Fall food frenzy: lasagna!

Cold weather has come to the Pacific Northwest, which means it's time to pull on the fleece, heat a mug of hot chocolate, and shovel in some comfort food. Ha! Who am I kidding. I do all of those things whether it's November or June.

Still, it's definitely lasagna time and I have a recipe that I've been using for several years now that is just plain old good and filling on a cold day. I've been refining it since first finding it on the side of a pasta box in the supermarket. It looked pretty do-able, yet  tasty, save for the opening instruction: brown your beef in butter. I checked the other sides of the box, but there was no coupon for half-off a heart bypass or buy one defibrillation, get a second one free or anything.

So my first modification was swapping one of the two pounds of ground beef (!) for ground turkey. I switched the second for ground italian sausage, which, while not much heart healthier, is at least more flavorful to me.

The rest of the recipe is pretty standard and definitely not for the lactose-intolerant: 32 ounces of ricotta and four to five cups of shredded cheese. I usually opt for a mix of italian cheeses, but occasionally throw in some gruyere or Dubliner. Wanting to get a few more veggies in the mix, I mix two boxes of frozen, shredded, cooked, seasoned spinach in with the ricotta and sometimes add or substitute one half to a pound of sliced, sauteed brown mushrooms for the sausage.
The latest and most time-saving change I discovered just in the last year: what scientific and industrial food production genius came up with no-boil lasagna noodles? And where have these been all my life?! I. Love. This. Product. Yeah, I'm talking about you Barilla.

Smattering of sauce on the bottom of pan, topped with 1st noodle

These things cut the number of pots and pans I use for this dish to two and my prep time to next to nothing. No guess-timating how many noodles to include or cooking too many or not enough. No timing the noodles so they're done when the fillings are but not done so early that they start to dry out. You just place them in your lasagna pan, layer with sauce and filling and bake as usual. 45 minutes to an hour later, cheesy, meaty, fall food goodness. Here's how I put it together.

 That's a the pot of sauteed turkey, sausage, mushroom, onion, garlic and tomatoes, next my 9" x 13" lasagna pan. When I was a reporter, I was lamenting to my foodie photog (also a former priest, but that's a whole other story) that I needed to find a bigger lasagna pan because it boiled over every time I made it. A few months later when I bought my first house, he brought me this as a housewarming gift. How thoughtful was that?! It's been about 10 years (!) and I think of him everytime I make this.

The layers go: noodles, sauce, ricotta mixture, cheese, repeat twice. This is the first layer of the ricotta, eggs and spinach mixture.

 The first two or so cups of cheese...

 Lather, rinse, repeat...

 Bake at 325 for 45 minutes to an hour...

And you get a deep dish, cheesy, meaty, veggie lasagna that the whole family loves and that makes your husband say, "Oh... Oh yeah. That is good." At least mine does. Serve with a green salad and slices of toasted, buttered peasant bread of choice. Got a go-to comfort food dish that you've refined over the years? Hit me up. I'd love to hear.

A vocal fringe does not a mandate make

A co-worker summed up my feelings about the results of yesterday's election: "There's a reason I'm wearing all black today. I'm in mourning." Yes. What she said.

Not simply because I live in a very progressive metropolitan area and most of the national results do not reflect our local world view. I'm in mourning for the dearth of civility and logic, and excess of rancor exposed by the scrabbling on all sides during this last election. When did moderation, compromise and thoughtful consideration of differing viewpoints became epithets hurled at anyone unwilling to pick up a stone, real or verbal, and hurl it at the nearest person not walking in lockstep with those in closest proximity?

I was one of those at home cheering Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and their 200,000+ brethren at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear last weekend. I danced with my kids to the bands in hopes that they would glean some of what was being presented: that it's okay to agree to disagree and not have a kneejerk, angry reaction to anyone with a different perspective.

I know, the pendulum of politics and history will swing again (for perspective, read Robert Reich's piece "Why Obama Should Learn the Lesson of 1936, not 1996"), but for now, I may wear black for another day or two.

10 months: no teeth, no problem

About a day after bringing baby Dylan home from the hospital, there was a moment where both he and big sister Ava were crying simultaneously, creating misery in stereo in our bathroom.

J. and I had spent the two previous not at all restful days in a bustling hospital room on a bed and fold out chair clearly intended to ensure that you left as soon as physically able. We looked at each other over the kids' heads with the same thought going through our minds: what have we gotten ourselves into?

Things have gotten much better since that day, but that was our first hint that our occasionally hectic but relatively calm life as a family of three was a distant memory. Gone too, at times, was our tenuous grasp of what it took to manage an infant. Now, we had to tag-team to manage the older kid, who, while quite verbal, was still just two, along with the new kid who was clearly very unlike the one who came before.

She was and still is all things tiny, pink, fluffy and girly. We didn't baby proof anything. A stern look or raised voice was all it took to keep her away from household hazards.

Dylan, aka Big Boy, is all things big, rugged and noisy. He is happiest sitting intently in front of a cabinet alternately banging the door on its hinges, slapping the pot and pan lids up and down and if left to his own devices, pulling them out onto the floor with a tremendous clatter and bang, followed by a smile. Every chance he gets, he beelines for the TV and DVD player, knowing that he's not allowed to touch them. The stern look and raised voice that froze his sister are met with a sidelong smile, hand poised in mid-air near the screen - his 10 month old's version of "I'm not touching it... Stiiiiill not touching it."

Over the last three weeks, he went from no teeth to two and a half: one upper, which he promptly chipped somewhere (sigh), and one and half lowers.

"Shouldn't he have more teeth by now?" my dad asked. "It's not like it's stopping him," I replied, listing out all of the foods he's been eating for the past six months: yams, bananas, grapes, apples, strawberries, watermelon, nectaries, cherries, rice, couscous, waffles, cornbread, gumbo, jambalaya, chicken, steak, tacos, shrimp, crab, corn, sausage, sugar snap peas, pizza (with salmon and capers!), lasagna, salmon, banana pudding, turkey... you know what? My hands are tired. You get the picture. Basically, he has not spit out ANYTHING that we've put in his gaping maw. Anything! And most of that list was before he had teeth!

Dylan, 10 months, with his performance art installation made of stir fried noodles with sugar snap peas and chicken.

All of that is in addition to nursing! Rather than a glutton, he appears to be a pint sized gourmand, diligently feeding himself and eating his fill, before topping off the meal with a nursing session.

Given those culinary proclivities and his weight at birth (nearly 10 pounds), it's probably not surprising that he now weighs 25 pounds at 10 months. Ava just turned three years old: she weighs 27.5 pounds. We are predicting that he may catch her in weight by Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Yet I have no fears that he's on the path to the debacle that is One Big Happy Family-style obesity. He's just solid through and through like his dad, and a one big happy baby.

And at 10 months, he really is still just a baby, which is easy to forget as he cruises the furniture and raises his arms to be picked up. Groaning, J. and I realize our aching backs never felt this strain with Ava becauase by the time she hit his size, she was well over two years old, walking, talking and rendering wardrobe opinions.

As in, "Nana, those pants are okay, but that shirt has to go." Thank you for channeling Michael Kors. Now go paint or something while I pry your brother off my leg so that I can get the feeling back in it.

Vote. Now.

A friend mentioned what a sad commentary it is that despite all the folks rocking their "I voted" online badges and posting their vote status to their profiles, most Americans don't vote.

I always want to punch those people I overhear or see on the news complaining about needing a stamp (we're all-mail voting here) or that they were too busy.

But judging by the beverage cup, not too busy for a double tall, half-caf, caramel mochiatto apparently. Perhaps that's what's needed to get more people to use their right to vote: drive through voting. At Starbucks.

But I'm sure there would still be some people who would complain that they have to lean out of their car to drop it in the ballot box and that makes their wrist cold. Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Halloween preview

Ava's went to a Halloween Carnival a week ago, which made things a lot less harried and sugar-fueled on the actual day. In honor of the recession and her limited long term memory for an event 1/3 of her life ago, we recycled her bumblebee costume from last year.

She asked excitedly, "Do I get to wear my bumblebee costume again?!"  Why yes! Yes, you can. And she had just as much fun buzzing around again. Look at that smile: don't fake wings and tulle scream fun pretty much any day of the year in almost any setting?

But check out that pumpkin. A little creepily over-excited, don't you think? Like it's ready to take a bite out of her head. Or maybe it's just amazed by her blow-dried, flat-ironed tresses, which she requested out of the blue that morning.

It's as if she said, "What is the attire for ye olde carnival? Festooned and bejeweled? Ah, well, simple ponytails would be gauche. Let us go forth with a more, shall we say,  substantive coif. Something more befitting a bee. A queen bee!"

Actually, she just said, "I want my hair straight! And down!" Regardless, that pumpkin is all, "Say whaaat?! Yeeeahhh gurl: that 'do is DONE!" Yeah, in my mind, the pumpkin is channeling every character Tracy Morgan ever played on SNL.

So after explaining the whole candy and doorbells and costume thing and seeing her accept it as plausible, I think I could make up just about any crazy "custom" and pass it off as real. Like, "Hey Ava, get some yogurt and string cheese. We have to go put these on people's windshields for the Dairy Fairy. She'll pick them up and leave a carton of Baby Yogurt under your pillow tonight!"

I mean really, is that any less plausible than the tooth fairy and trick or treat backstories? Clearly, I may not be the best one to impart these childhood fables, what with my lack of disbelief suspension and all.

Here is how we spent the actual Halloween: grocery shopping. I know: the paparazzi had a field day! (Ha!)

It was pretty cool to see that Dylan's finally big enough to sit in this kiddie cart without falling over or out, despite Ava's periodic efforts to steer both wheels at once. Check out his pose: it's like he's in NASCAR and gunning for the inside lane.
 
But note to store shelf stockers: if you're going to install racks at shoulder level that jut out into the aisle with toddler-sized bottles of spices, you're just asking for someone to have to utter the words "cleanup on aisle 12" over the PA system at some point during your shift. Just sayin'.

Hope you had a fun-filled day!