Grown Up Shells and Cheese (Recipe)

Macaroni and cheese.  It's a popular comfort food with people throughout the world, and my family is no exception.  However, when it comes to making it, ours is a house divided.  I like it homemade, with a thick layer of crunchy breadcrumbs topping pasta that is coated in a sauce made with the best sharp cheddar I can get.  Wife finds this type of macaroni dry, dull and lifeless.  If you ask her, macaroni and cheese is best when it comes from a box, the only cheese to be found in the form of a radioactive orange powder that has to be resuscitated with milk and butter before you can eat it.  (I imagine my description does a good job of conveying where I stand on the stuff.)  For awhile we tried to find a recipe she liked--she wants to enjoy real mac and cheese, anyway--but to no avail.  Everything from Alton Brown's "Good Eats" version to our friend's fabulous family recipe was met with reactions ranging from "ick" to "meh."  

Caramelized Onion, Gorgonzola, Walnut, and Pear Pizza (Recipe)

I don't often attempt to recreate meals I've eaten at restaurants at home. Part of that is due to budgetary constraints; that is, most of my dining out these days is limited to breakfast dinners and pizza places, with a smattering of fast food joints both local and global. Simply put, I make better food at home than most of the things I leave the house to buy. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, the truly great food I've eaten at restaurants I have decided to leave at restaurants so that I'll have something to look forward to. Recently, though, I chose to make an exception on account of a special occasion. It was my seventh anniversary, and we hadn't really made any plans to celebrate. During the summer of 2005, it seemed terribly romantic to place our wedding so that it would fall in the middle of the twelve day stretch between Wife's birthday and my own, but while it's cute to tell people that the entire month of August is a party, it can be taxing when you begin budgeting and you realize that special occasions are happening faster than you can get paid. Add in an annual tradition of going to the fair and two children who are now at the age where they need copious amounts of school supplies, and something's got to give. So a night at a hotel (our favorite treat, even if we don't leave town,) or even a trip to the theater wasn't going to happen. [Full Disclosure: We do intend to go see "Snow White and the Huntsman" when it hits the dollar theater. But it's less dramatic if I admit I can just celebrate later. And besides, there is something special about acknowledging special days on the days themselves.] The only place our anniversary was allowed to exist, within the constraints of our budget, was in meal planning. Luckily, something I'd been meaning to investigate for the purpose of this blog--grilled pizza--happened to co-exist within the same parameters as something that qualified as a romantic memory--dinner at the Red Rock Brew Publt Lake. Last summer we went to visit our good friend Lotus (she who prompted all the vegetarian recipes I posted this summer,) and when Wife pooh-pooed all of the Asian restaurants that were suggested (to no one's surprise,) we ended up at a brew pub. In case you didn't know it, Salt Lake actually has a pretty strong brewing culture, despite government mandated handicaps. While I loved the chipotle barbecue salmon I ordered, and the rest of our party's food was tasty, the dish I attempted to recreate for my special day is what Wife ordered for that meal, a pizza containing caramelized, walnuts, Gorgonzola cheese, and juicy pears.