Cooking over at my dads place..

Little more than a year ago, my beloved mother suddenly passed away, and left a pretty much devestated family behind her. We can be as many as 17 people around the table somtimes.. on normal days we are atleast 5.. I do not live with my father, only a couple of my brothers does.. but it is a familytradition ever since as long as I can remember, that we often gather for dinner sometimes every day. This is great for me, the single mom with a desire to cook elaborate and calorieheavy desserts, and try them on the pickiest people ever. My older brothers are merciless and tells it as it is. I sometimes rebell against how it is always the womens responsibility to cook whenever one of us sticks our nose in the door... but considering how good they are to me (hey.. they took care of my dentistbills without blinking) i really should be thankful my sole responsibility is to cook every once in a while.
Anyway.. other times my retired dad does the cooking, and this is the funny part. My dad is the type that absolutly could not cook. I have deliberatly tried to forget all the retch-worthy dishes he tried out before mom died. The last year before mom died, she got sick, and he helped her cook while she told him what to do, and I have taught him even more afterwards. Now dad will happily buy cookbooks (I inspirerd him to do that. I am always hanging out in the cookbooksection when we go shopping) and try new recepies. Some really good stuff is being made in his kitchen nowadays. Some old dishes from his past still stays with him though. Like "moms" macaronicasserole. I was making him that yesterday, and while i was chopping the onion and preparing everything he was chatting about how that dish came to be. When my dad was doing his tour of duty in the finnish army, he had written to mom and said that he really missed his moms macaronicasserole and how he wished she could make him something like that on his next visit. Well my mom apparantly braved up and asked her motherinlaw for the recepie. This was way back in the early 1950's and pasta was pretty exotic in the cold north of Finland. Mom had to go to town and specifically buy that, because people just did not have that laying around at home. And ever since that time every time my dad wanted something special he would get this macaronicasserole. It is simple every day type of food, and nothing special for us pasta every day type of people at all if you ask me. I grew up on it, and it is childhood and moms cooking to me. It tastes nice, and even better so the next day when you fry it in a pan. But it just shows how different things are. This dish has been loved by my dad and our family for over 50 years. That is special, and I have never enjoyed this dish more than yesterday when I made it and it tasted exactly how mom made it.

Makaronilaatikko (Macaronicasserole in finnish)

400 g dry macaroni (half a large package here in Sweden, I use Ideal macaroni)
1 large yellow onion
500 grams of ground up beef
salt
white pepper
a little blackpepper
3 eggs
1 liter of milk
salt and pepper
breadcrumbs

an ovendish of some kind. I use an oval pyrexglassdish for this.

Put the water on and halfcook the macaroni, drain the water away and put the macaroni back in pot.
Chop the onion and fry it in a little butter and pour in the beef. Fry it hard, and for a long time.. it should be really dry and even almost reach the point of "burnt". The only seasoning you use is generous ammount of salt and white pepper and a little blackpepper.
Pour it into the macaronipot and blend it with the macaroni. Pour into the ovendish.. the mixture should almost reach the edge of the ovendish. It is fine.
Whisk together eggs and milk, salt and whitepepper. Use alot.. the "eggmix" eats salt like crazy. And pour this over the macaronimix. The mixture should cover the macaroni, but not drown it. Then you sprinkle dry breadcrumbs ontop of the entire dish.
Bake in the middle of the oven on 200 degrees celcius for 40 minutes until the top is a nice browncrisp color and the eggmixture is not runny.

For variation, you can exchange the meat for ham, salami and bacon, or use cheese ontop.