Baked Macaroni and Cheese

I was raised on homemade macaroni and cheese. It’s so delicious. My recipe has a breadcrumb topping and tomato slices. Cheese is almost always wrapped in plastic, so I didn’t know what to do about the macaroni and cheese thing for a while. But I finally figured it out. I found this Cowgirl Creamery cheese, wrapped in paper, called Wagon Wheel at the farmer’s market. It’s kind of like cheddar, but it’s really creamy. It’s perfect for the macaroni and cheese. Here are the ingredients I used:

2 cups elbow noodles (The box has a little plastic window. It’s the option with the least plastic on it.)
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
3 cups shredded cheese
2 1/4 cups milk
pepper to taste (I ended up using ground white pepper, not the black pepper in the picture. Yes, that is a plastic pepper grinder. I don’t know where my mum buys peppercorns, but she just refills the grinder instead of throwing it out after one use.)
1 tomato
some bread

Boil a pot of water. Add the noodles.

Cook for 7-9 minutes, then drain.

While the noodles are cooking make the breadcrumbs. Take some bread (depends on how many breadcrumbs you want) and cut it into cubes. Put it in the food processor. I used a hunk of stale bread that my mum had made on the weekend.

Process until it looks like this:

Don’t forget to slice the tomato.

Next, grate the cheese.

Now you’re ready to make the cheese sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

Add the flour and whisk for one minute.

Add the milk all at once. Cook until thickened. The length of time this takes will depend on the fat content of the milk you use. Milk with a higher fat content will thicken faster.