Folks, we are talking RICH food here. If you don’t want to buy Beecher’s cookbook, you can reference the recipe from the Seattle PI. The cookbook is actually quite good, so it’s worth the $30. (Less if you buy it in the kit)

Beecher’s Flagship and Just Jack cheeses are ok on their own, but like many rindless American cheeses, they just don’t have the right flavors for me to crave them on their own. They are, however, fantastic for cooking. The ‘WORLD’S BEST’ MAC AND CHEESE recipe is actually two recipes: the mac and cheese, and the cheese sauce that is used for the mac and cheese. The cheese sauce was actually better by itself than with the mac, but this could be because I completely missed the note at the bottom of the PI page: “A single batch of sauce makes enough for a double recipe of macaroni and cheese.” So yeah, this recipe is already EXTREMELY cheesy, and I accidentally doubled the cheese. This was a mistake.

But the cheese sauce I will TOTALLY use again. It’d be a strong base for a cheese fondue, or a great topping to poached eggs for Sunday brunch. There’s also a recipe for Mariachi Mac and Cheese, which includes spicy peppers and veggies — sounds a little more my style.

Tessa at Beecher’s Pike Place Market store was extremely helpful. She told me they didn’t sell the kits in the store any longer, but she’d see what she could do. She came back a few minutes later with stickers and pasta, and reconstructed a kit before my very eyes. Tessa even checked to see if buying each ingredient separately would save money, which it didn’t. You actually save money by buying the $50 kit, since the cook book is so expensive. She even threw in an extra pack of pasta! I only used one package, wanting to be true to the kit, but I should have used both since the kit makes twice as much sauce as you need for one packet. C’est la vie.

In other news, here’s the promised picture of Hoss’ Landjäger hanger that I mentioned last post.

Apologies for the crappy cell phone picture… He decided to use a tie rack instead of custom building a hanger. This hangs right over his desk, which would never work for me since the sausage would be eaten well before coming of age. Please do not that sentence out of context when quoting this blog.

-Phil