Saturday = Debauchery

Saturday is one of my favorite days of the year.  Sassy and Tony's Fourth of July party.  Yes, the Fourth has passed, but what is wrong with celebrating our independence a few days late?  I am comfortable with it.  I had a lot of cooking to do in preparation for this celebration, so I got up early (8 am on a Saturday).  I had two tasks, one is to make enough mac and cheese for ALOT of children and two to make guacamole.  I love both of these foods, so I sincerely enjoy making them.  I started by cooking the bacon for the guac (yes, I put bacon in the guac).

My favorite way to make bacon is to cook it in the oven.  If you have never done this, you should because it takes all of the dirty work out of cooking bacon, plus the bacon cooks super evenly.  Simply lay your bacon out on a cookie sheet (I place a sheet of aluminum foil on the cookie sheet prior to adding the bacon for easy clean-up).  Set the oven to 375 degrees and once the oven has reached temperature, place your bacon in, set the alarm for 17 mins approx (check it around 15 depending on how crispy you like your bacon).  Simple and easy.  Make sure to remove the bacon from the sheet after you get it out of the oven and place the bacon on a paper towel.  If you forget this step, the bacon will stick to the cookie sheet/aluminum foil and you will be bitter and angry.

I then started the water for the Mac and Cheese.  My recipe for Mac & Cheese isn't healthy, but it is pretty darn good and pretty easy.

Liz's Mac & Cheese:

Ingredients
1 Box of Macaroni
2 8oz bags of finely shredded cheese-1 Sharp Cheddar and 1 Colby & Jack Mixed
1 small box of Velvetta-1/2 of the box cut into 1 inch cubes
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1/2 stick of salted butter
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper (freshly ground if available)
Salt to taste
5 tablespoons flour
4 cups of milk

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Take a large pot and fill with water.  Bring the water to a boil.  Once boiling add the 2 teaspoons of salt and add the box of macaroni.  Cook about 9 mins (look at the instructions on the box and cook to the lowest range-if it says 9-11 mins, cook until 9).  Drain the pasta.  Now, using the same pan as you used for your macaroni, put on low/medium (the butter shouldn't sizzle, it should melt nicely).  Once the butter is melted, using a whisk, add the flour.  This will look odd.  It will clump up.  This is fine.  Cook the clumpy mix for 1-2 mins.  You are cooking out the flour taste as an fyi.  Then, slowly whisk in the milk.  If the mixture is thick after adding all of the milk, then add more milk.  Your goal is a mixture that is thin. Then add the mustard, garlic powder and cayenne.   Cook this for about 2 mins.  Then add the Velveeta, stirring constantly until the Velveeta is melted.  Then add, slowly, 3/4s of the bag of sharp cheddar, the entire back of the colby jack and the Parmesan.  Taste the mixture at this point and decided if you want to add salt or not.  Also add the ground pepper at this point.  Then stir in the cooked macaroni.  You can eat it at this point.  (ie if you have a screaming kid who wants to eat).  You can then turn off the oven. If you are making this for yourself , take a large glass pan and pour in the macaroni mixture.  Top with the remaining cheddar cheese.
 ( If you like crispy toppings, you can also take a half stick of butter, melt it.  Add 1/4 of Parmesan and 1 cup of panko breadcrumbs or 1 cup of crushed lays plain potato chips. Mix together and place on top with the cheddar.)
Place the pan in the oven for 15 mins, then turn on the broiler and broil until the top is a nice golden brown.  Pull out of the oven, let it cool and enjoy.  This will hold in the refrigerator for about a week. 

Now, on to the guac. I feel I have put enough recipes and advice in this blog, so I will keep the recipe for another time, but just know, it is avocados, white onion, chipotle peppers, lime juice and bacon.  Use your imagination for now.

My injured fingers

Once this one was done, I headed over to  T& S's at 1.  There were a lot of people there and a ton of food.  It was also 105 degrees outside, so sitting in their pool was all I did, with short breaks for eating and getting myself another cocktail.

I hung out with great friends, got into some dunking contests with some of my favorite kids on the planet and proceeded to stay in the pool way too long.   I ended up staying in so long, and becoming so water logged that I scratched the surface of my fingers off by holding onto the side of the pool deck.  Top notch.  FYI, hurt fingertips are not cool.  Pretty much everything you do causes pain.

Fingers aside, the evening was absolutely fabulous and T & S threw another amazing get together.