With friends like these who needs enemies?

Yes, Owl City. I thank you for your adorable quote. That album was our soundtrack for the evening. It's good happy music, I strongly recommend it.

Happy music takes the edge off the endearing fact that this is where you store your cooking utensils:

We love you, pseudo kitchen.

We compromised this week; Jen chose a recipe and I chose a recipe.

I am only writing about my recipe today because my computer's a brat and I only have minimal pictures.

Our 3 lovely third party chefs had to visit the eye doctor (yeah, I only got tentative permission to post their names; work in progress. Until then, you will deal with my metaphors, y'hear?). I started the cauliflower casserole.

..this is what I did to the original recipe:

Ingredients:

1 large head of cauliflower cut into flourets. Flowerets? Florets? What do I know..

1 eggplant, chopped up with M's magical chopping machine

***Sauce***

4 tablespoons (2 ounces) butter

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 cups milk

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

6 ounces of super expensive marble cheese, rrg.

***Topping***

1 cup soft fresh bread crumbs

whatever seasoning I ended up using; I think "none"

1 to 2 tablespoons melted butter

bunch of cheese. No amount is too much, decidedly.

Preparation:

Boil cauliflower 6-8 minutes (I really didn't keep track)

Boil the eggplant, set both aside

Grease a 2-quart baking dish.

Heat oven to 350°.

In a medium saucepan, heat butter over medium heat. Add flour and stir until smooth and just bubbly. Add salt, pepper, and milk. Cook the sauce, stirring, until thickened and bubbly. Add the mustard and cheese and continue cooking, stirring, until cheese is melted.

Combine the cauliflower with sauce and spoon into the prepared baking dish.

Combine topping ingredients and sprinkle over the cauliflower mixture. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the casserole is bubbly and topping is browned.

Serves 6.

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I completely screwed up the sauce, as I didn't let the butter melt properly. After some pristine advice from M, I started over, and promptly screwed it up again by adding the milk too fast. It eventually turned into sauce.

Then it turned into casserole! The recipe didn't ask to cover it with any cheese (let alone this much), but we decided that there's no such thing as too much cheese.

Pseudo kitchen is also a dining room. I bet you didn't know that! Pseudo kitchen is magical.

Pseudo kitchen's stove didn't quite fit both dishes, but we MADE it fit, hence the browning of but one side.

A hit.

Dante was really excited @ the company, so he didn't eat much.

Eldon was the chairman of an over stimulation party, so I don't think he even tried it.

A hit with all 5 girls, though.

Miss B in particular.

After thirds, she scraped the casserole dish clean!

Ahh, success.

Or, as Eldon would say..

Gigantic enormous success.

The littluns also deserve a thanks for helping Jen with the messy business of unpacking. A special thanks to Miss S for vacuuming that terrible, terrible mess I made in the pseudo kitchen. <3

Now, if you'll excuse me, Eldon and I are going spider hunting with Miss O.

Don't mind Eldon's war paint (yes, it's marker).

Do mind his loose tooth! (bottom front! check it OUT!!)