I adopted this recipe from one I found in Family Circle’s January 2009 issue. I only made a few modifications to suit our tastes and it came out wonderfully, so per usual I’m going to post the recipe to share with you all. Just a warning, this recipe as prepared has about 500 in a not terribly humongous serving. So if you are counting your calories make sure you do this one on a night when you have the room for that size meal. We served it with some slices of French Baguette – we should have served it with a salad, but we were feeling lazy and pretended not to notice. I don’t have any pictures of this one yet because it was so delicious that the entire thing got eaten before I remembered to grab my camera. But we’ll probably make it again in a month or two and if I remember I’ll grab some pictures then. Anyhow, recipe…

Makes: 4 servings | Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 7 minutes | Microwave Time: 3 minutes at 50% power

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces of pasta of your choice (you could save 100 calories per serving by reducing this to 4 ounces)
• 4 ounces Sharp Cheddar Cheese
• 4 ounces of Trader Joe’s Quattro Formagio shredded cheese (parmesan, provolone, asiago and fontina cheeses – I love this blend but you could try any good cheese blend)
• 1/4 teaspoon McCormick’s Mesquite Marinade seasoning packet
• 1/2 teaspoon McCormick’s Smoked Paprika
• 3/4 teaspoon McCormick’s Smoked Sweet Pepper seasoning
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup of milk
• 3 slices of bacon, crisply fried and broken into pieces

Directions:

1. Cook macaroni in a large pot of slightly salted water according to package directions. Drain and place pasta into square baking dish.
2. Mix in the shredded cheeses, mesquite flavoring, paprika and sweet pepper seasoning blend. Stir until cheese melts, adding milk for desired creaminess.
3. Sprinkle bacon on top. Cover and vent the corners of the baking dish. Microwave for 3 minutes at 50% power. Serve warm.

The result is a cheesy, sweet BBQ style macaroni and cheese that smells fabulous and couldn’t be easier to make. We’re planning to use the rest of our mesquite marinade packet to make hamburgers on Wednesday and MM and I finished the leftover macaroni and cheese for lunch today. Next time I will plan to make a big salad to serve alongside this and probably reduce the pasta in the dish by half, saving us each 100 calories.