To celebrate my productive writing day, I took a break to make some QUESO.

Keep reading to find out about the horrible nightmare that followed. Warning: This blog contains graphic images of badly melted cheese.

When I was in Austin last week for the Texas Book Festival, I discovered this amazing dish called QUESO, a unique Tex Mex soupy cheese dip for chips that Austinites swear by. To jog your memory, check out my blog here on this culinary delightful discovery: http://paulayoo.com/content/live-blogging-austin-day-2-texas-book-fest-sat-11108

After obsessing over this amazing cheesy tasty bit of heaven, my new friend and fellow YA author JENNIFER ZIEGLER emailed me the following recipes below:

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"Paula -- Here are some great queso recipes.  The truly "authentic" ones use cheddar, not Velveeta.  But I'll be honest.  Velveeta does melt better.

"The trick to any of these is to keep it warm and eat it up as fast as possible before it becomes a solid block of orange tar.  Enjoy!"

"QUESO DIP:

1 c. (8 oz.) tomatoes, drained & chopped?1 lg. onion, chopped?2 tbsp. chopped green chilies?1 sm. clove garlic, minced?1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce?1 lb. cheddar cheese, shredded
Combine tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and Worcestershire sauce in 1 quart microwave-safe casserole. Cover with casserole lid and cook on High 3 minutes. Stir in cheese. Cover and cook on 70, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, stirring once. Serve hot with corn chips. Cooking time 4 1/2 to 5 minutes. Yield: 3 cups.

SPICY QUESO:

1 block of mild Cheddar cheese, diced?1 sm. can tomato sauce?1/4 c. half & half?1/4 c. onion, diced?2 tbsp. Parmesan cheese?1/4 tsp. salt?1/4 tsp. Tabasco sauce?4 to 5 chopped jalapeno peppers

Add all ingredients together in a Teflon-coated pot over a low flame. Bring to slight boil, stirring occasionally. Serve with tortilla chips.  Use more or less depending on amount of "flame" desired (cayenne pepper may also be used for those who like it spicy.)

EASY QUESO:

1 1/2 lbs. Velveeta cheese?1 lb. cooked Owen's sausage, crumbled & drained?1/2 c. milk?1 can Rotel
Combine all ingredients. Cook in microwave until cheese is melted or slowly cook in crock pot. You can substitute 1 can chili or 1 pound ground beef for the sausage, or make meatless. Serve with tortilla chips.

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So on this lovely Sunday afternoon, I decided to take a break from writing feverishly all day for Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) and reward myself with some queso.

Unfortunately, because I've been in the writing batcave all weekend, I did not go grocery shopping. I decided the first recipe, QUESO DIP, would be the most realistic one to improvise on.

I didn't have any tomatoes, green chiles, garlic, or Worcestshire sauce. I did have a leftover onion in the fridge:

So I chopped up about a quarter of this stale onion and put the diced onions into a microwaveable container.

I then used a spoonful of A-1 Steak Sauce and some granulated garlic powder.

Then I put it in the microwave for two minutes.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I have never owned a microwave. Why? Because I love cooking! I use the oven, the stove, and the toaster oven. Never really needed a microwave. I don't eat frozen foods! I'm very snobby about fresh seasonal vegetables and cooking from scratch!

Well, we moved into a house this year that had an old microwave oven. It sort of works - you have to jiggle the handle to make it turn on.

Anyway, since discovering the microwave, I have sampled many delicious frozen food TV dinner delights. Today, I learned that you can microwave cheese! I had no idea!

So I followed Jennifer's instructions to cook the onions/A-1 sauce and granulated garlic powder for 2 minutes or so in the microwave.

I forgot, however, to put a lid on the container as per Jennifer's email. As a result, A-1 steak sauce and garlic powder exploded all over my microwave.

Then I added some shredded cheddar cheese into the container of cooked onions and splattered A-1 sauce and garlic powder. I cooked it in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Below is the end result. Those of you with children are advised to take your children out of the room before viewing the photographic evidence below:

It didn't taste that good. I think I need to go grocery shopping and follow Jennifer's recipes exactly next time around!

But now I craved some type of cheesy nacho snack. So I decided to shred more cheddar cheese and just melt that with the chips. Here's the much prettier end result:

However, no one told me that cheddar cheese tends to "split" when melted. Look at this mess! It had this awful aftertaste and what is that oily lake of fat surrounding the softened cheese?

Given my research background as a former newspaper reporter and the fact that I am working on a YA novel about a girl scientist, I had to google this. I lucked out and found an experiment on "The Effect of Emulsifiers on Processed Cheese" from the Experiments in Food Science at the Institute of Food Technology.

According to this paper I downloaded...

"Cheese is a type of emulsion.  A working definition of an emulsion is a semi-stable blend of an oil with a watery (acqueous) s. For example, you can make mayonnaise by blending oil, water, vinegar and egg yolk.  Egg yolk acts an emulsifier, mainly due to its content of phospholipids (one phospholipid you may be familiar with is lecithin, the principal ingredient in cooking sprays).  As the ingredients are blended, the oil forms numerous small droplets which become coated with emulsifiers from the egg yolk, so that interaction between the oil and the water is prevented. This process is much like washing grease off your hands with soap.  Ask your teacher or “google” about emulsifiers and surface active molecules."

And then I found this: http://jds.fass.org/cgi/reprint/41/3/375.pdf It's a paper on "Relationship Between Melting Quality and hardness of Cheddar Cheese" by R. W. Weik, W.b. Combs, and H.A. Morris of the Dairy Industry, University of Minnesota at St. Paul. Check out this graph on melting cheese:

So there. Even though I failed miserably in today's attempt at making a queso snack and thus lost valuable writing time, I am not discouraged because I learned a lot about the scientific background of cheese and its properties. This is exactly something my main character in my new novel would have done because she is a budding scientist.

Stay tuned for a proper blog in which I follow Jennifer Ziegler's queso recipes faithfully, plus a final account on my last panel and day at the Texas Book Festival, and much more, including an account of the book launch party I am attending tonight in honor of SASHA WATSON'S debut YA novel VIDALIA IN PARIS (Viking 2008). For more info on Jennifer Ziegler, go here: http://jenniferziegler.net/ For more info on Sasha Watson and her novel, go here: http://kestrella.livejournal.com/

Now... Back to the writing batcave! But first, I must brush my teeth and gargle with mouthwash to get rid of this icky microwaved cheese taste! Blech!