Case of the Mondays? (Cajun Mac N Cheese)

Whoops! Forgot to hit post yesterday! Here is my post that was meant for yesterday!!

Typically Mondays are my least favorite day of the week, but to be honest with you today was pretty great.  At work a substitute was in for the main teacher I work with and I felt like a rockstar getting to take charge in the classroom.  My other classes were fun and interesting, my boring periods went by quickly.

J had some appointments today, but one of those was canceled so we were able to workout together which is a rarity now that he's back at work.  No one else was in our complex's tiny gym so we were able to talk and not annoy anyone else working out.  Fantastic, even though it was a tough workout!

I needed a tough workout however to workout the nerves I'm starting to get for my interview tomorrow.  Yes, you read that right! I have an interview for a teaching position tomorrow!  It may only be a long term substitute position, but it could be a step in the right direction for my teaching career.  While we worked out I went through a list of possible interview questions and answered them in my head to prepare myself for tomorrow.  Excited and nervous, but hopefully it goes well!

Something else that helps out my nerves is cooking.  Tonight I'm trying out a new recipe to share with all of you later on this week (hopefully this week isn't as hectic as last week).  But to tide you over here is a recipe that I tried last week and tweaked it to our preferences.

I recently got Food Network's March issue, "The Chocolate Issue" and everything looks pretty darn good, but I tried one of the few non-chocolate recipes: Cajun Mac N' Cheese.  Why did I want to try this?  Purely for the fact that the nutritional value was overwhelming. I"m sorry but 794 calories per serving...whhhhattt? And all the fat, but all that protein?  I adapted this recipe to try to make it healthier:

Cajun Mac N Cheese (adapted from Food Network Magazine)

• Kosher salt
• 1 box wagon-wheel pasta (Ours was a 1lb box)
• 1 package ground turkey (ours was a little over a pound)
• 2 bunches scallions, thinly sliced
• 1 green pepper chopped
• 1 tablespoon Cajun spice blend
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1.5 cups whole milk
• 8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese (we bought ours already shredded)

You can pop over to the link above to get the cooking directions (mostly because I'm too lazy to type them up for you today when they are right there on the website!).

The main difference between their recipe and what I did was that I used more pasta, turkey instead of sausage, no olive oil and slightly less whole milk and mine yielded WAY more than 4 servings.  I would definitely say this recipe yields at least 8 servings.  I had a bowl and a half, J had 2 full bowls and we STILL managed to fill two tupperware containers full of this mac and cheese.  The only other thing that I would change about this recipe is taking out the flour and taste testing the whole thing before adding it because I felt like the pasta had an after taste of flour, which was kind of gross.  Other than that I would definitely make this meal again but split it in half and freeze the other part for a future meal.

Thats it for today!  Back to preparing for my interview!