Comforting Casserole

I haven't written in a bit as we have been frantically frazzled like chipmunks preparing for winter stuffing their little holes in tree trunks with nuts. Seriously though, we have been working to finish up more planks in the cave to age lots of 'Butternut' cheeses we have been making lately. The weather has been so incredibly brutal and dry this winter that each week it seems we have yet another cold front affronting us! So to evade monstrous cold hauling to the cave, we moved a slew of Butternuts before one hit. We moved 80 wheels in one day and stocked planks full. Back and forth, back and forth to the cheese house. I must say my biceps better be getting stronger!

In addition, my husband had been hauling logs out of the woods and sawing, chopping and splitting each day. It's been so cold that we have had to burn one extra woodstove to keep the house warm at night. You see we burn wood that we harvest ourselves from the land, in an outdoor wood boiler. Then we also have the back up woodstoves inside the house. While he has manned the outdoor boiler, I have essentially womaned the woodstoves...


After making cheese, moving cheese, doing firewood, one can barely get enough energy to make dinner. So I decided to just throw a few things together and arrive at a comforting casserole. The kind that finds you in the chair asleep ten minutes later. First I made some elbow pasta, then a roux (mixing butter and flour together in a paste and adding milk from the dairy until thickened), then chopped up some of our ham from the night before, a bit of spinach from the market and grated Butternut on top.............and voila!


Perhaps I should confess, asleep in five minutes.