What To Do With Extra Cheese and Jalapeños
What is a recipe that was very common for you to eat as a kid? For me it was, grilled cheese, broccoli, burgers, hot dogs, pizza, rice, pasta, and finally, Macaroni and Cheese. Not the really good stuff no, it was Kraft macaroni and cheese, the kind that was only good for one night and one night only. In adulthood, I love macaroni and cheese especially made right but I don’t crave it like I did when I was ten. Oh Sweet Tomatoes Macaroni and Cheese, you have my heart.
Thinking back to when I was a child, I would not eat any pasta with added ingredients. Unless it was more cheese or bread crumbs. Let's just say as an adult, taste buds have kicked up a notch or twelve.
Here is how you can change your kid-friendly macaroni and cheese into a game changer for your adult friends.
For ingredients you will need:
• Butter or Shortening for Macaroni Pan
• 8 cups of water
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 3 teaspoons of salt
• 1 pound of Farfalle bow tie pasta
• 1 garlic clove, cut in two
• 2 tablespoons of coarsely chopped chipotle peppers • 4 tablespoons of butter
• 4 tablespoons of flour
• 4 cups of whole milk
• 1 cup grated sharp white cheddar cheese
Our Ratings
This recipe was within our means financially but not health wise. The type of ingredients of course are not the typical we would shop for. We try not to have white carbohydrates or excessive amounts of dairy. However, it has been a rough couple of weeks with Shayne in school and me in quarantine. I will just use these carbohydrates for a long strength training day. We all know that carbs make everything all better. Actually, I need to start using the
saying, “For the love of carbs.” Thank you Alexa PenaVega for that one.
My Rating: 9/10 for sure. I am sucker for pasta, cheese, and anything spicy. However, I do feel like there could have been more cheese added. Of course, I didn’t want to mess with Sookie’s recipe. I think the main point was to really have the spice of the noodles compared to cheesiness. The ingredients were not hard to retrieve and the steps were not difficult to follow. The only suggestion I have is to blend the jalapeño peppers and chipotle peppers in a chopper. Using a standard size blender just requires you to dig down to get the most you can get from the peppers. Also don’t touch your face. IT BURNS. I had to stop midway and clean my face because I touched my cheeks. UGH. Either way, 9/10 for taste and making this recipe.
Shayne’s Rating: 8/10. He says you can’t beat Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. For cheesiness at least. He thinks it should be more cheesy. I do understand especially when you are used to stove top box Mac and Cheese compared to baked macaroni and cheese. His reaction to spiciness was legitimately, “Wow. I can literally taste the jalapeño.” He coughed a bit after he took a bite too. A lot of kick for pasta.
Our Financials
As always, I shopped at Walmart for my groceries below is the cost of the items for this recipe:
• Water- from the tap, don’t judge me, I live in Florida and I can drink from the tap.
• Olive oil- already had the oil so free!
• Salt- already had the salt, so free!
• Jalapeno Peppers- $0.12
• Farfalle bow tie pasta- already had gluten free penne given, so free! Just substituted the pasta. I feel like with this recipe, you can use any pasta that is made to be short like farfalle, gnocchi, penne, ravioli even. Just not spaghetti, linguine, angel hair type of pasta.
• Garlic Cloves- already had the cloves, so free!
• Chipotle peppers- $1.10
• Butter-already had the butter, so free!
• Flour-already had the flour, so free!
• Whole Milk- $2.74
• Grated Sharp White Cheddar Cheese-$1.98
The ingredients cost for us to make this recipe was $5.94.
We had a lot of the ingredients already and the only reason why it even cost that much was because we don’t keep dairy on hand. If you have a lot of the ingredients then it makes the ingredient costs super low. This recipe also is turned into leftovers so it is another lunch or dinner for yourselves.
Those Millennial Cash Back Earnings
From 2020-2023, the amount of applications I have gained on my phone has quadrupled. However, during this Gilmore cooking phase of mine, I got my four favorites locked and loaded.
Unfortunately, I did not earn any money from Ibotta. For this recipe, and for majority of the recipes. There is not a lot of fresh groceries that were on Ibotta. There was also
not a lot of generic dairy products, and Walmart did not have the certain brands we were looking for to buy.
Fetch Rewards, one of my favorite applications, I earned 50 points but because of other ingredients we bought for other recipes. A victory is a victory for this application. More points, get you more points for gift cards of your selection. Using those gift cards for furnishing my future home. I got multiple goals for using these applications and that helps.
For walking into Walmart, I got 10 kicks for just walking in to the store. Shopkick typically does not have the products I shop for, I earn kicks by walking to the store. Though, there is an option to scan promoted items to earn more kicks. An option I don’t utilize, however this will help you later!
Finally, Coinout earned me three cents for scanning in the receipt. Coinout definitely is an application where you have to do subscriptions to earn a significant amount of money back. If you are not pressed to earn money, then this application works very well.
Outcomes and Recommendations
This recipe definitely is a money saver because a. The ingredient cost is low. B. The recipe can be left over another meal or two. Shayne and I were able to keep the macaroni and cheese in the fridge for four days which served as 3 meals for him and 3 meals for me. We tend to split food evenly. C. I was able to still earn money on cash back applications.
This recipe would amazing for a dinner for two or an adult party or even a Super Bowl party, with tons of alcohol. I honestly recommend a silver tequila to go with the hot chipotle and jalapeño peppers.
In addition, I also made this jalapeño macaroni and cheese for my housewarming party in Colorado and it was a huge success. Granted some of my friends were absolute pansies and couldn't handle the spice, however this macaroni and cheese was consumed within two days. Let me tell you, baked macaroni and cheese with Jalapeños and chipotle sauce is an adult hit at a party.