Thursday Night Eats 8/23/12

Heather Beth here...

Last Thursday evening we tried out two Pinterest recipes. We had to modify them to fit our cooking space and picky eating needs. We made Bloomin' Onion Bread and Four cheese baked skillet rigatoni.

First off...Bloomin Onion Bread. Heather Rae and I were so excited to make this! Due to some picky eaters, we modified it to be a garlicky version of the original, which can be found here: http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2011/05/bloomin-onion-bread.html.

Here is how ours came out:

I found a loaf of crusty bread, because they had no sourdough left at the store. We did use the same cheese as in the original, but instead of the poppy seeds and other ingredients we just did butter and TONS of garlic. The assembly was pretty easy, June and Heather put it together in no time. It came out great and was devoured pretty fast. Group food friendly, which is always good for us.

The main dish for the evening was a very indulgent macaroni cheese. The original can be found here: http://www.howsweeteats.com/2012/03/four-cheese-baked-skillet-rigatoni/.

Here is how ours came out:

Now it may not look like much...but it was SO DELICIOUS! My alterations to this recipe included making the sauce in an electric skillet, and then mixing it with a box and a half of pasta (there was SO MUCH sauce) in a pyrex pan and baking it. I can't use cast iron on my glass top stove. A word of warning; the cheese is expensive, and you may want to have some helpers on hand (thanks June and Chris!) to do some of the shredding! We also used garlic Philadelphia cooking creme instead of marscapone, just because. The panko breadcrumb topping was amazing. I can honestly say this is the best mac and cheese I have ever made. The cheese melted together just right in the pan, and with Meagan stirring while I added the cheese, it was super easy. The leftovers were really good too. Mac and cheese often gets "weird" in the microwave, but this one did not.

So that's it! I hope you are encouraged to try a new recipe. Next week...hopefully something healthier will be on the menu ;)

-Heather Beth