Macamoni and Cheese

When you write about kids and food it is easy to get way too cute and brag about the latest mispronunciation as the most hilarious thing your child has ever done. I certainly fall victim to it... frequently. This week is no exception. From calling the bobcat sitting on the driveway (renos have begun!) a pomegranate, to the subject of today: macamoni and cheese.

It might be a not so secret food snob goal of mine to see if I can get my kids to adulthood without a taste of Kraft Dinner. Sure, they'll be tempted along the way, but I can police all their meals at friends' and daycare, right? Okay, but I know Grandma won't give it to her, and neither will Hubby. And so far she loves what Mama and Daddy give her in the way of macaroni and cheese.

For as long as Hubby and I have been together we've engaged in somewhat spirited debates about the best way to make macaroni and cheese. He in the melted cheese with a little bit of milk camp and I in the cheese sauce and baked with bread crumbs on top camp. We will happily eat each other's rendition, while secretly thinking ours would be at least slightly better. All that being said, I may have created a winner for both of us.

Before I go further I need to also get another food snob confession off my chest. I don't believe in hiding vegetables in food. Sure, there are things like zucchini chocolate cake, but that's just plain good. I'm talking about the sneaking in and stalking of vegetables, just for the sake of getting your kids (or partner) to eat vegetables, a la this book.

This recipe for mac and cheese, however, is one that would qualify as sneaky. I had a vague recollection of seeing something similar a few years back, but couldn't find the recipe. So I made one up. And have made it again and again and again. Use whatever cheese you have around, but the strong, aged ones are my favourites. Use whatever kind of squash - aside from a spaghetti squash - or even a pumpkin. The sauce contains more pureed squash (or pumpkin) than milk and cheese. It is creamy without being heavy. It is orange! It can be eaten straight as made or baked without drying out. It is so good, seriously.

Two real mom advantages of this dish are that you can feed your baby and the rest of your family at the same time. Make the puree for baby and use the rest for the mac and cheese. Plus, you can easily freeze it. I bake mine in two small pans. We eat one and I freeze the other for those days when Little Miss Sunshine and the Monster keep me out of the kitchen.

Sneaky Mac and Cheese
(makes one 9 by 13 baking pan or two 8 by 8 pans, or a lot from the pot)

4 cups dry macaroni
2 Tbsp butter
2 cups pureed squash or pumpkin (fresh or canned)
1 cup milk
5-6 ounces finely shredded cheese (your choice)
1 cup bread crumbs (optional)
2 Tbsp olive oil or melted butter

1. Cook your macaroni in boiling, salted water until al dente. Drain and return to pot.
2. While your macaroni is cooking, melt butter in a medium saucepan. When melted, stir in the squash puree and milk.
3. When squash mixture is hot, stir in 5 ounces of cheese until melted. Season well.
4. Stir the squash mixture into the cooked macaroni.
5. If you like your mac and cheese baked, then put it in a buttered pan, and top with 1 ounce of cheese mixed with the breadcrumbs and oil/butter. Bake in a 325 degree oven for 20-25 minutes.

Is there any way to style mac and cheese to look good? I'm not a professional, but I couldn't do it.

Multi-Pieced Binding Tutorial

In reality, almost all bindings are pieced - unless you are doing a miniature or baby quilt. I wanted to offer you my technique (far from being unique) for a pieced binding and inspire you to do some multi-fabric bindings to finish your quilts.

Binding on a quilt is like hair. A bad haircut can ruin an incredible outfit, making your quilt look like the equivalent of an 80s yearbook photo. Okay, the clothes weren't great then either. But the right haircut will make you look just so fabulous, even if you are wearing two pairs of slouchy socks and a sweater tied over your shoulders.

Multi-fabric bindings aren't right for every quilt, but they are right for so many. Scrappy quilts, fat-quarter quilts, charm quilts, stack and whacks, and generally any quilt that uses more than 6-8 fabrics are prime candidates for multi-fabric bindings. Even a traditionally pieced quilt can be jazzed up with a multi-fabric binding. Generally, I take some of the fabrics that are used in the quilt, cut random length strips, sew them together, and attach to the quilt. Sometimes I get more formal and do the corners, for example, in one colour and the rest of the length in another.

A couple of notes on my technique. This is not for bias-cut bindings. A bias binding has its place (although it is rare on a quilt I make), but mixing bias cut and straight-grain cut fabric in the binding will just create a complicated mess for you. Secondly, this creates a double thickness of fabric on the edge of your quilt, a double-fold binding. You will not notice a difference, but it provides some added strength for wear and tear.

Here's how I do it.

1. Cut your strips of fabric. The length of the strip will depend on the size of the quilt. To maximize the effect you want at least 2 or 3 fabrics per side. My go-to width of binding strip is 2 and 3/4 inches. This gives a broad enough binding that wraps around the edge of the quilt easily.

*Do not use bias cut fabric*

2. Iron your strips in half lengthwise.

3. Now it is time to join all your strips. Open up the fabric, place your two fabric ends, right sides together, at right angles to each other.

Pin close to the top left corner and bottom right corner.

Draw a line from the outside corner to the outside corner. Do not draw your line from the top left corner to the inside corner, that won't get you anywhere but two randomly sewn together strips. Sew along your line.

After a few tries you won't need to draw the line. Just sew one strip to the other and so on.

The key is to not get your strips twisted.

4. Once all your strips are sewn together cut off the extra fabric triangle. Press the seams to one side. Repress the strips in half where two strips meet.

5. Attach your binding in your preferred method. With this method I sew the binding on my quilt, one side at a time. Each corner is mitred. Then I fold over the binding and sew down by hand, covering the sewn line.

It will be out of order, but the next tutorial will be on squaring up a quilt. Then I will tackle the way I mitre binding corners (I don't do continuous bindings), hand sewing the binding down, and creating a hanging sleeve.

Just Orange

Have you been watching Saturday Night Live lately? Sarah Palin and Obama imitations aside (freakin' hilarious!) on Weekend Update they have a new segment called, "Oh My God, Are you Serious?" I've been saying that a lot lately when it comes to the Monster's food preferences.

Orange is one of my favourite colours. It favours heavily in the decorating in our house, I use it liberally in many quilt designs, and my favourite mug and second favourite purse are bold displays of the citrus tone. Apparently it is also one of the Monster's favourite. She, however, displays her propensity for the colour by only eating orange cheese. Oh my God, are you serious?

Our suspicions about this were confirmed a few weeks ago when she boldly stated that the cheddar on her plate for snack would not do because it was not, as she said, "lellow cheese." I knew that she wouldn't eat a hunk of mozza, nor a Babybel round, having defiantly turned her nose at these for months. But that aged cheddar was fantastic, plus she'd already eaten it in a quesadilla.

Still, I thought I would try an unscientific experiment on her, a cheese plate taste test if you will. At the market last week I stocked up on some gouda from Sylvan Star, a whisky cheddar from The Village Cheese Company, and some fantastic Honeycrisp apples and Bartlett pears. Along with some supermarket marble cheese, dried apricots, and a few bagel crisps my mom left behind we had ourselves a snack.

She went straight for the fruit. Okay, so maybe including the fruit skewed the experiment. But just a plate of cheese didn't seem like a good snack, plus I have to groom her for a trip to France...one day. It should be noted that the first fruit she ate were the dried apricots, shockingly orange.

The volume of choices did her excited, not overwhelmed. Everything was picked up, and usually licked. Oh my God, are you serious? And all was put down, except the supermarket marble cheese. She almost took a bite of the crackled whiskey cheddar, but thought better of it. Brown is not orange.

Seeing as this wasn't a formal focus group and I resisted the urge to question her choices I can only come to one conclusion: she's weird. That, or she's just a toddler.

I did leave out her favourite cheese - feta. A salty sheep's feta is her hands down cheese of choice. If that is an option she will eat nothing else. Knowing that, I left it out so as to avoid skewing the results. Feta is white, or at best, cream. Oh my god, are you serious?

Sources:
Sylvan Star Cheese
Village Cheese Company

Swimming Along

Ignore the fact that this top needs a good pressing, and the light has washed out the colours a bit. Oceane's quilt top is done, the back is done, and I need a nap to get it basted.

I wanted to give you a binding tutorial, but the Monster just woke up from her nap and will not let me use the computer without incessant demands for the Baby Beluga video and a tour through You Tube. Hopefully I can get to it on the weekend.

As I was getting the binding done yesterday and snapping all the photos I realized that I want to add a few more tutorials - on mitered corners, labels, and yes, squaring up a quilt. Soon to come, a series on all the finishing touches for your quilts.