Macaroni Bake and Cherry Pie

Here's a macaroni bake I conjured up for my daily lunch. This is what most Finns of my age grew up with! Good stuff for making in large quantities and then freezing for later use. Normally macaroni bake is quite simple, and this isn't much more complex, but I added bell peppers and blue cheese for extra taste and colour. If you want additional softness with bell peppers, you might lightly sauté them before adding them to the mix but it is by no means necessary. Also other stuff might suitable to the mix, such as corn, peas and tomatos. For spicing you might use black and white pepper, chilli, marjoram, garlic and paprika, for instance.

For this you need macaroni, mince meat, milk, eggs, some vegetables and cheese. Macaroni and mince should be about equal amounts. For 400 gr (14.1 oz) unboiled macaroni you need 7 dl (1.23 pints) milk and 3 eggs.
Boil macaronis and fry mince that while. Remember to fry the meat in small enough portions, so that it will actually fry and not boil. I mean this. If there's too much meat in the pan, the juice coming out of meat wont vaporize but makes an area of liquid on the bottom and the meat will boil in it. Depending on meat you are frying, it should cover only 1/3-1/4 of the bottom of the pan.
Slice the bell peppers in small dices, and break the blue cheese in small crumbs. Mix boiled macaroni, fried mince and bell pepper dices together and pour into an oven proof casserole. Whisk milk, spices, eggs and cheese crumbs together. Pour over macaroni mix and stir. Bake the casserole at 200c (Celsius) for an hour. In Finland, ketchup goes traditionally with this food.

This is my favourite berry pie. Cherries! Oh! Ah! Traditionally this kind of crust goes with blue berries but I find it very good with cherries too. The crust is simple to make (I found this recipe off a flour bag ages ago):

4 eggs
3 - 4 dl sugar (use more sugar for sour berries)
4 tsp vanilla sugar
6 dl wheat flour
3 tsp baking powder
300 gr butter (melted)
2 dl milk or juice

The recipe says to use 6 dl berries but I used 2 L cherries. Slice and take the stone off before you do anything else.

1. Beat eggs & sugar together.
2. Mix the dry stuffs
3. Add flour etc., butter and milk/juice. Stir until even.
4. Cover an oven sheet with parchment paper. Pour the dough over it and add the berries evenly.
5. Bake at 200c, for 25-35.