A Dancing With the Stars Dinner Party!

This morning, despite a bad night’s sleep, I awoke early, packaged some shipments, cleaned up and put away the dishes and went for a wonderful morning run. I’m able to run longer and longer distances and am actually beginning to envision running 2.5 to five miles a day again

Then I finished up my daily habits and then … it was off to the market for goodies for tonight’s dinner!

A dear friend, Carol, is coming by to watch the premier episode of Dancing With the Stars tonight. Carol is actually my enabler. She got me hooked on the show three or four seasons back. While I haven’t been watching the past two seasons (I no longer wanted that time commitment hanging over me), I confess to catching clips of favorites (I had to see how Susan Lucci did) on Youtube.

This year’s lineup though, with Denise Richards, Belinda Carlisle, Steve Wozniak sounds ridiculously fun (Jewel and Nancy O’Dell have already had to drop out owing to injuries).

Carol’s special request was macaroni and cheese – she loves mine.

I, however, always the perfectionist, haven’t been quite happy with it.

Years ago I set out to replicate Whole Foods prepared mac’n cheese, which was made with ziti in a cheesy sauce with plenty of cayenne.

I did manage to produce an excellent facsimile, however my tastes in mac’n cheese have changed. I wanted to return to more the traditional elbow macaroni version, yet with a kick.

I think that tonight’s mac’n cheese is going to be perfect.

After all, I googled “best macaroni and cheese recipe ever.”

Smitten Kitchen’s take on Martha Stewart’s recipe came up at the top.

Of course, I had to add my own touches (I used three cheeses instead of two, added a smidgeon of Trader Joe’s mustard aioli and used pink salt. I also stirred in shredded cheddar to the hot bread crumbs and butter!). Take a look and tell me what you think.

Did I mention the apple pie? Another google special. Ths is Grandma Ople’s recipe and in Internet speak has been deemed the “best apple pie recipe ever.”

Heck I am drooling.

Whatever. It was fun to make (I always use Alton Brown’s recipe for crust) and this is my first lattice crust. Too bad the recipe called for you to pour the caramel sauce OVER the lattice top; you can’t see how pretty it is!

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The macaroni and cheese was just awesome. Creamy and cheesy and OMG the best that I have ever made – bar none! The salad made a nice accompaniment – field greens with pine nuts and a soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey, ginger and sesame oil dressing. The apple pie? I cannot lie. It was the absolute best apple pie I have ever had, even beating out the former Annie’s Restaurant in Ardmore. The butter, flour and two sugar syrup that was poured over the granny smith apples … it was like an apple explosion. Get the recipe here.

A quick Dancing with the Stars review: Jewel’s husband, the rodeo guy is cute as a button but cannot move for the life of him. He’s so charming I hope that he improves. Gilles Marini is toooo sexy for words and matched up nicely with Cheryl. Denise Richards doesn’t appear to have the chutzpah to match up with Maks. Holly Madison was a disaster – all that plastic in her body has affected her rhythm – yet the judges were curiously lenient with her. Lil Kim was a revelation – she can shake it!

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PPS: Rob, my sweetie, was understandably peeved that I made “the best apple pie that I have ever made in my life” – and didn’t save him a slice. What else to do but bake him his very own pie?

So I did.

Ever since I ruined his favorite quiche recipe by using some obscure “German cheese,” Rob has admonished me to stick with what works.

Did I listen?

Well I thought I did. The only thing that I did differently with my second try at Grandma Ople’s Apple Pie was to use standard supermarket granny smith apples. My first pie used small organic granny smiths.

The second pie was even more beautiful than the first. The larger granny smiths mounded high in the pie plate … it was hard to even cover them with the lattice crust. Everything was perfect – or so I thought.

45 minutes into the baking, the apples still seemed raw. I left it in an additional 15 minutes and 30 minutes after that with the oven off.

Would you believe that using standard granny smith apples as opposed to organic ruined my pie??

I threw it out.

Rob will get his favorite – strawberry rhubarb – just as soon as rhubarb is in season again!