Macaroni and FAIL

Every now and again I get a little big for my britches. Okay, maybe it's more than every now and again. Pride seems to be my favorite sin, and it sets me up for some embarrassing failures. The good thing about embarrassing failure is that it's usually pretty entertaining for the bystander. Anything for a laugh, right? This is a story of one such failure.

I have no training in the kitchen. I'm just a housewife with a hobby. After a few successes though, I wander into the delusion that I'm the next Julia Child. A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend about macaroni and cheese. We had started some for lunch and I was going on about how much better it is if you make the box stuff with half a stick of butter rather than the two tablespoons of margarine the box calls for. (By the way, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that's better with margarine than with butter, even if the recipe calls for margarine. Just a preference of mine) When the pasta was draining in the sink I melted the butter in the hot pan. At this point I got distracted by my own apparent genius started "instructing" my poor friend on proper pasta cooking or some other babbling. I don't remember exactly what. The butter got VERY hot. I then made a discovery: if you deep fry the cheese powder, it turns into crunchy salty little cheese bits that are apparently insoluble in milk. I screwed up a box of macaroni and cheese! I didn't even know you could do that. Some gourmet I am. My friend was very gracious and ate the strange burnt concoction, but hasn't quit busting me about it yet.

So there it is. I can improvise a bain-marie but I can't make mac-n-cheese. I wasted a perfectly good stick of butter too. Oh, well. Next time I'll just make sandwiches.