After a long summer of renovations on our home in Canada, and before signing on the dotted line for the sale of our dear old home, I had three of the grandkids to our mostly empty house for a sleepover. I wasn’t going to be with them long and wanted to prepare something memorable for their last dinner here. Turns out it was.
I contemplated for some time what to serve. Pizza had been on the menu the last few times they were here so I wanted to surprise them with something new. I settled on macaroni and cheese.
I thought that the rice pasta in the cupboard might work nicely. I had butter for the sauce, however no wheat flour (bad for grannies) so I used oat flour to thicken it instead. Didn’t have milk (not too good for grannies either) but ha! I did have almond milk. And I had a fairly large bag of cheese (real cheese). When I mixed the slightly boiled pasta with the sauce it looked pretty good, so I left it on the counter to cool. Unfortunately the cat found it up there. I think he only got a few mouths full before fleeing in terror as I descended upon him.
The dinner started well as I knew the grands’ favourite vegetable was those little crunchy cucumbers and I had a lot of them, which I had purchased along with the cheese, chocolate milk and chocolate chip cookies – all a part of my plan to surprise and spoil them.
The macaroni and cheese smelled good when it came out of the oven and I recall saying proudly “You’re just gonna love grannie’s mac and cheese!”
It held together nicely when I sliced it for each hungry child. Too nicely. The kids got mac bricks. Inedible mac bricks. There may have been a bit of misgiving but those brave three dug right in. And they did have to dig to break those bricks. I give them credit for each child took at least one bite before politely examining their silverware, cups, walls, cat….
The cookies and chocolate milk went down much better, as did the microwave popcorn I found in the pantry which we ate together in my bed – the last bed in the empty house – while we watched a thrilling episode of Dora the Explora. She would have been proud of my three. They didn’t survive the jungle like she did, but they conquered grandma’s last supper. We named it the three C’s: Cucumbers, Chocolate chip cookies and Chocolate milk. The best dinners, like some of the best memories, are served and preserved with laughter.