Homemade Macaroni & Cheese

I had wanted to make some homemade mac & cheese for quite awhile - it was something I'd never done, and I had a hunk of gruyere to use. So, I looked around for a recipe & the best (maybe only?) one I found was in my handy-dandy Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

First, I had to make a cheese sauce. This was basically a white sauce with some cheese mixed in - but I'd never made a white sauce before either. I kept waiting for it to boil, as the book said it would, but it never happened. So I think I ended up thickening it too much, b/c I kept stirring for far too long. I made the sauce in advance & when I looked at it the next day, it was a solid.

Hmmmm.... not going too well so far. Well, I added some more milk, and pushed onward. And promptly made too much pasta, because in my head I was supposed to make one pound of elbow macaroni. The book actually says 1/2 pound, but I trusted my memory instead. Not good.

I finally finished making this on the day that I had HVAC contractors in to give me some estimates. It smelled amazing, and I was very excited. It tasted ... bland. The pasta was too mushy (maybe I shouldn't have let it sit overnight in the sauce?) and we both had to add a lot of pepper, and it wasn't particularly cheesy. Hmmm. Fail.

I will try to make it again, but: 1) will make correct amount of pasta; 2) won't let sauce get so thick; 3) will add fewer breadcrumbs to top, more cheese; 4) will add more spices to sauce; and 5) will actually make the whole thing at once, rather than getting lazy after 30 minutes and deciding we can have it the next night for dinner.