Foodblogging -- 2

My mom had two recipes for macaroni and cheese. One of them, the healthier one, I have no use for. It had eggs, it had milk. It had some cooked macaronis, and some cubed cheddar cheese. The long cook-time made the macaronis too soft in my opinion, and there was never enough cheese to disguise the creepy taste of the unsweetened custard that bound the dish together.

No, the one I liked was the other one, which had a salty, intense flavor, and a brownish, almost meaty color. I liked that one so much that after I left home and got my own place, I wrote back and asked my mother to send the recipe.

And when I saw how it was made, I almost went into shock.

Understand as you read it, that we used to eat differently back in those days. My favorite recipe for Sloppy Joes, came out of my Betty Crocker's New Boys' and Girls' Cookbook. The main ingredients were canned tomato soup and ground beef. I knew that, and I was okay with it, because back when I was growing up, either ground beef or canned soup, if not both of them, went into practically everything we had for dinner. But when I went back as an adult to make my old favorite Sloppy Joe's for my husband and family, I found that I couldn't remember the secret ingredient that gave the Joes their "special" taste, that is, that kept them from tasting just like canned tomato soup mixed with ground beef. So I tracked down my old cookbook and looked up the recipe to check:

It was a teaspoon of French's-style mustard. That was all that was in there, besides the soup and the meat. To me, that says all you need to know about how we ate in the 1970's right there: Not only was a teaspoon of mustard enough to give something a "special" taste, but I couldn't recognize the mustard in the dish when I tasted it.

Bear that in mind when you read the following recipe for:





LUMBERJACK MACARONI

Hot Boiled Macaroni (8 oz uncooked)
2 Cups Grated Cheddar Cheese
5 Tbsp. Worcestershire Sauce
1/4 C. Chili Sauce [My mom used catsup]
Salt and Pepper
3/4 C. Piping Hot Melted Butter [My mom used margarine]

Spread Macaroni out on large hot platter. Sprinkle with cheese, Worcestershire sauce, chili sauce, salt and pepper. Pour hot meleted butter over all. Mix with two forks until sauce is creamy. Serve at once on hot plates. Serves 6.

I have never dared try making this recipe. It is over-salted, and full of processed ingredients (and some that I never even keep around the house any more; just out of curiosity, when was the last time you used Worcestershire sauce?), but I'm sure you'll understand, it's the butter content that puts me off. 3/4 cups, is 12 tablespoons. That's 1,200 calories, just for the butter!

I am reconciled to a lifetime without Lumberjack Macaroni. But you know, I remain curious. Because as with the mustard in the Sloppy Joes, my memory does not fit with my sense now of what the dish would be like. I think about it, and I picture pools of grease lying around the macaronis on the plate, but when I look back at my childhood image of it, I just remember the noodles, and a brownish, cheesy sauce. Was I so used to the grease that I didn't even notice? Or did the butter perhaps emulsify with the catsup better than I'm imagining?

Please don't get me wrong, the last thing I want to do at this late date, when I am desperately protecting what's left of my health so it will last me into my old age, is start in making recipes that have 1,200 calories worth of butter in them. But if any of you should make it, I wish you would write back and tell me if the sauce emulsifies, or if the cheese and noodles just sit in grainy lumps, on top of the puddle of grease that is the melted butter.

HyperSmash