That looks like a proper mid-century meal, right? Be not fooled by the plate’s low-profile appearance: this dinner was inarguably beautiful.
I am not typically a “mac and cheese person,” which is to say I only eat cheese & macaroni when it’s prepared by someone else. This has always been the case, from the time I was a tot to the current day. Furthermore, I have limited experience with homemade macaroni and cheese, which (as I discovered this week) is an entirely different animal than its boxed mutation.
When he returned from Amsterdam, Amadeo brought Alex a selection of fabulous cheeses — gouda and pesto-infused varieties among them — from the city’s famed market. What to do with all that cheese? Alex wondered. The answer presented itself, as it often does, in the form of a Mark Bittman recipe. (Note: here is a link to Bittman’s recipe for Baked Macaroni and Cheese.)
Alex making roux: yeah, yeah!
From-scratch macaroni and cheese isn’t as difficult to make as you might think. True, it requires one to boil water, grate cheese, and make roux (a tricky but not impossible task). Even so, it’s totes manageable for a weeknight.
As Alex prepared the mac, I took over salad prep. Above, you’ll see the salad (undressed): a simple assemblage of butter lettuce, English cucumber, halved tiny tomatoes, and paper-thin radish slices for pepperiness. In an old jar, I mixed a simple vinaigrette: oil and vinegar and Maldon salt and fresh pepper and lemon juice and a wee bit of fresh maple syrup, for the tiniest hint of sweetness. Fresh vinaigrette — so easy and so satisfying — is one of my current favorite things. In fact, I think I’ll make some this evening, just because.
Note: We didn't have any bread with dinner. In fact, this is Sam's loaf of bread, but Alex also got a loaf from Josey. At any rate, I thought you all would enjoy this photo of a beautiful, craggy loaf.
Macaroni and cheese with a fresh green salad: right now, I can’t think of a pleasanter, more balanced meal. With a dish as rich as the mac, you have to serve the lightest side dish; the tossed salad, with its oh-so-delicate butter lettuce, fit the bill. The relative acidity of the salad was a nice foil to our creamy main. When all was said and done, I didn’t even crave dessert; that’s the sign of a wholly satisfying meal.
I’m definitely coming around to macaroni and cheese — not that I had beef with it before, but it never fully registered in my food consciousness. Now, though, it has taken up permanent residence there, interrupting my daily thoughts with reminders of how good baked pasta and breadcrumbs are together.
Bloody Marys, because they are the spiciest — cough & sputter spicy — and because they have the saltiest olives. Burgers with homefries because I recently discovered that I like mayonnaise (WHAT?), and because a burger sounded good. I’ll tell ya, Zeitgeist does homefries right. I don’t know their secret (though I suspect it’s rooted in oil), but their fries are golden-orange-and-crunchy on the outside, pillowy within — a rare find.
After our weekend o’ revelry, I felt it necessary to scale back my indulgences just a wee bit: not as much bacon, not as much champagne, more veggies, more tea. Vitamins to the max. My plan followed thusly: I wouldn’t stop eating the foods I loved, I’d just add a bunch of healthy stuff to them to get some nutrition alongside my grease. Dig?
For this event, MP opened their kitchen space to guests — a rare treat. Many is the time that I’ve walked by and wondered what it would be like to chill near the stand mixer, and now, my question has been answered. (Answer: such chilling is just as cool as expected.)
Moving through the kitchen, we ran into 
Before leaving, Alex decorated a section of the prayer flag to be hung outside the shop. Looking through the flags already decorated, I couldn’t help but feel buoyed by the optimism of the messages — responses to the question, “What do you wish for?” A few people expressed wishes for personal gain (“to be prosperous!” was one person’s response), but most expressed desire for a larger good — for everyone to have enough to eat, for peace in the community and worldwide. Even I, normally a bit of a snarkmeister, felt warm and cozy.
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Perhaps this fluidity — climatic, geographical, emotional — is what allowed for my full acceptance of a non-traditional Xmas breakfast. Rather than bake a Dutch Baby as we’ve done every year (literally every year), my mom, sis, and I opted out. Our breakfast was simpler: ready-made cinnamon rolls drizzled with shockingly sweet frosting; Pannetone spread thick with butter; bacon and hard-boiled eggs; fruit salad; and cup after cup of coffee, its bitterness mitigated with soy milk and stevia.
