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Holidays/ Lasagna
Jan. 3rd, 2007 08:42 pmMy holiday season was characterized by lots and lots of lasagna. Some very sweet cats, some excellent people, and some damned festive, and massive, lasagna.
I wanted to recreate this vegetable lasagna that my mother used to make back when I was young. The recipe claims that it makes three lasagnas. I decided to go for it, because I could take one to the New Year's party, keep one at Andy's for meals there and freeze one for meals at my house in the future. So on Saturday morning, A. and I took the bus to Lunds. There, we marvelled at the mass, and price, of the ingredients necessary to make this lasagna. Cheese costs a lot of money when you are buying 5 pounds of it. We are talking mountains of cheese here when it was put into the largest bowl available in A.'s kitchen. Add to that many pounds of vegetables and 2 gallons of tomato sauce, and our bill was pretty high.. although not terrible when you consider how many servings we were making. Still, it creates pressure not to screw up when so much food is on the line.
Making the lasagna took four or five hours. The lasagna involved both a tomato sauce and a bechamel sauce with spinach blended into it. A. did a very good job of making the bechamel sauce, while I cut up vegetables and blanched them. It was an extravaganza: Piles of vegetables! Two huge pots of sauce! Lots of noodles! A cheese mountain! We ended up having enough ingredients left over to make two more 9x9 pans of lasagna, although without the bechamel sauce.
I was worried about all of this food coming out of the oven right, particularly since we used the usual lasagna noodles for a box and it said to use them uncooked. Somehow, miraculously, the lasagna came out of the oven pretty well, although soupy. One of Andy's friends who had listened to a cooking show that very day which we had turned the volume down was on on hand to give us a tip from that very show: the proper response to soupy lasagna is to freeze it and defrost it, which somehow gets rid of the extra liquid.
The day of making the lasagna left me pretty tired out from all of the physical and psychic labor involved. It tasted pretty good if I don't say so myself, but the recipe nevertheless created a lot of lasagna.
Other events to report on: A.'s friends had a pancake party New Year's Eve morning. 'Twas quite good, and I had one of the few long intellectual discussions I've had in a long time with one of the girls there. Then, A. and I headed to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alirose and grepper's party in St. Peter. It was snowing hard for the first time this winter, and we passed something like nine cars stuck in a ditch on the way there. Still, snow is pretty and peaceful-feeling, even tho' its power that night was vicious. The party itself was quite excellent. Much hilarity was had by all. It's good to reconnect with Carleton folk.
The end. I hope you all had a good holiday season and wish you a wonderful 2007.
I wanted to recreate this vegetable lasagna that my mother used to make back when I was young. The recipe claims that it makes three lasagnas. I decided to go for it, because I could take one to the New Year's party, keep one at Andy's for meals there and freeze one for meals at my house in the future. So on Saturday morning, A. and I took the bus to Lunds. There, we marvelled at the mass, and price, of the ingredients necessary to make this lasagna. Cheese costs a lot of money when you are buying 5 pounds of it. We are talking mountains of cheese here when it was put into the largest bowl available in A.'s kitchen. Add to that many pounds of vegetables and 2 gallons of tomato sauce, and our bill was pretty high.. although not terrible when you consider how many servings we were making. Still, it creates pressure not to screw up when so much food is on the line.
Making the lasagna took four or five hours. The lasagna involved both a tomato sauce and a bechamel sauce with spinach blended into it. A. did a very good job of making the bechamel sauce, while I cut up vegetables and blanched them. It was an extravaganza: Piles of vegetables! Two huge pots of sauce! Lots of noodles! A cheese mountain! We ended up having enough ingredients left over to make two more 9x9 pans of lasagna, although without the bechamel sauce.
I was worried about all of this food coming out of the oven right, particularly since we used the usual lasagna noodles for a box and it said to use them uncooked. Somehow, miraculously, the lasagna came out of the oven pretty well, although soupy. One of Andy's friends who had listened to a cooking show that very day which we had turned the volume down was on on hand to give us a tip from that very show: the proper response to soupy lasagna is to freeze it and defrost it, which somehow gets rid of the extra liquid.
The day of making the lasagna left me pretty tired out from all of the physical and psychic labor involved. It tasted pretty good if I don't say so myself, but the recipe nevertheless created a lot of lasagna.
Other events to report on: A.'s friends had a pancake party New Year's Eve morning. 'Twas quite good, and I had one of the few long intellectual discussions I've had in a long time with one of the girls there. Then, A. and I headed to
alirose and grepper's party in St. Peter. It was snowing hard for the first time this winter, and we passed something like nine cars stuck in a ditch on the way there. Still, snow is pretty and peaceful-feeling, even tho' its power that night was vicious. The party itself was quite excellent. Much hilarity was had by all. It's good to reconnect with Carleton folk.The end. I hope you all had a good holiday season and wish you a wonderful 2007.
