Drained macaroni

With all of Jim’s health problems, it’s no wonder I’ve been craving all kinds of comfort foods. Sarah’s been wanting me to fix some macaroni & cheese for awhile now so I’ve decided to get to it. I have several macaroni & cheese recipes I use depending on the cheeses I have onhand & which one I feel will suit my tastes better at the time. Some of them are very simple & easy with only 1 cheese involved; some are more complicated & use several cheeses. Today, I don’t want to have to pick up more cheese & just want a simple basic macaroni & cheese. As usual, I have cheddar cheese onhand.

Layered macaroni, cheese, & cracker crumbs just needing milk poured over them.

That’s why I went with the simplest & most basic one I have. Once again, I’m using one of my great-grandmother’s, Mama Bobo. Cook 2 cups of macaroni in boiling, salted water until it’s tender. Drain the macaroni. Grease a 2-quart casserole dish. Place 1/4 of the macaroni in the casserole dish  & pepper it to taste. Taking 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese & 2 cups of crushed cracker crumbs, layer a 1/4 of the cheese over the macaroni & cover with 1/4 of the cracker crumbs. Continue this until all ingredients have been used. Then pour 2 1/2 cups of milk over the layers in the casserole dish. Place in a 350 oven, uncovered & bake for 50 minutes. Try to refrain from eating it until it has cooled enough you won’t burn your tongue!

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers with parmesan cheese

Tonight I did something different. I usually use the whole wheat Ritz crackers for the cracker crumbs. We have some Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers that are made with parmesan cheese. Nobody in the family has liked them that much. Not wanting to waste them, I decided to use them for making the macaroni & cheese. You wouldn’t think such a small detail would matter, but frankly, we liked it even better than usual. I have some more of those crackers left so will try it again & see if they do work better or if it was just we were so hungary.

Oops. Somebody has already been in the mac & cheese!

However, today, I did get all the pears sorted out & pulled all the ripe ones out. We had our production line going again this evening long enough to do another batch of canned pears. Another batch of 4 beautiful quarts of pears just ready to be put up.

Once the jars were sitting in the water bath, I started supper. Fixed pork chops. As I put them in the skillet, I got to wishing I had some apples to cut up. I love fried apples with pork chops! Next thing I knew, I was convincing myself that there was NO reason I couldn’t cook pears the same way. So I cored & cut a handful of pears. Once my iron skillet was hot, I added a couple of tablespoons of butter to it, poured some honey in there & let it all mix up good. Then I added the pears that were cut into the melted sweet butter simmering in the skillet. Shook a little cinnamon over the pears & stirred them as they cooked for a few minutes. Jim & Sarah were both intrigued with the idea of fried pears when I was cooking them.

We were all agreed they were really good. In fact, Sarah fussed at me for not fixing a bigger batch of fried pears. I reckon while they last, we’ll be eating quite a few of the pears that way. A sense of adventure is all you need to discover new favorite foods for your family.

The only ingredients in this preserve recipe are pears & sugar. I added about 1 tablespoon of FruitFresh to keep the preseves light in color.

After supper, I peeled and sliced 6 cups of pears. Tossed them with some Fruit Fresh and 3 3/4 cups of sugar. Covered the bowl with Saran Wrap. Now it sits in a cool spot until in the morning when I’ll finish making the pear preserves. I love the recipe because there’s nothing in it but pears & sugar. This year I wanted it to be a lighter color so I added some Fruit Fresh so the pears wouldn’t darken as much. I’ve had this recipe for pear preserves so long, I can’t remember exactly where I got it. Probably came from my mother or grandmother on my father’s side as I can remember making preserves with Mother years ago. Grandmother always had the best pear preserves to eat. My great-grandmother, Mama Bobo had a big old pear tree that everybody in the family would get pears from to make preserves. Wonderful memories.