Totally did not intend for that to come out the way it did but it happened so this will be a short post.

I had some celery that was getting ready to go out the door. To give meaning to its existence, I started frying some in butter. I used about two stalks of celery and one tablespoon of butter. I didn’t have a plan in mind. Sometimes I just start cooking an ingredient and make up my mind as I go. Maybe I can call it Jazz Cooking.

The smell of the celery cooking inspired me as I was pecking through my cupboard. Shallots would go nicely with whatever was going to happen with the celery. At this point I was really getting hungry so I decided to boil some shell macaroni while the celery and shallots were softening. I didn’t think that a capful of vermouth would hurt at all. Along with the vermouth I added about two cloves of garlic. Garlic and shallots go good together. Especially on noodles, which were about done boiling.

I wanted something smooth and creamy so I added just enough milk to barely cover my ingredients, minus the shells. Whenever I have something creamy I always crave black pepper so I liberally shared my pepper grinder with the ’sauce’ that was now forming. If I had white pepper I think I would have used that for this meal instead of black.

Now it was just a simple matter of tossing the shells with the yummy sauce I had just cooked. I got about three servings out of this meal and it was worth it. Especially when I topped it with some asiago.

We had three items:

• Brazilian Baked Trout
• Macaroni and Cheese
• Creamy Celery

The recipe for the trout was taken from a cook book called Cooking With Wine from the editors of Sunset Magazine and Sunset Books. It was delicious. I’m sure the recipe called for skin-off, but I really enjoy cooking fish with skin and all.

Macaroni and Cheese was from the same. Just some shells tossed with cheese melted with Chablis. The best part was crumbling the Cheddar Beer Kettle Chips on top.

Creamy Celery was found in my Google Reader through my Amateur Gourmet feed. This consisted of thinly sliced celery softened in butter, tossed in flour, gradually added milk and then peppered and dashed with a bit of brandy as a substitute for sherry.

*update-got the pics figured out. Now I need to get the borders right.

–More details to come as soon as I figure out how to share the pictures.