Bendy celery bake

(Direct for the TNSS kitchen!)

Serves 2 hungry people or maybe 4 not so hungry people with a salad.

Take:

3 stalks very bendy celery, about to crawl its way to the compost bucket
2-3 carrots, peeled (hopefully in slightly better condition than the celery)

Wash and chop into smallish pieces. Place in microwave safe dish, cover and nuke for about 3 minutes (please note, I bought my microwave in 1989 so yours is probably more powerful - please check during cooking as you want the carrots al dente not mush-like)

Turn your oven on to 200.

Meanwhile, boil a largish pot of water and cook 120g shell pasta until al dente.

At the same time, make a cheese sauce as follows:

Melt 2 Tbspn butter in a pot. Add 2 Tbspn flour and stir until thick. Add 1/2 cup milk. Stir until thick. Do this twice more (1 1/2 cups milk in total).

Add a pinch of curry powder, lots of ground pepper (or to taste) and turn off heat. Add 2 cups grated tasty cheese and stir until melted.

Combine pasta and celery/ carrot mix in greased oven dish/ casserole thingy.

Pour the cheese sauce over the top. Make sure it spreads to all the corners. Whack it a couple o f times just to make sure.

Sprinkle with dried breadcrumbs (if you have them - also try crunched up chips if you're so lucky as to have any spare) and paprika.

Shove in the oven and bake for around 15 minutes.

Serve and be astounded yet again how lashings of cheese sauce can make anything taste good!