Kicking Kraft to the Curb!

Finally!  I finally found a macaroni and cheese recipe that my family happily eats.  With all of the processed foods we've ditched, we were still hanging tight to that highly recognizable blue boxed mac & cheese.  It was kind of sad really.  We make homemade cottage cheese, homemade yogurt, homemade bread, homemade cream of something soup, etc....but every month we still faithfully bought Kraft macaroni.  Not anymore!

Thanks to the Heavenly Homemaker, I found a simple recipe that is tasty.  Only a few ingredients--milk, whole wheat elbow noodles, diced up cheddar cheese, and salt and pepper (to taste).  Couldn't be simpler!

The secret?  Cook the noodles in milk.  I added a bit more milk to the original recipe after reading through the comments.  With Maggie and Epie giving us lots, this isn't a problem.  I used about 5 1/2 cups of milk for 4 cups of noodles.

The starch from the noodles mixes with the milk as it cooks and creates a wonderfully creamy sauce.  It took about 15 minutes for the noodles to get tender enough.  Make sure you stir really frequently, as it will burn easily.

Then you pull it off the heat and melt the cheese into it and season to taste. Wow!  Everyone loved it.  And it was much more filling than the Kraft version.  Real food being more filling?  Who'd have thunk?  :)

To keep with our family favorite, I pan fried some all-beef hot dogs as well.  Mac and cheese with hot dogs...a simple supper that was really good!

Forgot to take a picture while it was cooking, but here are leftovers ready for Bryan's lunchbox. Yummy!