Scratcheroni and Cheese

Several years ago, Gazpacho gave me the brilliant idea of adding sour cream to a cheese sauce when making macaroni and cheese. This recipe takes a remarkably short amount of time to whip up, but is worth it when you really want macaoni & cheese but don't want to face one more boxed dinner. Unfortunately...or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the recipe is highly imprecise, which means that you can alter it for any amount of persons you want.

Scratcheroni & Cheese

Macaroni (or other pasta shape if you prefer)

Cook this until al dente and drain it thoroughly. While you're cooking this, create a white sauce. I like mine thick, so it's usually equal proportions of flour and butter and about 1/3 cup milk for every 2 TBSP butter, but you can thin it however you want. Once your white sauce is nice & thick, add in SHARP (or Extra-Sharp) Cheddar cheese, a heaping dollop of sour cream, and cook/stir until the cheese is melted. Stir this all over into your pasta, add salt & pepper (and more sour cream if you want) and enjoy!

The sour cream makes it creamier, holds the cheese in suspension better so that leftovers aren't all greezy and separating, and it adds a piquancy that the mac-from-a-box just can't achieve (though you can stir in some sour cream and a little dill weed if you want to better up your box lunch).

Iced Citrus Wafers

This recipe comes from the Monster Cookies cookbook which I'm not even sure my mom still has, but in there it's called "Iced Lemon Wafers." I personally like to make these with lime juice/peel (and substitute vanilla for almond extract) better, and Bonitinha has experimented with other citrus fruits and found (if I recall correctly) that orange doesn't yield a nice icing: too much water in fresh squeezed juice I guess. Still, you could concentrate that down if you're just dying for some orange frosted cookies. I believe Gazpacho once experimented with a Lime Rickey variation that involved some cherries in the lime wafer version. Whatever you decide, enjoy!

Iced Lemon Wafers
1/2 cup margarine (this actually works best with margarine, not butter. Go figure!)
1/2 cup sugar
1 TBSP finely grated lemon peel
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 TBSP cornstarch

Lemon Juice
Powdered Sugar

Thoroughly combine all ingredients (dough will be dry), shape into a cylinder and wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for an hour. (I actually just refrigerate the dough in the bowl: I don't like having to cut my wafers and prefer to roll them into balls and then flatten them with the bottom of a cup, but you do what's easiest.) Cut your wafers into 1/8" slices and bake on a cookie sheet (greasing not necessary) at 350 for 8-10 minutes. Cool on a rack and then ice with a combination of lemon juice and powdered sugar thinned to either a drizzling consistency or thick enough to spread (whatever your choice).

Funeral Potatoes

Don't you hate it when you have a recipe you know you like but every darn time you want to make it you have to go back and find the recipe somewhere in your collections of books or call people to get it or run a google search (now that that's an option)? Yeah: this is one I keep losing, so I'm putting it in this ONE place along with some others I know I like and never can quite put my fingers on. I'm sure it has a better name than funeral potatoes, but what it is, I'm sure I don't know.

Funeral Potatoes
6 cups diced, peeled potatoes (~6-8) (or 2 lbs frozen hash browns)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 soup can of milk
1 cup sour cream
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
salt & pepper to taste

Cook the potatoes (or thaw) until tender and put in 2-3 qt casserole (9x13" pan). Combine soup, milk, sour cream, cheese, and onion with salt & pepper to taste. Mix that goop up and spread it on the potatoes. At this point, if you want a crispy topping, crush enough corn flakes to yield 3/4 cup crumbs and mix them up with 3 TBSP melted butter and put this all over the top.
Bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes (hot/bubbly throughout).