I ended up going home this weekend to watch the Super Bowl and I was so glad I did. What a game! I think my family and I were having a collective heart attack for the last five minutes of it. I have no idea how four people managed to be so loud, but the noise we made after the Giants won was unbelievable. And, in case anyone was wondering, my dad did wear his magic green polo. It worked again!
Not only did I get to watch my favorite team win with my family, but I also had a rare luxury: I got to cook in a kitchen. I managed to make chicken nuggets, stove top macaroni and cheese (not the Kraft kind), hashbrown casserole, buffalo chicken dip, taco dip, and pancakes in the two days I was home. It was amazing. I wish I had thought to take pictures of all of the food.
For those with a kitchen, or those who torture themselves by reading recipe after recipe of things they can’t make while sitting in their dorm, I thought I’d include the results for the chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese.
We used this recipe for macaroni and cheese from Hungry Cravings. I had it favorited on food gawker (a great site to find recipes) and I was looking for something that didn’t need to be baked.
This recipe has you begin with the pasta, water, butter, milk, and seasonings all mixed together. You have to stir the pasta constantly once the mixture begins to boil. The whole process took me about fifteen minutes. For about nine minutes it was just me standing in front of the stove and stirring my macaroni. I didn’t mind it, because my boyfriend was working on the chicken nuggets next to me and I just talked to him. If I were making it alone, I might have gotten a little tired of stirring.
Instead of making a roux, this recipe has you cook the pasta with the milk and then leave it unstrained. You just pour the cheese on top afterwards, and it all melts together to be extremely cheesy and creamy. I wasn’t completely sold on this method. I think the texture of the finished product was a little off–maybe it was just the way my cheese melted, but it was a little grainy. Regardless, I ate my whole serving and my boyfriend enjoyed it, so it is definitely worth a try! I may try this recipe again with a higher quality cheese.
We found the recipe for chicken nuggets from 100 Days of Real Food. It was so simple to follow the directions and the end results were delightful. The part that took the longest was simply cutting up the chicken into bite sized pieces. The macaroni and chicken nuggets ended up being done at about the same time.
Unfortunately, as nice as this weekend was, I’m back to cooking without a kitchen. Check back later in the week for a recipe for a quick study break snack!
cookingwithoutakitchen 