2 cups macaroni
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon dry mustard
3 cups milk
1/4 small onion, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 egg, beaten
3 cups cheddar, shredded
salt and pepper
water

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the macaroni, cooking until just tender. Drain.
3. Meanwhile, melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Whisk in flour and mustard and continue to whisk until smooth.
4. Add the milk, onion and bay leaf to the butter and flour and simmer until onion is tender, about 10 minutes. Remove the bay leaf.
5. Remove the milk mixture from the heat and stir in the egg and 3/4 of the cheese.
6. Season the cheese sauce to taste with salt and pepper and stir in the macaroni.
7. Transfer the macaroni and cheese to a casserole dish and top with the remaining cheese.
8. Bake until cheese has melted and starts to crisp, about 25-30 minutes.

Makes 4 servings

2 cups macaroni
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups cheddar, shredded
salt and pepper
water

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the macaroni, cooking until just tender. Drain.
2. Meanwhile, melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Whisk in flour and mustard and continue to whisk until smooth.
3. Add the milk to the sauce pan and simmer until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.
4. Remove the milk mixture from the heat and stir in the egg and 3/4 of the cheese. Season to taste with salt.
5. Stir macaroni into the cheese sauce and top with freshly grated black pepper to serve.

Makes 4 servings

4 hot dog buns
4 wieners
4 tablespoons ketchup

1. Preheat grill.
2. Grill wieners until outside skin is blistered to your preference.
3. Remove the wieners from the grill and place into the hot dog buns.
4. Top with ketchup to serve.

Makes 4 servings

It's way too hot to be cooking. Thankfully I live in Canada where we only have a month or two of actual summer, but these next 2 months of heating up the stove in the already hot kitchen is not going to make me very happy. I made Hot Dogs on the barbecue and had to keep throwing towels on the ground so I wouldn't burn my feet. I thought that the Franks and Beans night would've been enough hot dog fun, but I guess I was wrong. I'm not going to lie, I'm starting to get desperate. When I look in the freezer and I see a wiener, I'm going to cook it. Nothing really special to report here, I didn't fancy them up and they tasted just like hot dogs with ketchup. It's a tried and true recipe, you might say.

For side dishes I made a duo (actually, trio) of macaroni and cheese dishes. Here in Canada it's quite common to mix ketchup with everything and put wieners in your macaroni and cheese. I can't say that I'm above that, but I'm sure there are better macaroni recipes out there that I'm unaware of. The Creamed Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese was the best of the three, though this is likely because it was the only one I ate as it was hot, leaving the other 2 to be reheated come dinner time. That's one thing that has always disappointed me about macaroni and cheese - no matter how awesomely delicious it is the first go around, the leftovers always pale in comparison to the original product. The leftovers are dry and pasty and altogether not good tasting.

The second macaroni and cheese dish was Baked Macaroni and Cheese. I thought the sauce was originally kind of runny after adding 2 cups of milk, but I really wish that I'd added another because all of the sauce had basically dissipated by the time I actually got around to eating it. It was still somewhat edible, but the single addition of that milk would've made this dish a whole lot better.

The third and final macaroni and cheese dish was basically refried macaroni and cheese, where I tried to rehydrate the baked macaroni and cheese by adding it to a pan of hot butter. This failed miserably and since the "recipe" is just the baked macaroni and cheese one with the addition of it then being added to a pan of hot butter, I figure I'll just omit it from the database.