"Small and focused, but resonates far into the night"

Only Ian McEwan could cobble together so many words with commas, and end up with such mellifluous truths!

From Ian McEwan's 1992 novel "Black Dogs"

"He was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as multiplicity, a near infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than any one could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions... each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of postwar reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling - all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?"

Sweet Potato Mac 'n' Cheese

So today we decided to undertake this strange variation on a classic family recipe. "We'll just make a small serving of it" we thought, "just to see what it's like". We were (are?) clearly delirious, since the words "small serving" to an Italian have absolutely zero context. Nevertheless, this delirium forced us onward, and we proceeded with the following recipe:

1. Finely chop an onion and caramelize the bits in a frying pan with a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, and stupid amounts of butter. Rosemary/sage/oregano can be added here too.

2. Meanwhile, skin and slice (thinly) two small sweet potatoes. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the slices till they are shmoushy. Do not plop the potatoes in the boiling water, or you will splash boiling water everyone, including your hands (as we learned). If you do splash burning water on your hands, curse till the air is blue, then run your hands under cold water.

3. Drain the potatoes but SAVE THE WATER! You will be needing to cook the pasta soon, and why waste all that sweet-potato-watery goodness?

4. Mash the potatoes and stir in the caramelized onions.

5. Boil the sweet potato water (with a little more water added) and dump (carefully!) your macaroni (about 300g) into the water.

**At this point we looked at the proportions of onion/potato/pasta we have just started to cook and realized there would be nothing small about this concoction. Sigh**

6. Make your cheese sauce - everyone has their own way of doing this, but here's the right way. Alternate three spoons of margarine with about 5 spoons of flour in a large pot on low heat, stirring continuously. Add milk, a little at a time while still stirring, to thin out the sauce. Then GRATE YOUR CHEESE-OF-CHOICE LIKE A CRAZY PERSON (thanks to our cousin for the advice) and add it to the sauce.

**Don't forget to check on your pasta! No one likes overcooked pasta. Make sure you are good and ambidextrous before embarking on this madness as now you need to be continuously stirring multiple things.**

**Also, at this point, you should preheat your oven to 350.**

7. Once everything has melted into a gooey-cheese-mess of yumminess, stir in the sweet-potato-and-onion mixture till its even.

8. Take the hot mess off the heat. Drain the macaroni and stir it into the cheese sauce. Cover the top in bread crumbs. Pop it in the oven until the cheese bubbles.
9. Consume immediately.

Ok, so this makes TWO CASSEROLE POTS worth of mac 'n' cheese. We cannot eat this much mac 'n' cheese. We will TURN INTO a pot of mac 'n' cheese. Does anyone know if you can freeze mac 'n' cheese?

Fail. (But not in taste - its SCRUMPTIOUS!)

Eli

PS - We used a 300g package of mild cheddar, and about 150g of Gouda. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.