6 word saturday

Macaroni Cheese is my favourite supper

Deprivation of a favourite food makes me appreciate it all the more on the rare occasions when I do make it.  For the last few years, cheese has been forbidden fruit for Jock (at least the doctor said to cut down on the cholesterol, so ever-literal Jock cut it out completely).

The deliciously strong Cathedral City Cheddar has always been difficult to find here – too strong for French palates – but a friend brought me some from England last week. If I’d suggested this for supper it would have been refused, so I decided to present a fait accompli,  and made my best-ever dish yesterday afternoon, while Jock was up at the hangar working on the carnival float.   I lined the dish with sliced tomatoes, chopped red and green peppers and a generous layer of crispy bacon lardons, before pouring on the cooked macaroni smothered in a richly cheesy Bechamel sauce, to my secret recipe, smothered the top with more cheese and browned it to a crust.

 

The result was a feast.  Jock didn’t complain and ate every scrap.

The farmers here are working flat out, and the roads are a constant to-ing and fro-ing of convoys of tractors and vast machines.  Silage time conincides with sowing the maize. For the first time round here they are sowing it under strips of plastic, which was offensive to my green beliefs, but I’ve been told it makes germination more certain, keeps the weeds and pests down and avoids the need for spraying. And I’d been hoping for strawberries! Perhaps the bees will have a better chance this year.  if they keep off the chemicals.  They’ll have to find the pollen in the hedgerows.