Skip to main content

homemade mac&cheese recipe

this was one of my FAVORITE dinners as a kid, although my mom now claims that she made it differently than the recipe she gave to me… I’ll try my best to make this recipe ‘usable’, but you’ll probably have to refer to my recipe disclaimer and accept my apologies, once again, for ambiguous measurements!

003

in case that won’t actually cut it for you, allow me to try and translate.

  1. cook 2 cups of macaroni according to package directions. drain. put in 2.5 quart casserole dish or 9x13 pyrex dish. (I only use whole wheat pasta and actual elbow macaroni can be hard to find – although a friend recently alerted me that whole foods sells it. i use shells, rotini, bow ties, whatever the kids choose.)
  2. in a separate bowl, combine 1 can of cream of something soup (I usually use celery), 1 can of milk (meaning you measure your milk in the soup can you just emptied), and several good shakes of the following spices: parsley, celery seed, onion powder, garlic powder, and basil. mix WELL with a whisk.
  3. pour over cooked noodles.
  4. cube cheese (I do this while the noodles are cooking). the amount of cheese is kind of hard to specify. i’ve been making this for years and I just kind of eyeball it. maybe about a cup? maybe a little more?
  5. stir in cheese, making sure to get it well distributed throughout. this is also where I like to add some diced ham, if we’ve had it recently and have leftovers, but it’s just as good without it too.
  6. sprinkle parmesan cheese and paprika over the top.
  7. cover and bake at 350* for 30-40 minutes, until bubbly and all cheese is melted. remove cover for the last 5 minutes of baking.
  8. allow to set for a few minutes before serving.

enjoy!

Comments

Post a Comment

all comments are moderated. unkind comments will be deleted.

you may like...

random diaper musings

do you ever feel at odds with yourself? i constantly feel like i'm a big wad of contradictions. and being the living-in-my-head, overthinking type i can spend years, i mean hours pondering things. it can really get me down. example: diapers. one would think that this was a relatively easy thing to handle. i've got 3 kids. i'm pretty familiar with diapers. it seems so simple; your baby needs a change so you take the old diaper off and put a new one on. done. right? no. i have this constant dilemma going on. cloth or disposable. i have 25 perfectly good fitted cloth diapers that i paid a lot of money for when i decided a couple years ago that i was done filling up landfills. so micah wears them a good share of the time. but it bugs me that they're so bulky, especially with the covers on and clothes fit funny and that totally drives me nuts. so at home, he just wears the diaper w/ no cover and when we leave the house, i put a disposable on him. not usually...
6 comments
read more »

a blue period...

i'm feeling really lazy lately. well, some might think i'm lazy all the time, but it's worse right now. i always get really down on myself when i'm having trouble keeping things organized, when my house is a mess, when we eat mac and cheese for dinner, etc. usually that's appropriate motivation to get me off my butt and make me keep things in some sort of relative order. but night now it's really bad. i don't feel like doing anything. there are toys all over, and i purposely make myself not see them because i just don't want to pick them up. same with the dirt behind the door in the bathroom. the pile of clothes that need to be ironed, the mess in my bedroom, the crap falling out of the drawers in my bathroom, the garage. i don't want to go grocery shopping. i don't want to cook. the floor needs to be swept and mopped in the kitchen and dining room and the sink is dirty. the backyard is a total disaster and i just don't feel like ...
5 comments
read more »

blessed with good oral health!

well, i made it another 6 months with no cavities! i had a dentist appointment today. my second in six months, but prior to that, i don’t think i’d been in 4+ years. oops. i was much less nervous for this appointment than i was for the last one. last time i figured my luck had run out and because i’d been bad about seeing the dentist, this time i’d really ‘pay’ for it. but no. other than a little excessive scraping of tartar (4 years’ worth), everything was fine. around the time i turned 20, i pretty much assumed, every time i went to the dentist, that this was finally my time for a cavity. i mean, how long really, can one person go without ANY cavities? well, now i’m kind of over that and figure that maybe my teeth are just impenetrable or something. at any rate, every time the dentist comes in at the end of my cleaning, pokes around for a minute and tells me my teeth look great, i breathe a sigh of relief and feel tremendous gratitude for my good teeth. the no cavities thing is only ...
4 comments
read more »

it just keeps getting better...

so obviously, from my earlier post, the dinner-making portion of my day was a little less than spectacular.  oh, that was just the beginning. dave worked late today. after dinner, i ran a bath for the younger 2 and in the process of getting them from the dining room to the bathroom, micah knocked the container of cheerios off the table and they dumped ALL OVER the floor.  i scooped up what i could and threw it back in the container, then, mindful that the water was still running in the tub and i didn't want to flood the bathroom, i herded the kids into the bathroom and dumped them into the tub. i went back into the dining room and proceeded to sweep up the mound of cheerios that was left on the floor, all the while keeping an ear open for both voices and giggles in the bathroom (as long as you can hear them, their heads are above water, right?).  that took all of about 2 minutes. i looked in on them (both happy as could be) and discovered that both of my younger...
4 comments
read more »

boxed in.

so i’m feeling a little bit stifled right now. when i took over responsibility for shane’s education, i knew i was making a big time/lifestyle commitment. i also figured that layla and eventually, micah would be involved in this endeavor. i knew that i was stepping out into a great unknown, having never completely done this sort of thing before. it was an experiment. in general, this experiment has gone well. not entirely as planned, but well, nonetheless. i mean really, when you’re dealing with kids (or other human beings, for that matter) what does go as planned. but at this point, i have to say that homeschooling is NOT my favorite thing. it’s not that i can’t do it. it’s not that shane isn’t learning. it’s not that i’m excessively overwhelmed or that i feel like i’m failing. it’s not any of that. the best thing i can figure out is that i feel ‘boxed in’. i feel like my time and opportunities are so limited for all of us. it’s not just about shane, and with layla and micah so mu...
6 comments
read more »