Mac & cheese and cherry cobbler

I served the first of my winter one-dish dinners last night, and I think it went well. I made a little too much plain mac & cheese - there were 19 people, so I made three 9 x 13 baking dishes, figuring each one would feed 6, not considering all the other stuff; the salad and the mac & cheese w/ ham. There was one completely untouched dish of plain mac & cheese at the end of the dinner, so into the freezer it went - divided it into 2; it'll be handy when kids come home from college. There was just about the right amount of the ham kind, though, and Al is still on winter break, so it'll probably all get eaten. [PS as of 8:44 p.m. Thursday the leftover plain mac has been devoured]

Actually, when I got home after the dinner, Al was at the house with a bunch of his friends, one of whom had parked right in the worst spot, the skinny part of the driveway, so it was kind of hard to unload my car. And all I wanted was to make a hot drink and veg in front of TV; I am getting a cold and have a sore throat. Instead I had a living room full of slightly drunk , loud, 19-year-olds ... they only hung around for about an hour, and they did eat some of the leftovers, although they didn't fall on them and polish them off as I was hoping. I got into my nightgown and a sweatshirt and fleece slippers (the kind of outfit my mom used to call her Mrs. Nosey get-up), made my hot toddy and washed the dishes. After the kids cleared out and I got the couch back, I used it to fall asleep during David Letterman.

The base greens for the salad were red leaf and romaine lettuce, with purple cabbage and grated carrot and a few leafs of spinach and parsley. The dressings were balsamic vinagrette, creamy curry, and ranch. There were peas, grated Mobay cheese, raisins, toasted almonds, cubes of cooked sweet potato, and marinated kidney and garbanzo beans to put on top.



I used this recipe from Cooks Illustrated for the cobbler, where you baked the biscuit topping separately.



It was so good, I had it for breakfast, with vanilla yogurt, today.