more people booked in the hotel than they expected, methinks,because they couldn't give us the kind of room we booked. It was, actually, significantly different. Smaller. Without a kitchen. And the A/C running full-tilt didn't get the temp below 72 degrees...and, being the hottest man in America, I sweat more in the hotel room than I did in outside in the sun. I didn't sleep well at all.

(They did, eventually, move a refrigerator into the room, which increased the liveability for us. But they never could get the A/C running so that I was comfortable.)

Anyway -- we do the pool bit and showers and hop onto the 2nd Ave. bus, headed to the B&H Dairy, one of my favorite restaurants from my days in New York. The B&H is a little...and I do mean LITTLE kosher dairy restaurant with cabbage soup that is out of this world! I had the spinach blintzes and cabbage soup, Myfanwe had a whitefish salad sandwich on challah and cabbage soup, and Norbert had the macaroni and cheese and gazpacho. Oh -- and I splurged and had an egg cream. Divine! Dessert was obtained from the (unfriendly) kosher bakery two doors down from the B&H. As far as I was concerned, we could go home that night...I done what I came for!

After diner we walked a bit around the east village, then hopped on the 1st Ave. bus, which dropped us off in front of the United Nations. Nothing makes you feel safer than getting off the bus in front of well armed, well trained guards.

Stardate Tuesday, August 20



Up and at 'em bright and early -- ok, we were bright, but the skyline was not. At least not yet. We got our only rain of the trip, and it was while we were still in our jammies.


We ate quickly -- yummy cheese danishes from the unfriendly bakery -- then hopped on the 2nd Ave. bus to the end of the line at Battery Park where we stood in line, went thru security, then got on a ferry to Libery Island where we stood in a line to stand in a line to go through even more and more stringent security to stand in a line to get into the museum. Oi. Norbert loved it, tho. (He says Liberty and Ellis Islands were the highpoint of the trip for him.)



To be perfectly honest, while it was cool to see the replica of Lady Liberty's big toe, it wasn't really worth the cost and the wait. I would have been happier taking the Staten Island Ferry for the view and saving $40 or so.



Ellis Island was, at least to me, much more interesting. I ws taken by the beautiful architecture and moved by the stories of people who had entered America through this awesome portal. (My favorite quote, from a film at Ellis Island, was an old Jewish man saying "And the white bread they were having in America, it was like cake already." Oh, my, I love that.)



I was saddened, though, by the condition of the majority of buildings at Ellis Island. One would think our government would be able to put them to good use.

As you can imagine, we were pretty tired after all those lines...oops, I mean after so much activity, so after swimming and showers at the hotel we ate at The Oriental Noodle Shop on 45th near Lexington, which is my friend Joel's favorite noodle shop. Norbert ordered chicken lo mien, Myfanwe ordered a green bean and beef dish, and I ordered the crispy beef. It turned out rather peculiarly, in that I liked Myfanwe's dish better than my own, Myfanwe liked Norbert's more than hers, and Norbert liked mine more than his lo mien. But in the end we were all happy.

NEXT...

Since I've already blogged most of Wednesday for you, next time I will pick up with Wednesday dinner. Until then, peace out.

REMEMBER...

There are a million things to blog about concerning our trip to New York, but most of them will have to wait until we get home and my feet stop hurting.

But a few things must be put down while they are fresh.

While in Boro Park completing the multi-year quest of finding oval challah pans...don't ask...we had lunch at an (un-airconditioned) Israeli restaurant on 13th Avenue called Amnon. We didn't find many of the people to be friendly. To be honest, with only one exception I found the people in Boro Park to be rude, condescending, and dismissive. But there was an exception.


This is Bronia.

Bronia -- I won't use her last name -- approached our table and spent a very pleasant few minutes in conversation with us. She wanted to make sure we felt welcome -- it was pretty obvious we were outsiders -- and to tell us about the Museum of Jewish Heritage, at which she volunteers.

Bronia is originally from Galicia, in Poland. She was born about 20 miles from the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Her parents were exterminated there. So were her mother's 10 siblings.

Bronia and her sisters were sent to Auschwitz by the Nazis when Bronia was only 8 years old. She was originally chosen for immediate extermination in the gas chambers, but snuck into the line her sister was in and began 4 years as a slave laborer. She exited the camps at the age of 12 when the camps were liberated. Only she survived.

Bronia made the infamous Death March from Auschwitz through the snow, pushed onward by the Nazis, who shot anyone who stumbled or slowed. She walked past bodies of people she knew, dead in the snow with bullets through the head. She says it took her 25 years to laugh again, and that she still hasn't cried.

People did this to her. To her family. To humanity. And I don't know how to process it. Now, none of this is news to me...I know all this. And I've met survivors before. But I don't understand it and I can't understand it and I don't want to understand it. I want to cry. Loudly, and unashamedly. I want to give voice to the grief and pain and longing and disbelief.

But I can't cry enough.

So I am going to say Kaddish. For Bronia's mother and father. For her sisters and aunts and uncles. For all of them. And I promise not to forget. I will never be able to understand, but I will remember.