

I didn’t moan, but I used to feel it wasn’t fair.“ Some of the maids used to moan like mad and say they never got enough to eat.

McIlroy’s fault, she wasn’t allowed to give us more. She says, “What we had at night were the left- overs of the day before or a macaroni cheese or welsh rarebit. Margaret describes how some of the households went through vast amounts of cream and meat and all sorts of good ingredients to make elaborate 12-course meals for their every dinner upstairs, while downstairs, the servants were fed far less scrumptious meals. In pre-war times in the wealthy households that she worked in, mac and cheese was not held in high regard at all. And while reading the book, I noticed that my favorite dish was treated rather poorly.
STORE BOUGHT GLUTEN FREE MAC N CHEESE FULL
The book is full of rich little nuggets like above that make this book a riot to read (but also full of human insight). Not that I could have hoped to have a dish that was perfection at Lady Gibbons’ because even the best cook in the world can’t make a dish out of poor ingredients.” I soon realized when a dish wasn’t perfection. The more experienced I got the more I worried.
STORE BOUGHT GLUTEN FREE MAC N CHEESE HOW TO
It’s only when you know how to cook that it worries you when it goes wrong, because when you don’t know, you don’t know it’s gone wrong. Or on cooking, “It’s a funny thing, but the less cooking you know how to do, the more competent you feel.


You’ve only got to gaze into their eyes, and sound as though you mean what you say. Even a man with a face like the back of a bus, if you tell him he doesn’t look too bad, believes you. Plus, Margaret has a witty and insightful writing style that makes this book so much fun!įor example, when talking about trying to find a husband, “Men are very susceptible to flattery. It must have been eye opening at the time for the upper class to see themselves through the perspective of one of the maids. Her book is supposed to have inspired both Upstairs, Downstairs, as well as Downton Abbey. Have you heard of it before? Margaret was born in 1907, and worked as a kitchen maid and later as a cook, and this book is her autobiography. I finally took the plunge, and it came out wonderful!ĭid you know that macaroni and cheese was a popular penny-pinching dish for a long time? I’ve read several references to it as such in old cookbooks – one of which was one that helped the poorest city folks know how to cook frugally for their families.īut I was very amused by the references to mac and cheese in the book, Below Stairs, by Margaret Powell (Amazon links are affiliate). I had been tossing around the idea of making a goat cheddar mac and cheese recipe, but I was a little worried about how it would turn out. The problem is that some of us don’t do well with cow dairy, and half the family is gluten-free. Growing up my mom would make big dishes of oven-baked mac and cheese. And my favorite by far was mac and cheese. But sometimes it’s also fun to share nourishing versions of my favorite childhood dishes. I’m glad that my children eat a variety of nourishing foods, including ones that I wouldn’t have ever eaten as a child ¬– foods like caviar and seaweed and dark greens. Yum! This dish is gluten-free and cow dairy-free, but still has that lovely creamy flavor and perfect noodles that I loved as a child. Gluten-free noodles topped with an ultra creamy and mild cheese sauce that is free of any cow dairy, but rich and creamy with goat cheddar and chicken broth.
