This week's recipe...

My resolution to try one new recipe a week continues...  While the goal was to embrace the cookbooks I have* I also wanted to make a dent in all the recipes I find online and bookmark.  This week was an online recipe from The Pioneer Woman. I'm a newcomer to this blog.  Saw that others raved about her, but never really clicked through to check out what they were raving about.  Until one day at Cyndi's urging.  I read her entire love story in one day.  I spent hours learning about how she met her husband and the challenge of giving up city life for ranch life.  I was hooked.  I've been a regular ever since.  And so glad I am so that I saw this recipe for 'Fancy Macaroni'. 

I took a few pictures as I cooked.  None of them will be as beautiful as what Ree has posted on her sight with this recipe.  Seriously, this is why food photography is another one of my resolutions.  Please visit that recipe and look at her step by step photos.  

I have been looking forward to making this dish since the New Year.  I thought I would make it one night when Colin was home watching football also and I could share it, as macaroni and cheese is one of his favorite dishes.  Every weekend came and went and Colin and I never managed to have the same free time.  I couldn't wait anymore.  I made the dish.  I opened a pretty good bottle of red wine (Frog's Leap Rutherford) and I cooked.  

I used my new cast iron dutch oven pot that I received for Christmas to make the cheese sauce.  The only changes I made to the dish was using whole wheat elbow macaroni and halving the amount of bacon.  

It looked perfect.  It looked just like her photos.  Visit the site, make the macaroni.

::Photo from The Pioneer Woman::

I liked it very much.  When I make it again (because I will make it again) I may omit the bacon.  I think the dish tasted too much like bacon and not enough like all the delicious fresh cheese I shredded.  And the cheese was glorious.   I had to check it for quality many times during the shredding process.

* I bought three more.  I bought three more cookbooks.  I know.  I know.  It's a sickness.  But there was a sale and there was free shipping.  This is the resolution that will never end.