Macaroni and cheese

With cold London broil. 

These packages are noticed in large boxes by what would be a discount end of an import aisle. The area has oddly mixed norteamericano influences on labeled brands manufactured in Mexico, apparently, while marketed back in the United States, if not produced here, to satisfy a mostly if not entirely immigrant target market. Coca Cola for example made with cane sugar and different than what we've become accustomed, and sold here in the U.S. in very small historic size bottles at a premium price of imported products. It says on this package in English made from durum wheat and that is a crop of northern United States and of Canada, cold climate with short summers, not of Central America. This very well could be produced here. They caught my eye because they looked like Ramen noodle packages and they're sold for 35¢. I think they are cute so I bought 3. 

A whole dollar worth.

"Hey, look at this." I half expected the woman to ignore me. Who speaks to strangers at the grocery like this, with an imperative no less?  Later I would speak to another woman gathering green beans, she gave me the idea to buy them, they look good. Her head was wrapped tightly in a scarf and she wore long gray heavy for summer unrevealing frumpy clothing. She smiled and responded mildly and her husband, I presume, moved directly straight in from near distance, like an arrow, ping, disrupting our incipient harmless confab. "DO NOT SPEAK TO MAN" the tacit command. Religious proscription no doubt.

What a fuck'n bummer. 

But this woman in dairy, a random black woman who happened to be there, the only person around, joined me in discussion of the remarkable discount on cheese. Both of us could not understand it. Asiago. Most confusing. It's good to look at these discounts. Their reasoning is odd. They must move things. Nothing can linger. It's all customer driven. Customers rejected this cheese for some reason, usually bad reasoning. Asiago. Reason alone to at least try it. I have plenty of cheese already, but c'mon, who can resist this weird serendipitous discount? Carpe caseum, seize the cheese. I bought three. What the heck. After all that friendly cheerful cheese-related discussion the random woman chose not to buy any.

What a minor bummer. 

Ready and waiting, the last thing added to sauce when it's finished off the heat.

Sauce: 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour.

Salt and pepper, of course, goes without saying, but there I just said it so apparently it does not go without saying. 

When you see this it looks like magic. It does. My buds are amazed seeing it. "Thank you for showing that," I've been told repeatedly like I'm some sort of magical chef or something. I'm not.  

Sometimes a sauce like this is done in two stages whisked off the heat. First an alcohol of some sort, to sludge, reduced a few seconds. 

Boiled down until a new sludge is formed and the remaining liquid whatever it is, whisked in to full boiling. It goes very fast and changes forms stunningly at hand while whisking, it looks a hopeless mess then looks too thin to use then as it reaches boiling temperature thickens right there in seconds. With cheese flavoring and thickening further, clogging it up off the heat. 

Nutmeg the last thing scraped on after plating, or last thing scraped into the sauce.