Macaroni and Cheese

I'm a day late on this one because I was too busy being depressed over dinner last night to do anything but watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  Also, Sally is my new role model, I've decided.  She knows what she wants and she may mess up some things along the way but that doesn't stop her.  Also she has fun hair.

Anyway, last night I got home from work and started on my roasted garlic and fennel.  I bought a pork tenderloin on Tuesday from Trader Joe's and decided to make it Thursday.  I found the recipe on Martha Stewart and decided, what the hell, I might as well do it.

So the garlic and fennel are roasting, and I decided to start with the rub on the pork.  One problem: I open the package and I'm hit with the smell of hard-boiled eggs.  Hmm.  I've never made pork tenderloin before; is this typical?  A call to my mother confirms that no, this meat is rotten, and I need to get rid of it.  I wrap it in two bags and take it downstairs.

Nick didn't feel like picking up anything on the way home (when it comes to stuff like this, I think he just expects me to take care of anything, meaning he doesn't need to actually think about what he's eating for dinner), so I sat on the couch and pouted for a while and then heated up the leftovers from the following macaroni and cheese decadence.
This is another Martha Stewart wonder.  I found it on Bon Appetit's blog a few months ago, and finally decided to make it.

Ingredients, OCD-style

Cheese and noodles

Pre-oven.  Sadly, there are no post-oven photos.

The recipe can be found here.  In one word, this meal is decadent.  In two, it's very nutmeg-y.  I always use nutmeg in my macaroni and cheese, but for some reason, the taste was very pronounced.  If you aren't into nutmeg, you may want to halve the amount down to 1/8 teaspoon.

Some changes:

• Okay Martha, we're buds and all, but macaroni and cheese is orange.  Or, at the very least, yellow.  So I cut down the amount of white cheddar and threw in maybe a cup of sharp yellow cheddar.  To be honest with you, I only eyeballed the amounts of cheese.  I feel like I have a good cheese gauge in me, and I can use it for this recipe.  It didn't fail me.
• I used Gruyere, which is one of two choices she offers (the other being Pecorino Romano).
• I didn't have cayenne pepper.  I could've sworn I did, but no such luck, so I threw in some paprika and some dried mustard instead.  I don't think it affected anything.
• This makes a ton of food.  Seriously.  We both ate Wednesday, took it for lunch Thursday, and also ate it last night after I threw my pity party.  We still have about 1/4 of the casserole dish left (that's a 3 qt. casserole, by the way).  Make it for a crowd.
• This goes well with broccoli.  Throw some in the bottom of a bowl, put the mac and cheese on top, and mix.  Perfection.

This is a hell of a meal.  I almost felt like I was being too indulgent while eating it, but I got over that really quickly.

So what's up for the weekend?  We're expecting snow here in DC--I'm not a happy girl.  It's October!  Cross your fingers that it doesn't happen and I can venture out for tacos instead.