Recipe: VEGAN Corny Veggie Mac 'n Cheese Cups!

VEGAN Corny Veggie Mac 'n Cheese Cups!

Happy & Healthy Cooking,

Fun-Da-Mentals Kitchen Skills

• brine :

  to soak in salted water.

• grate :

  to reduce food, like a carrot, to very small shreds or pieces of the same size by rubbing it on a tool with an outside surface that has holes with cutting edges (a grater).

• knife skills :

  Bear Claw (growl), Pinch, Plank, and Bridge (look out for trolls). 

• mince :

  to chop into teeny tiny pieces.

• mix :

  to thoroughly combine two or more ingredients until uniform in texture.

• scoop :

  to pick up an amount of food with a utensil to move it to a dish, pan, or container; utensils that can be used to scoop are spoons, dishers (small scoops used for cookie dough or melon balls), ice cream scoops, or large transfer scoops for bulk foods.

History of Mac 'n Cheese!

• Pasta and cheese recipes were first in 14th century Italian and medieval English cookbooks. A more modern recipe was found in a 1769 English housekeeping book. So how did macaroni and cheese become such a popular American dish? The prevailing story involves Thomas Jefferson, the third US president. Is it way too gouda to be true?! 
• The story says that Jefferson encountered macaroni and cheese when he traveled to Paris and northern Italy in the 1700s. He sketched the pasta and took detailed notes on how to make it. Then, in 1793, he sent an American ambassador all the way to Paris just to purchase a pasta machine so he could make his own macaroni. After a year of waiting, the device was finally brought back to Jefferson, and guess what?  It didn't work!
• But Jefferson did not give up. He started importing dried macaroni pasta and Parmesan cheese from Italy to serve at his dinner parties at his home in Virginia. In 1802, Jefferson served the very first macaroni and cheese dish at a state dinner, which he named "a pie called macaroni." It was considered an exotic and fancy meal. As far as we know, this was the first time anyone in North America ate mac 'n cheese.
• At that time, mac 'n cheese was considered a cuisine of the upper-class. However, Thomas Jefferson had slaves who cooked for him and his family. These slaves made this "fancy" dish their own, and mac 'n cheese became and remains a staple southern "soul food" dish. 
• About two decades (20 years) after Jefferson served the first cheese pasta dish at his dinner party, a recipe called "macaroni and cheese" was published in the 1824 cookbook called The Virginia Housewife. A distant cousin of Jefferson's, Mary Randolph, wrote it. 
• During the Great Depression in the USA in the 1930s, Kraft Foods created a boxed version: Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. As a result, mac' n cheese became affordable and accessible to all Americans, and it has been one of America's most popular comfort foods ever since.
• July 14 is "National Mac and Cheese Day!"

Let's Learn About Soul Food!

• Soul food is a cuisine developed by people from Africa who had been forcibly brought to the Southern United States to work as slaves for wealthy plantation owners. These enslaved people took some of the foods and recipes they cooked for their masters, like macaroni and cheese, and made them their own. They also took the provisions they were provided for their own meals, such as cornmeal, turnip, beet, and dandelion greens, and unwanted, leftover cuts of meat, and elevated them with seasoning and cooking methods learned in Africa.
• Soul food has African, European, and Native American influences. 
• Some of the other staple soul foods are black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes, fried catfish, and in Southern Louisiana, red beans and rice. 
• The expression "soul food" originated in the 1960s when the word "soul" was also used to describe African American music and culture.