I am, of course, talking about cheese. (That's what the song is about, right?) Cheese itself is not toxic unless you have a severe allergy, but it is definitely a food that I have over-indulged in on more than one occasion. And that's okay, it's just food, I have more important things to worry about.
Like Halloween.
I love Halloween. My biggest hobby is building costumes, of course I love pulling out all the stops for the biggest costume-based event of the year. I love seeing all of the crazy and creative ideas people pull together to be scary, pretty, funny, and all-around awesome. I love decorations and parties and events and, of course, fun food. Halloween also kicks off the "holiday season" with Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years in rapid succession behind it. The entire month of October is Halloween for me, so with today being the 8th of Halloween, I am posting a fun recipe for this spooky season.
So, fist off, I am aware that this recipe is incredibly gross-looking and childish. Yes, I made this recipe for me with no intention of sharing it. I am an overgrown child. And for anyone who doesn't know, I work in a medical laboratory, I see things every day that a lot of people can't stomach. I majored in Biology in college, my visceral disgust reaction is basically gone. So, when I see a recipe that is designed to get and "ick" reaction from a bunch of 9-year-olds, I'm all over it because, well, it's just fun.
Thus this Toxic Waste Mac and Cheese. Because I love to make my food fancy, I surrounded it with decorative scientific-looking bottles. Toxic waste is supposed to give you superpowers, right? Comic books wouldn't lie to me!
Don't let the appearance fool you, the only thing toxic about this dish is how much you want to eat all of it. When I saw this recipe online I couldn't resist. Not only does it look absolutely vile, the ingredients sounded right up my alley and pretty easy to make. When there is cheese, I say yes please! And look at that, we even get a decent amount of vegetables in there. I threw this together in about 30 minutes, so this is a very doable recipe for those who have, you know, actual children who want to eat gross-looking green goop. And even outside of how it looks, this recipe tastes really good. It sure beats boxed mac and cheese. I would describe the taste as a cross between spinach artichoke dip and broccoli cheddar soup. Creamy, gooey, cheesy, what's not to love? So, here's my original recipe:
Toxic Waste Mac and Cheese
Sprinkles of Kim:
-I used gnocchi instead of traditional noodles. Gnocchi are little potato-based dumplings you can generally find along with pasta in the grocery store. They have a lot of starch and cook up really sticky, so I thought they would make this recipe look even more like toxic goo. You can use any pasta depending on what look you want.
-frozen cauliflower works just fine for this, it would also work with broccoli or peas or zucchini, whatever vegetable floats your boat. Or just leave it out all together if you're not a fan.
-I wanted this to be a more substantial meal, so instead of melting butter at the beginning, I browned a pound of ground turkey and used the juices as the base for my sauce, then added the meat when I mixed everything in at the end. I thought the meat added a lot of flavor. I would definitely recommend doing this with the turkey, or pork or beef, whatever you have.
-I used a generic green gel food coloring. definitely use gel rather than liquid, it's stronger and really gets that fluorescent green color.
-I added a bunch of stuff to make the flavor to my taste. Taste your sauce and add what you think it needs, here's what I did:
-more black pepper
-paprika and an extra dash of cayenne
-lots of garlic powder (gotta keep vampires away)
-a big sprinkle of Parmesan cheese
I will probably have more Halloween-themed recipes this month because there's a thousand different ones that I can't wait to try. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go see if I gained super powers.
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