“Dang it! I just bought that cheese 2 weeks ago! How did it already get moldy? I had it in the fridge!”

Does this sound familiar? How about this:

“WTF? These chips are already stale? I hate fucking stale chips!” (Even when you bought them on the clearance rack)

Fret no more. We’ve got a great recipe to put those annoying stale and moldy leftovers to use. It’s called “Zesty” Baked Mac.

Prep Time: 15 min
Bake Time: 20 min
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

• 1 block of moldy cheese
• 1 1/2 cup stale chips
• Some kind of macaroni. Don’t be picky
• Splash of milk or soy milk (unflavored)

Preparation

OK, so you’re not sure whether you that moldy cheese is good for you. I did your homework for you and hard cheeses are safe if you cut the mold off. If you’ve got a strong immune system (like you’re from South America or some other diseasy place) and you feel like adding some extra “zesty” to the recipe, don’t cut the mold off. But I don’t condone this (even though I just dared you to do it).

1. Pre-heat oven to 350°
2. Prepare the pasta very al dente. Drain well. If you don’t know how to cook pasta, I’m sorry. While the pasta is cooking, continue to the following steps.
3. Shred your block of cheese. Be your own judge on how much. Use your whole block if you’ve got enough pasta
4. Put the stale chips in a bowl and crush them. I happen to have a meat mallet in my kitchen. Find something blunt and go to town. Avoid rusty hammers.
5. In a casserole dish or pie plate or something else shallow and bakeable, dump the drained pasta. Pour in the milk and then most of the cheese (you want a good layer of cheese on top, so don’t use all of it) and mix it up.
6. Once you’ve got it all nice and even, put the rest of the cheese on top in an even layer and then sprinkle the broken chips over the top.
7. Place in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the cheese is melty and a little brown on top.

Verdict

Sweet! (And by sweet, I mean totally awesome)

This dish came out great for me with Fontiago cheese from Trader Joe’s and those roasted red pepper chips. I also happened to use whole wheat pasta which is ordinarily pretty gross, but it seems baking it after boiling it helped. Also, it was surrounded by cheese, so that probably helped. The prep is super easy (unless you can’t cook pasta). Cleanup is a snap. It’s delicious, but too much cheese and stale chips may one day permanently clog your arteries, so beware.

I give it 4 toilet seats up! (Our rating system explained)

What do you get when you have a couple of Tupperware containers in the fridge with some roasted beet mix and corn-quinoa elbow macaroni?

OUR FIRST RECIPE!

We call it Macabeet Chickakale.
Preparation time: ~25 min
Difficulty: Medium

Here’s what we started with:

Leftovers:

• Roasted beet stuff (beets, tomatoes, spices)
• Corn-quinoa elbow pasta

Fresh ingredients:

• Kale
• Carrots (sliced)
• Green Onions (chopped into 1/4″ pieces, including the white part)
• Yellow onion (diced)
• Chicken breast

You can feel free to substitute any or all of the ingredients in this or any recipe on this site. While I know everyone should have roasted root veggie mix in their fridge, sometimes it’s not possible.

Preparation

1. Slice the carrots and the green onions and rip apart the kale into bite-sized chunks. Set aside.
2. Optional: If you’ve got a pretty thick piece of chicken, pound it flat first to speed cooking time. You can also cut it into chunks if you like. Doesn’t matter to me.
   Tip: lay the chicken between two pieces of saran wrap before you pound the crap out of it to save time on cleanup and to prevent the spread of nasties.
3. Get a saute pan going over medium heat and let it warm up. Get some butter or oil or both (I like to do half butter, half olive oil and medium-low heat so the butter don’t burn. Warning: this will increase your cooking time, but make it more delish.) going in the pan and add the chicken. Brown on both sides and then add the onion and some basil. Salt and pepper to taste.
4. Start another pan with high heat and add about a teaspoon of oil. Add the kale, green onions, and carrots and cook until the kale is just tender. (I like my veggies al dente, but you can cook them to whatever consistency you want.)
5. Back to the chicken pan, when the onions are translucent and the chicken is cooked through, add the beet mix (or whatever you substitute for it) and the macaroni and toss it up so that everything is well coated in that delicious onion/oil/butter stuff.
6. When the beet mix and macaroni is heated thoroughly, remove from heat and serve with the greens.

Verdict
Edible

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t make this again, but it was much more edible than some other things I’ve made in the past like Annie’s cheddar bunny pasta with cut up turkey dogs. This one’s at least got some nutrition and greens. Since it relies on some fresh ingredients which aren’t always available in a bachelor fridge, it may not be for everyone. The cleanup time also made it not worth it.

I give it 2 toilet seats up, mostly for the fresh greens. (Our rating system explained)