"Aunt Martha's Ring of Plenty"

What do super-cool, rambunctious, non-loserish people do on Saturday nights?! They make weird recipes and serve them to their household so they can blog about it. No, really.

After a Bay Leaves failure earlier in the week, we are really hoping for a winner this time. The one I chose has a funny name and a dated presentation, but the ingredients aren't that weird.

The Recipe:

I didn't know Aunt Martha, but I'm sure she was a lovely woman. I like to imagine she had this obsession with enringing foods, and had many different ones including her "Ring of Delight," "Ring of Disappointment," and "Ring of Carbohydrates." She only would eat cheerios, donuts, and spaghettios (occasionally adding a gravy) and her home was decorated with tinseled hula hoops and wreaths. She was well loved, ol' Martha.

The Players:

Ok, so Tim and I agreed that CUTTING UP MACARONI into short pieces seemed cruel and like a huge waste of time. Maybe this too was part of Aunt Martha's ring obsession. Instead, we got ditalini which is kinda like pre-cut-up macaroni. I can't imagine how long that cutting would take, or how much of a crazy mess it would make. We vetoed that. The type of cheese to use is not specified, but I did manage to find another version of this recipe that called for american cheese.

Once the pasta was cooked, this recipe was pretty easy. Several of the recipes we've done have included instructions to just combine everything in a bowl. Unfortunately, that typically leads to a slimy looking bowl of vomit. Oh look, no way that's totally what we ended up with.

I greased my bundt pan and filled 'er up, placing it into a dish with water as the recipe stated. I had to refer to an alternate recipe again because this one doesn't even say how long to bake it (35 minutes). I probably let it cool for about 15 minutes, then it was time to pop this thang out.

So I guess I didn't grease the pan quite enough, but once I kinda pieced it back together, it looked almost like a complete ring. The suggested filling of the ring seemed to be flexible, so I decided to fill ours with roasted Brussels sprouts instead of creamed mushrooms. I thought that really completed the look. What a BYOOT!

And guess what?! It tasted good! It was a lot like baked mac n cheese, and had a delicious buttery flavor. The pimentos didn't really add much for me, but they weren't bad, and they added some color which made it look kinda Christmasy and festive. Using white cheese instead of orange might help even more. Tim was pleased that we had finally made something that wasn't just brownish and ugly. I mean, its still ugly... but with flair.

Other than the omission of several important details, we liked this recipe. It was promptly gobbled up, and we didn't have to throw any of it away! BAY LEAVES WIN!