Deep Breath

After the fiasco of Friday night, I really wanted to take it easy this weekend. Its so typical of me to rush headlong into a project (Beet with Kasha! I'm so cool!) just to get burned and quickly move on to the next crazy/brilliant project. But no! I'm not walking away - just need a better plan. From now on I'm going to group the weeks by regional cuisine - Indian, Japanese, etc. This week I'll take it easy by hightailing to the somewhat familiar territory of the Mediterranean. To up the ante I plan to make my own fresh pasta and fresh pizza. I may even try my own cheese - whoa, who knew you could even do that?!

Saturday night I relied on a tried-and-true recipe from a Food & Wine cookbook: Pasta with Canned Tuna, Capers, and Olives. Literally just heat up the tuna with some spices, olives, and capers and bam! A yummy, delicious, inexpensive dinner. I think I ate an entire "family" portion myself. I've found myself eating more as a vegetarian - I guess I'm not filling up with meat proteins and consequently I'm eating larger meals and snacks throughout the day. And that's completely fine by me.

Sunday night I needed something filling and nutritious, but could be prepared ahead of time. I was to pick up Sophie & Erik from the airport at 7pm - poor child had been traveling for 12 hours, I really didn't want to make her wait for a warm dinner. Ah! Vegetable lasagna! I've never made lasagna before and consequently looked over several recipes to get the feel of the meal - one called for broccoli and no tomato sauce (yuck!), another was just sauce and cheese (oh please). So I experimented and come up with a pretty darn fine meal.

Layers from bottom up (3x):
1) preboiled, not-quite-done lasagna noodles
2) 10oz thawed spinach, squeezed of excess water - stirred into jar of pasta sauce
3) spooned ricotta with some shredded mozzarella sprinkled on top
4) then repeat 2 more times, adding some Parmesan on the top layer
5) pop in oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes and yuuuuuuum
*I admit it was a lot of spinach - I might scale back the next time.
After a quick reheat everyone, small children included (!) ate large portions! Yaaay!

I have to say I'm proud to have successfully improvised with this recipe. I usually follow the instructions to the letter, unsure of my skills as an interpretative "chef" (wait, you don't have to actually measure out that 1/2 tsp. of salt?). Erik teases me for it - but I'm slowly learning to trust my cooking intuition. In college, I can still remember being astounded when a roommate constructed a meal from seemingly nothing. Peering in the refrigerator, he said "alright, looks like we have some linguine, pesto, some fresh bread, even spinach - we could make a nice pasta dish". I blinked quietly and said softly "you can do that? just make up a meal?". I felt slightly ashamed when asked with bewilderment "you've never done that?!" I was lost without a frozen box with printed instructions...