I'm realizing now that I have a LOT of posts to catch up on--I'm nearly halfway done with my list (!!) and don't have near enough posts to show for it. So here's an old one:
Last November, my awesome friend and former roommate Elizabeth met Ricky and I in Sarasota for their annual chalk festival (think 3D street art and such), and then she came to spend the weekend with us in our apartment. She's the first person to sleep on our couch! (That doesn't sound like as big of a deal as it feels in my head.) Anyway, while she was visiting, I told her about my lasagna goal, and she waved her hand dismissively like the pro she is and said she could help me whip something up. (She was actually was more supportive and enthusiastic about it, but I like the mental imagery of Lizbeth scoffing sophisticatedly at my cooking peasantries.) So we went to the store! And we cooked things!
I hope it counts even if I didn't make the noodles from scratch, but who even does that anymore?
My roommates in college used to tease me about measuring water out for boiling noodles, so it probably won't surprise you that I had about a dozen heart attacks every time Lizbeth would tell me to "eyeball it" or something brave like that. I can cook well enough...if I follow an extremely precise recipe to the letter. Every time I try to wing something, it's disastrous, so I leave the improving to moms and anthropomorphic rats in Pixar movies. I don't like cooking because it feels way too much like having to show your work while doing a math problem...a math problem that everyone has to eat when you're done with it. And, no matter how long it takes to make something, it's gone in fifteen minutes. In fact, the better it is, the quicker it's finished! How unfair is that?
Slow cookers were invented for me, I think. Also, those vegetables that steam in the bag.
Luckily I had Elizabeth with me to be an adult and have the patience to do these things, and the lasagna turned out delicious.
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| Cooking away! |
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| Some seriously delicious cooking snacks, courtesy of Elizabeth. |
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| Laying out the lasagna...Elizabeth did cheese, I did noodles. |
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| In the oven it goes! Please ignore my weird hair-thing. I have no control over it. |
Lasagna is Ricky's favorite food, so he was pretty pleased, even though it was meatless (vegetarian and all that, you know). Fun fact: Ricky's a better cook than I am, but neither of us has time to cook anything that takes longer than 30 minutes to make, so those talents are under the figurative bushel for another year. We have a "Katie-on-weekdays-and-Ricky-on-weekends" deal in place that'll go into effect once we have kids. Until then, maybe I'll just bus Elizabeth down from Massachusetts every other week.
I would love that deal! I told you it wasn't really that hard. I think the hardest part is always the sauce, so many things can go wrong. I once tried to make a cheese sauce and it was, uh, interesting; there were lumps involved. You totally owned that lasagna! It was delicious and I still remember it so there.
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