Christmas decorations, paint and leftovers.

That was today in a nutshell. I spent some time digging out the last of the Christmas decorations, which we had mostly put up yesterday. Our house is so much bigger this year, that all our decorations are out and up, and it really doesn't look as festive as it always did. I guess that's good! That means I am going to have to get more decorations. The tough part is finding decorations that hang on the wall. I have plenty of knick-knacky things, but I have some serious empty wall space. Hopefully I can find some cute snowman things this year, as all of my decorations are strictly snowmen. Except for the ornaments on the tree anyway.

So Andy spent today painting our bedroom. :-)!!!! We finally picked a wall color and picked up the paint yesterday, so he painted today. The color is called Fool's Gold, and is a dark golden yellow. I am planning on decorating with a Spicy Moroccan theme. Very warm and cozy. I will now be able to go shopping for fabric to cover my headboard and fabric for my drapery. I am very excited about that! The tough part (I think) will be finding some artwork that I like. It will be fun.

Meals today revolved around the leftovers that have taken over our fridge. After a very late start, we kind of missed breakfast, but lunch and supper were both leftover meals. I have got soooo much turkey leftover, that I think we will be eating it for some time. Lunch today used up our roasted vegetables and sweet potatoes. I tossed the roasted broccoli into some eggs, along with some Irish Cheddar cheese and made a frittata. To accompany that, I took the sweet potatoes and fried it up, so it was sort of like refried sweet potatoes. Very good, actually. The frittata was perfect, and I was very happy that I actually used leftovers. Dinner tonight started out being a very simple dinner of turkey and gravy over biscuits. While I was working in the kitchen though, Zander walked in and asked "supper? Macaroni and cheese?" How could I say no. The problem was that I didn't have any macaroni and cheese. And my kids do not care for homemade baked mac and cheese.

FoodTV to the rescue. I had remembered Alton Brown's episode on macaroni and cheese. So I varied his recipe a little, and came up with a very good stovetop macaroni and cheese. And I was able to use leftover cheeses from the appetizers on Thanksgiving. I will post Alton's recipe below. My changes were to leave out the mustard and hot sauce, use twice as much evaporated milk, and for cheese I used half gouda and half medium cheddar. It will definitely be made again here. Although I prefer homemade mac and cheese, Annie's makes a very good boxed one, and I tend to make that. But this was just as easy as opening a box, and it was full of yumminess. So here is the recipe. Enjoy!


Stove Top Mac-n-Cheese
Recipe courtesy Alton Brown

1/2 pound elbow macaroni
4 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
6 ounces evaporated milk
1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Fresh black pepper
3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
10 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the pasta to al dente and drain. Return to the pot and melt in the butter. Toss to coat.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, hot sauce, salt, pepper, and mustard. Stir into the pasta and add the cheese. Over low heat continue to stir for 3 minutes or until creamy.