Category Archives: dinner

The ‘Mac’ Daddy

I—like you, I’m sure—like macaroni and cheese. Cheese, noodles, a crunchy top (maybe some bacon if you’re really getting at it)…what’s not to like?

However, I do not like mac and cheese from a box, which we literally keep cases of in our basement for Kraft’s biggest fan, Tillie.

I wouldn’t mind having some macaroni for dinner every now and then. But we find ourselves in a quandary here because Tillie has let it be known time and time again that she doesn’t like it baked, just out of the box—powdered cheese (how do you “powder” cheese?) and all.

How could I sway her to my side, where we could have a nice macaroni meal together?

I know: make muffins!

Kids always go for muffins: it’s just what they do. Maybe it’s the shape that appeals to them. And maybe, I thought, if I present mac and cheese in this form to Tillie, I’d be able to get past the idea of her favorite food being prepared in the dreaded “baked” fashion.

I found a recipe for Easy Macaroni and Cheese Muffins on AllRecipes.com. The word easy drew me in most of all as I’d never made these before and I was trying to leave myself enough time to come up with a backup plan, if need be. Also, it was moms’ night out and I wanted to get Tillie to bed on the early side so I could have some TV time.

I’m just getting into “Arrow” and watching it on Netflix: check it out if you haven’t! (CW Network, you’ll be getting my bill for that plug there.)

Anyway, I set about my task to get this meal going. And it was easy, as the name of the recipe suggested. So easy, in fact, that I really didn’t have much for Tillie to help me out with. I did get her to crack an egg, beat it and pour over the cooked noodles. She added the milk and cheese, and did some stirring. And she helped me put the mix in the muffin tin.

I guess she did more than I thought!

So after topping most of the muffins with bread crumbs (a necessity, in my opinion), we got them in the oven and took a couple of peeks from time to time to watch the magic happen.

photo 1

After about half an hour, while we watched “Teen Titans Go!”—another show I recommend (Cartoon Network, see above statement to CW)—our muffins were done, ready to break out of the oven in all their cheesy, bubbly goodness.

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The recipe said to let them sit for a few minutes so the cheese could settle, which gave me time to steam up some broccoli for the veggie portion of the meal. I wanted to go with a safe accompaniment for T because there was no telling how she’d react to the mac and cheese. I guess if one were to place a bet, though, the safe one would be no dice.

How pleased/surprised/flabbergasted to find that wasn’t the case!

She stabbed into one of her muffins, chomped into it and seemed satisfied. She did ask, “Where’s all the cheese?” (which, due to the muffins’ baked nature, lacked that powder-into-liquid taste she was accustomed to). But she did give me a sign of approval:

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And with that, I feel macaroni and cheese now can make its way onto everyone’s plate at the same time. It did take some work and thinking on my part (note that I never referred to them as “baked” macaroni and cheese muffins because that would’ve been the end before things even started).

Also, I’m not going to deprive her of the boxed version: I can’t take that away from her. After all, she still has a case of it in the basement to go through!

That’s using my noodle?

“Fine, if you’re not going to eat what I cook, then you cook!”

Just kidding: Things haven’t gotten that drastic on the homefront where I’d tell Tillie to fix her own meals.

She’s only 6, and I’m sure there are some laws out there that would prevent me from doing that.

But I did have one of those brilliant/common-sense ideas: Why not have her help me make a dish? And for this particular experiment of mine, I figured I’d start out with something that’s going to involve multiple steps to keep her engaged.

Something like… lasagna!

Something… she’s only eaten six bites of in her life and didn’t like.

What can I say? I like a challenge.

We got her to try some a couple of years ago after she had this brief exposure to that lasagna-loving cat Garfield. The lasagna to her didn’t taste as good as the world’s laziest cartoon animal made it out to be, and she was done with it—and Garfield—shortly thereafter.

But this time would be different, I thought, because she was going to be doing a lot of the prep work and cooking.

First, I had her cut up the zucchini to go in the sauce. After that was chopped, we put it in with the orange peppers I had sauteeing, then she kept those two cooking. I relieved her and had her cut up some portabella mushrooms to go with the peppers and zucchini. We threw those in and she went back to stirring.

(Don’t worry: Safety measures were taken with the cutting and cooking!)

After I browned some ground turkey in a separate pan, I combined it with Tillie’s veggie saute, then dumped the sauce over it for her to keep stirring, as seen here:

tilliestirsI let her sample it, telling her chefs always need to taste their food. Some got on her apron and she had a line for me, saying that shows you’re a good cook when your apron gets dirty (a little nugget of wisdom from mom).

When the sauce was done, we got our spinach-ricotta combo going. I showed her how you can squeeze the ricotta out of the container and let it plop into the bowl: fun times for the kid set. We put some spinach in with the cheese, then came the part Tillie was a little nervous about: cracking an egg into the bowl. She did it like a pro and ran off to tell her mom, full of pride.

So we got the sauce done. We got the ricotta done. Final steps, layering it all up lasagna-style. And since she’d done so much in the process, I wasn’t going to hold her back on this. We each did half, no simple feat. It went in the oven for the requisite 45 minutes or so and it came out looking like this:

thelasagnaWhile that was resting, I made some garlic bread and also worked on my backup plan: just some regular spaghetti sauce and noodles in case the lasagna was a no-go. I didn’t want to have a fallback, but I also wanted her to have a full meal in her belly. She can easily fill up on garlic bread if you let her.

When it came to serving up the food, I cut her a small chunk of the lasagna and dished it up with a piece of bread. Tillie had no idea about the extra food, which I didn’t want to spring on her until she was absolutely out on the lasagna.

I kept talking it up, like “You made this: this is going to be awesome!” and other such platitudes to try to get her excited about it. But actions speak louder than words and it was eventually time for her to taste it.

She took a bite and very politely said:

“I don’t really care for it.”

There were mushrooms; she doesn’t dig those. She bit a crunchy-after-baking noodle; thought she was going to break a tooth. There was the mushy ricotta and melty mozzarella.

In other words, there was a lot going on.

I’ll give Tillie credit, though: She got down a few more bites before she was completely out. I told her there was spaghetti and she downed a plate of that. As for the lasagna, which she worked so much on, she didn’t completely pan it:

tilliebiteI won’t try it again anytime soon, though. But I will let her help me out more: She had a lot of fun making the food and I had a lot of fun working in the kitchen with her. Tillie assists Nancy with baking a lot, but all I’ve ever had her do is roll out pizza dough with me. She’s more than just a dough-roller; maybe she could have a future in lasagna-making.

Eating it, on the other hand…

My fate is in my hands (Part 1)

Tomato paste? Hmm, nope. Worcestershire sauce? Maybe…actually, no way. Thyme? Too tricky, forget it. Cabbage? I’m the only person in our house that even likes cabbage.

What does that leave me with then? A cooked pile of ground beef and diced potatoes absolutely, undeniably, unequivocally, unabashedly, utterly devoid of flavor that was to be the filling for my first crack at savory hand pies for dinner.

Aw man.

Let me tell you how I ended up in such a sad state of affairs. In my travels through the Twitterverse, I saw a recipe around St. Patrick’s Day for Irish Beef Hand Pies tweeted by Kitchen Daily by way of Martha Stewart and I quickly favorited it to have on–sorry to type this–hand.

I never had this particular dish before, but I’m really good about getting behind savory hand-held pastries. Who knows? Maybe it brings me back to those Hot Pocket days of yesteryear I enjoyed so much (but am in no rush to revisit now). Anyway, I was down to give these a try. However, one question always comes to mind when talking about food for the family:

Will Tillie eat it?

Not with those aforementioned ingredients, I figured. Visions flashed through my mind of her biting through a hand pie as originally intended and curling her mouth up with such disgust that I might never want to cook again. So I left out the tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, thyme and cabbage. And evidently, the flavor.

That ground beef and potato mixture was some of the driest and tasteless food I’d ever put in my mouth. I tried to add more salt, but nothing doing: It just wouldn’t, couldn’t get right. And I was left thinking, “Van, you took the coward’s way out. Better to go out knowing you went for it, then self-sabotage.”

After beating myself up over this for a while and resisting the urge to call my wife to tell her and Tillie to just pick up a pizza on the way home, I picked myself up and decided to fight back.

“Horrible-tasting, dry meat and potatoes, you’re goin’ down!”

I reached in the fridge and grabbed this marinade I recently bought from a butcher’s in Brooklyn. I put a spoonful of it in there, then another, then another until it started to look like some moisture action was happening. I wasn’t tasting it, though, as I went along: I figured it was smelling pretty decent, so maybe it would be alright.

We’d all find out together!

Then, I went to work on my pie crust—store-bought, of course. I had to roll out the shell, then cut it into the necessary pieces. We had a crust from 1996, or at least it seemed that old because when I put the dough roller to it, it practically crumbled.

Luckily, the fresher ones I picked up that day held true and I got to hand-pie-making. Soon after I got them into the oven, a nice aroma started making its way through the kitchen and I started to have a glimmer of hope that everything would be OK.

Tillie and Nancy came home from their bike ride, then went upstairs for T to take a bath. While the hand pies were baking, I sauteed up your favorite green and mine, some kale. I heard exclamations from Tillie and Nancy that things were smelling good, which was great to hear.

Soon, it was hand-pie-removal time. I took a bite of one of the shoddier-looking ones—they didn’t all make it into the oven looking picture perfect—and was pleasantly surprised. It came out with some nice flavor.

I asked Tillie if she wanted to try a bite, but then quickly rescinded my invitation. I didn’t want her saying “no way” before she even sat down at the table. I fixed her a full plate and served myself up one. Nancy got her own dish together, then we convened at the table with me anxious to see what Tillie thought. She took a bite and…

She liked it! She really liked it! Success! But not just regular success. No, this was snatching victory from the jaws of defeat success! Despite myself, I did it—and Tillie rewarded me with two thumbs up.

tilliehandpie

The pies were a hit—plus she was killing that kale.

All in all, it was a good meal. Granted, she did lose her enthusiasm about eating the hand pie. But I have it captured for posterity that she was happy at one point while eating the dish. Would I make it again? Probably. I can’t see Tillie clamoring for it anytime soon, but I’ll give it a shot in the future—maybe even with all the ingredients.

That’s something to ponder for another day, though. Right now, it’s moment-savoring time!

NOTE: Oh, before I forget, the headline says Part 1 because I’m going hand-held for the next dish, too: stay tuned!