Dinner, Wine and a Tom Hanks Movie

The Husband has a work thing all weekend, so rather than being solo tonight, I invited two of my favorite girls over for a wine night.  Well...it started off being just a wine night, but it quickly evolved into wine and a Tom Hanks movie (we watched "The Terminal").  The plan was wine and finger foods, but I decided that I wanted to make something decadent and crazy-rich for dinner, so the final plan was set.

Our disgustingly hot Seattle summer is supposed to give way to a pretty fierce, autumn-like storm this weekend, and the meteorologists mistakenly told us that it was going to start today (which, beyond some rain this morning, did not).  Following the weather forecast, I wanted to make something that was comfort food-ish, so I toyed with the idea of some over-the-top macaroni and cheese.  When I Googled this, I found a lot of bacon mac and cheese (and you all know that I'm all about the bacon), but that just didn't seem special enough.  I browsed a few more links and found some recipes for lobster mac and cheese, which sounded perfect, except for one teensy little problem.

I don't like lobster.

You know what I love, love, love though?  Dungeness crab.  One quick swap, and the Dungeness crab macaroni and cheese was born.

I found this recipe for Lobster Bake Macaroni & Cheese, which came from the Tillamook site.  I did everything exactly the same, but for the one pound of lobster meat, I used two-six ounce tubs of Dungeness crab (oh yeah, and I used shell-shaped pasta rather than gnocchi because I couldn't find any).  I thought about going for three tubs, but Dungeness crab is pretty spendy, so I figured it would be just fine with one less tub (and it totally was).

This recipe was really easy to follow, and it was the very first time I made a bechamel sauce (which I would like to eat All The Time, Forever).  I felt VERY accomplished!  The problem with this recipe is that the timing for all the steps was kind of off.  Looking back, I really should've realized it the first time I read the recipe through, but I was trying to follow the instructions, so I did what it said.  The water for the pasta should've been started as I was making the bechamel sauce, and the oven doesn't need to start being preheated until the pasta is actually in the water (because otherwise, your house heats up for longer than necessary because the weathermen are liars who were wrong about the heat and humidity that actually happened today).

Anyway.  The end result of this was freaking amazing.  The three of us ate a really decent amount of the mac and cheese, and there's still a ton left, so I'll be eating Dungeness crab mac and cheese for several days to come (cue the violins, right?).  It smelled soooooooooo good, and looked fantastic!

Side note: if you're looking for a lot of step-by-step pics of my food, you're really not going to find it here.  I admire people who are able to take pics as they cook, but I don't have the attention span for it.  I need to focus on one task at a time, otherwise, I'm likely to burn the bechamel (I'm pretty sure that's my new favorite word).  What I do like, though, is extreme close-up pictures, so be prepared for lots of those!

Extra wine night tip:

Last night, while I was shopping for ingredients for the mac and cheese, I made a pass through the wine aisle, and came across this, Acronym White Wine Blend.  I bought it because I really liked the look of the label, and it ended up being completely delicious wine!  It was sweet and fruity, but not ridiculously sweet.  The bottle is empty now, ha!

Also, I just finished up a lovely helping of mac and cheese leftovers while writing this.