One day in the not so distant past, I had a serious craving for non other than Adult Mac & Cheese. I knew what I wanted to put in my adult mac & cheese – chicken sausage and broccoli… By the end of my work day I was not sure if I would have enough energy to drive, go to the grocery store, get home and actually start making the mac & cheese. It had been a long day. But apparently my desire for this meal was strong enough to get me to Trader Joe’s and home with energy to still make dinner. I thought this could be a great recipe for the cookbook – and I am lucky enough to have awesome friends that have been doing recipe testing and tastings for me. While I was at work and on Twitter describing my upcoming dish, I had a lot of friends express interest in testing this recipe for me. It should have been a slam dunk for the cookbook!

But sometimes things don’t work out exactly as you want them too. I was off to a good start – I had roasted broccoli, grilled the chicken sausage and had my béchamel sauce going on the range:

The pasta was cooking and I had my baking dish ready to go. After my béchamel sauce was thickened, I added a little bit of dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Then I added in my grated cheddar cheese into the sauce and stirred until everything was smooth. As I was stirring, I started to notice that my sauce had thickened up a little more than normal. So, that about sums up what happened – I either didn’t add enough milk into my base sauce or I might have added a little too much cheese for the base that I had – basically the sauce was just a little off. I thought about adding more milk into the sauce once I had added the cheese – but I wasn’t sure if that would destroy the sauce and then I’d be left with pasta, chicken sausage and broccoli and no sauce. So I went with it, and it tasted really good – but it certainly was not perfect. I have to try the recipe again – but in the mean time we had “ok” Adult Mac & Cheese to eat for a couple of days. I didn’t mind it at all – but it wasn’t perfect.

I thought the end result was pretty good. I garnished with fresh chives, thyme and a little hot sauce:

I am hoping the next time I make this recipe I will get it right and will be able to write out the recipe for the Cookbook Project. But this just goes to show you the whole process, often it is a lot of trial and error – and sometimes you’re left with a lot of food even if it isn’t perfect!

Stay tuned for more stories from my Kitchen. Happy cooking!