GF Mac and Cheese Because I Needed It

I have been out of boxed GF mac and cheese for weeks now. The place where my mom works sometimes has times where things aren't available, and this is one of those.

But I was craving the stuff badly, so what does one do when one is miserably without the boxed stuff and unwilling to pay astronomical prices for the stuff from the grocery store?

Make your own.

I took my original recipe from the Stouffer's Mac and Cheese copy in the Top Secret Recipes Unlocked book, and then did THIS:

1 cup skim milk
5 teaspoons flour (here I used besan flour.)
2 cups freshly shredded medium cheddar cheese (supposed to be 6 ounces. I used eight.)
2 teaspoons margarine (used butter instead)
1/4 plus 1/8 teaspooon salt
3/4 cup uncooked macaroni (used shells, and a bit more than 3/4 cup, probably closer to 1 and a half cups. Next time I'm going for two.)

Whisk the flour into the skim milk in a small saucepan then place it over the medium low heat. (Here I threw in some black pepper, probably a 1/4 tsp.) Add the shredded (I cubed it) cheddar cheese, margarine, and salt and stir often with a spoon until the cheese begins to melt. (Here I tossed in some leftover cream cheese, an ounce or two, and a bit of parmesan (1/8 tsp.), and a bit of mustard (1/4 tsp.)) Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. (Nah. I certainly didn't) Use a whisk to stir the sauce every couple of minutes so that it becomes smooth and thick.

(A trick I have learned with cheese sauces is that if you drop a few drops of lemon juice into it, the sauce will not be stringy.)

While the sauce thickens, prepare the macaroni by dumping 3/4 cup uncooked elbow macaroni into rapidly boiling water. Boil for 8 minutes or until tender and then strain. You should have about 1 3/4 cups of cooked macaroni.

When the cheese sauce has simmered for 30 minutes (ha. I couldn't do this. I gave it five), pour the pasta into a medium bowl. Gently stir in the cheese sauce and then (here I disregarded all protocol and started eating.) pour mixture into a loaf pan or casserole dish. Cover and freeze.

When you are ready to dive into your macaroni and cheese preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, bake the frozen macaroni for 50-53 minutes or until the cheese begins to brown slightly.

Mac and cheese is one of those things where you can play with it and futz with it and it probably won't damage the dish. Obviously I fiddled with this one because A) there wasn't enough STUFF in it already and B) I'm GF and I can't have regular flour or regular pasta, so some adjustments needed doing.

I'm going to save half for later, I think, because it was kind of heavy (but in an awesome kind of way.)

Nothing on the job front yet; I've given up for the moment to focus on other things so that I don't spend all day moping like I did yesterday.

I think today I'm going to go watch Sherlock (again!) write some stuff (again!) take the dog for a walk (yes, AGAIN) and maybe do something stupid like play a computer game. I also have to vacuum again.

So ta, y'all.
Bec