Chef Q

Due to my hectic schedule and sometimes me just being lazy, I don’t cook often… Now you may be thinking how do you eat then? Unfortunately lately ive been a slave to fast foods and when i want to fake it I warm up processed foods in the microwave. I know I have to do better but it’s just hard, and with me on the flipside of 30 it seems as if the junk in the food sticks to me more than it used to…

Sunday I decided I was going to finally prepare something to eat. For some reason I had been having a craving for Macaroni & Cheese and other than going to “The Chicken Box” soul food restaurant I havent had it often living down here. I REFUSE and ill say it again REFUSE to make that box mac knock off mess. So I decided to call the one person I trust in regards to cooking and recipes, MY MOM… So prior to calling her I just knew she had some grand ol super secretive recipe for making Mac & Cheese… NOOOOO all she says is look on the back of the box, that’s where i get my recipe from… DUH so are you telling me I deprived myself from home made mac & cheese unnecessarily and could have been had this ooohey ghooey cheesey delight. So after reading the directions I decided to make some modifications which included taking away the onions (I LOVE onions but not in MAC & Cheese), not using bread crumbs as topping and substituting regular milk for soy milk. I will be honest that last edit of milk gave it a different taste so ill be using whole milk next time… So as I am prepping to make it I consult another respected outlet TWITTER, to find out how people make their Mac & Cheese. One thing that stood out in regards to variations was the fact that some people used eggs instead of flour as a thickening agent… The recipe called for flour so that’s what I went with. I didn’t want to risk ruining my first time making it trying to be too daring… So i finally got everything together and it looked like how my mom makes hers so i was pretty confident it would be ok…

After letting it cook the allotted 30 minutes and letting it sit to cool, then came the big test HOW DOES IT TASTE… all it took was one bite and I was in heaven. I don’t know if it was more because it was the best i had ever had or i was just so excited that it turned out right. Interesting enough beyond the small amount of a taste, dinner was nowhere near done. And for the rest I had to wait til the next day to begin to prepare

Now I know people are like why couldn’t you prepare the entire meal in one night eat it and be done. Well the meat of my dinner was one of my favorites. Smoked Turkey Necks… Many people use them as a flavor adding agent for their greens but I enjoy them so much I can eat them as a main dish. I ended up having to wait to cook those the next day, because I was fixing them in my crock pot. *sidenote* for all my foodies and dinner makers PLEASE make sure you have a crock pot in your kitchen it is a lifesaver. I decided to slow cook my turkey necks while I was at work. The key to great turkey necks is making sure that you have just enough water in the pot so they don’t dry out but also not OVER-SEASONING (which is one of my biggest fears as a novice chef) With them being in cook mode while at work they had roughly 10 hours to cook and by the time I got home they were fall off the bone tasty.

The last part of the dish was a simple side of green beans that I added ONIONS too (see told you I loved them) But instead of just using the juice from the can I also took some of the juice from the smoke turkey necks to cook them in… talk about the best usage MAAAN it was so on point during the taste test…

Since it was a lot of food I decided to take some to a co-worker of mine, and talk about BIG HATER, the entire time she was eating she kept saying “so who made this for you or tell the girl who cooked this, good job” (as she licked her fingers and cleaned the plate) It was so funny hearing her say this because she swore up and down that I didn’t make it and I can’t cook… It’s always a great feeling proving people wrong

while everyone who reads this wont have the pleasure of tasting it I did take a photo of the leftovers to show you how good it looked. (the mac & cheese had just come out the fridge and is un-warmed)