Hot tamale train.

With Brad's birthday just passing, Christmas not too far behind us, and fun stuff looming in the future, we decided to stay in for Valentine's Day this year (our 11th together -- craziness!). That's not to say there was no celebrating -- it was just of the make-at-home nature. In honor of our long and spicy life together, I had a second go-round with pimento mac and cheese. This time, I assembled all the elements as I went along, rather than mixing my pre-made pimento cheese with pasta. I did a quick search and pulled up Rachael Ray's pimento mac and decided to go with that recipe. I tend to not use too many RR-specific recipes -- she always has sooo many ingredients -- but this one was pretty simple and ended up being easy. As per usual, I made one boo boo: in the two seconds it takes to read the instruction and turn back to the counter to follow through, I forgot to only put half the cheese in the sauce (half was supposed to go on top for baking). I started to stir and thought, huh... weird... why's it so thick? Duh. I added a dash more of milk, kept stirring, and it worked out just fine in the end. Since I wouldn't have the extra cheese crust on top, I added a few handfuls of breadcrumbs for good measure. Then under the broiler for crisping. The top crispy layer is my favorite.

This was much better than my previous attempt. I love the bite of pimentos that doesn't quite hurt burn like a jalapeno spicy. The sauce was plenty creamy. And, of course, the crispy top noodles were oh so tasty. My only mini complaint is that it still seems like it could be even cheesier -- cheesy tasting that is, not cheesy creamy, which it is plenty. I used Meijer cheese; a likely candidate for being the problem. I'd be very curious to get the recipe the Roadhouse uses. Either way, two thumbs up!

Aaaand... there was plenty left over for Brad to take for lunch today in his new birthday VERY MANLY lunch bag.

And what's a Valentine's Day celebration without a little chocolate? With random treats we had laying around, I threw together this VERY classy "WT VDay Dessert Smorgasbord."

Yes, that is totally frosting. From a can.

Hope everyone had a happy day. Lots of Pickles love to everyone!