Fun with Food.

This morning I was feeling like giving breakfast a little more life. So instead of asking if the kids wanted oatmeal for breakfast, I asked them if they wanted rainbow oatmeal for breakfast. Of course that received a positive response. I gave the kids the choice of what color of the rainbow they wanted. Ella wanted red, but I persuaded her that pink would be better for her digestive system. And Alex wanted blue. So I did a little mommy magic, and voila, rainbow oatmeal.

Ella didn't touch hers because she wasn't feeling well, but Alex ate all of his. I've decided that I need to use food coloring in more food. That's what it's for, right? The next time I make pasta, you better believe it's going to be fun colored. Maybe bread too. Oooh, what about yogurt! So many fun ideas.

Ella has been begging me for weeks to make macaroni and cheese for dinner, and since I don't consider the boxed stuff to be dinner worthy, I went on the hunt for a good homemade recipe. I actually detest homemade mac 'n cheese. It's always oily and lumpy because the cheese separates, and it just looks and tastes gross. But I found me a recipe that sounded a bit different, so I gave it a try. I was tempted to color it too, but decided with all that dairy I ought to just try it plain the first time. Well, let me tell you, this mac 'n cheese was fantabulous. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com, and I thought I would share it with you.

Chuck's Favorite (and now ours) Mac and Cheese

Ingredients:

• 1 (8 ounce) package elbow macaroni
• 1 (8 ounce) package shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
• 1 (12 ounce) container small curd cottage cheese
• 1 (8 ounce) container sour cream
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup dry bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil, add pasta, and cook until done; drain.
2. In 9x13 inch baking dish, stir together macaroni, shredded Cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. In a small bowl, mix together bread crumbs and melted butter. Sprinkle topping over macaroni mixture.
3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until top is golden.

I left off the bread crumbs and just topped it with more cheese. It was creamy, rich, and I'm sure super fattening. But that's why it was soooo good. And that's also why there's no picture of it. We ate it too fast!

On a side note, literally, I added Twitter over in my side bar. Throughout the day there are always random things that I think about blogging about but I don't have enough to say to fill a blog post. So I figured I could Twitter it. We'll see how it goes.