Time for Comfort Food

Wednesday, January 30.  Today I woke up and do much of what I usually do on January mornings.  Had my coffee, watched some CNBC (and of course Ellen!), made some commodity trades, and hung out in my pajamas.  Today my morning lasted until about 2pm, at which time I thought that it might be good to get out of the house.  My task of finding something new hung in the air as I thought about what I could do today.

Now a small aside.  I hope to do some bigger, crazy things as time goes on and my courage grows.  Skydiving, calling someone famous, working as a greeter in Meijer's all are ideas that I've had.  But I can't imagine that everything will be earth shattering.  Some days, small things will have to do.  I also hope to do some good deeds, like help an elderly lady put her groceries in her car.  Part of the overall nuttiness of this idea is that I just don't know what I'll do.

Before my morning turned into early evening, I managed to catch Tyler Florence's Ultimate cooking show on the food channel.  In HD of course.  If you don't have an HD tv or HD service, I highly recommend you do both.  It is life changing (shout out to my buddy Justin for helping me see the light on this one).  Anyway, he was making one of his Ultimate dishes--you know, the best hamburger, the best chili, the best crab cakes.  The ultimate.  Today was the Ultimate tailgate, which meant the Ultimate chicken wings, the Ultimate chili dogs, the Ultimate Potato Salad.  I then recalled an episode I watched a while back, the Ultimate Mac and Cheese.  That was it!

With the weather being the way it is, and with me being really hungry because I had spent all morning in front of either the computer or the tv, I decided to go out and buy the ingredients to make my first homemade, from scratch macaroni and cheese.  Don't get me wrong, I love Kraft mac and cheese.  Mmmm, all that tasty, almost glow in the dark cheddar!  But today it was going to be homemade.

Two hours, many dirty dishes, and two large mugs of coffee later, my creation was complete.  Bubbly, oozing, mac and cheese.  Hot out of the oven and with a bacon/onion/garlic mix sprinkled on top.  It turned out great.  My roommate Ryan gave me his approval later when he tried some, so I know it had to be good.  I was rather pleased.  I've tried recipes off of the food channel before and none turned out quite as good.  So there's number three.  I'm starting to think that I just might be able to keep this up!