Lasagna

My head hurts today. Very badly. I wasn't feeling great yesterday and now I feel even less great. Part of the reason I wasn't feel great yesterday was the sucky circumstances. If you read my previous post, you'll know all about the late-opening grocery store fiasco. Well, after it didn't pan out for me to be as productive as I had wanted to be in the morning I got a call from my mom saying that the fish at the hospital weren't doing to well and that I needed to pick up some stuff for the tank. So, when Gabe finally woke up at 10 I got him fed, dressed and ready to go and we headed off to do errands. Oh, and the car was almost completely out of gas so I had to stop and fill up and the clerk was really rude and the guy in front of me kept talking and talking and talking and it took me 5 minutes to pay even though there was only that one guy in front of me. Then we went to the pet store. That was an in and out operation - maybe too quick for Gabe's liking however. He barely got to see the fish. Then we went to the hospital. I had troubles finding parking and then when I got in my mom took Gabe and walked away so that I could work on the tank - the only problem was I didn't have keys to open the drawer that has all the tank supplies in it and my mom knew where the spare key was but I didn't know where she went. All in all, I spent about 45 minutes at the hospital. By this time Gabe was starting to get sleepy. I made the trip at the grocery store as quick as I could and picked up some mini maki rolls for lunch while I was there. I got home, put away the groceries and then went and sat with Gabe in hopes that he would, very quickly, go to sleep. Well, he didn't. Not for 40 minutes. I, in the mean time, ate my sushi and it was awful. They had overcooked the rice so it was basically maki mush rolls. Seriously, I make better sushi than that. I did make myself an Irish Cream Cremosa - an italian soda with irish cream flavor and a dallop of cream in it - so that was a good thing about yesterday. Anyway, when Gabe finally fell asleep I went and cleaned the kitchen up and then baked and made it messy again, but at least I got my two-bite brownies done. As soon as the brownies were all done baking I needed to make dinner: Lasagna. I had never made lasagna before yesterday! Seriously! I looked up two recipes: one from Chef at Home and the other on the back of the lasagna noodle box, just to give me an idea of what needed to happen, and then I went to work.
First off I fried up some diced shallots with the ground beef. When the onions were fairly well cooked I added about a cup of diced orange pepper and a big clove of garlic. When the meat was nearly fully cooked I added another clove of garlic (one definately was not enough) and a full carrot, grated. Then I poured over it one can of crushed tomatoes and one can of tomato paste. I let that cook for a little bit over medium heat and then I added probably a 1/4 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp thyme and 1 tsp basil. I don't measure when I cook so those are definately approximates. Then I added some salt and pepper and let it cook a little bit longer. Next came the cottage cheese. The first time I had lasagna with cottage cheese in it I thought it was amazing and I always knew that when I made my own lasagna recipe up that it would have cottage cheese in it too. What I didn't know is that you should mix an egg up with the cottage cheese. Not sure why, but you should :) Anyway, I started layering next. One of the recipes I had seen said to have two full layers of meat/cottage cheese/mozarella and two more layers of meat. I decided differently. I did a layer of meat, then noodles, more meat, all of the cottage cheese, mozarella, noodles, meat, mozarella, asiago. It worked great! I then cooked it at 350 for about an hour (oh, and I had it covered with tin foil that whole time) and then I took the tin foil off and let the cheese get all crispy. I really liked it! And so did Matt although he wanted me to put some tabasco sauce in it (I usually do with my pasta sauce).
Anyway, we went to bed late last night thanks to our little monkey and then I just could not wake up this morning and when I did it was painful. So today I need to catch up on all the stuff I didn't get done tomorrow and today's list too. That means cleaning the living room, our bedroom, Gabe's bedroom, packing out suitcases and folding laundry. Party, eh? I think my first task should be to make a very big pot of coffee. Oh, and my voice is going in and out so I really hope I don't lose it before our choir alumni concert this Saturday!

Mrs. Vander Leek ;)