Every time you get into the kitchen, it doesn't need to be for the healthiest reasons. Sometimes, getting into the kitchen to create some gluttonous, cheesy comfort food. Making food that you want to eat - and are excited to eat - can be just as "good" for you, too. Healthy food does make you feel great afterwards, but there is something to be said about comfort food that makes you want to lay down for a few hours. For my roommate's 22nd birthday, I asked him to go through my cookbooks and find a recipe that he would want to indulge on for his birthday. This time, we made a Mac'n'cheese from Chrissy Teigen's Cravings cookbook. I want to warn anyone reading this about the insane amount of cheese that goes into this. You may need to eat some cheese immediately after viewing this blog post. Enjoy. To start off the mac, we prepped all the ingredients. Three different types of cheeses. Yes, three. We used two bags of shredded cheddar, two bags of shredded Swiss, and over 15 slices of American cheese. There's a lot of cheese going on here. As I was assembling the cheese bowl (pictures below), I thought for a second about how overwhelming all this cheese could be. It snowballed from there, and suddenly, I was thinking of all the overwhelming things in my life, including the cheese. I took a big breath, and mixed it all together. Sometimes, when you have a lot on your plate (or in your bowl), the best thing to do is just keep moving forward. Moving forward, despite crippling uncertainty, is necessary. My roommate and I decided we needed to work together to get this one done. It was much more than we both realized, and I knew I needed his help. Plus, it was a nice change to have someone with me in the kitchen. Thomas took control of the bread crumb topping: bread in the food processor, heated over a stove with an ungodly amount of butter. I'm so glad that he came into the kitchen with me - he did an amazing job. To make a very, very, very long story short, we then mixed all the cheeses with the base we had been cooking on the stove. Adding the cheese was gradual, making sure that all melted and combined well. We actually ended up reserving more cheese than we needed for topping, but we decided that maybe all that cheese wasn't as necessary as it may have seemed. Once the cheese cause was made, we mixed in an entire box of cooked pasta. We finished it off with the reserved cheese and our delicious breadcrumb topping. Finally, the mac could be put in the oven for an hour. However, we spent the whole hour cleaning up the mess we made. Making this mac and cheese with my roommate was a great way to relieve some stress and have some fun. Happy birthday Thomas!
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Food
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