Another January Day

I know what our next door neighbour did yesterday – pranced around on his front lawn in a t-shirt.  Okay, he wasn’t actually prancing.  More like zipping out to his car for something and then taking his sweet time going back inside because it was relatively sunny and warm here on the first day of the new year.  And by warm I mean around the freezing mark.

Sorry that’s all I’ve got on him.  Just happened to see him briefly from my front window and have no idea how he spent the rest of his day.  Here in the late afternoon we were feasting on an awesome vegetarian lasagna made by my son.  We didn’t have the whole gang because life and work and other priorities take people in different directions.  I’m always happy to see whoever drops in.  Especially when they bring food.

This morning the wind woke me up early and has been blustering away all day, blowing snow off the roof tops and the trees and depositing it in our driveway.  No t-shirts noted anywhere on the block.  Colder weather is forecast for next week.  I wish we could send some of it (minus the wind) to Australia.  Along with a ton of rain.  I fear the devastating disasters in store for all of us if we don’t take the climate crisis seriously.

But I won’t get myself started on that tonight.  I’ll tell you what I’m happy about instead.

– all the Christmas leftovers are gone

– except for some fudge and butter tarts, and W is taking care of those

– all the decorations are boxed up and put away

– except for the outdoor lights, but W is taking care of those too, probably by February at the very latest

– we have had our youngest three grandchildren around sporadically for almost two weeks.  We find them interesting and they find us boring, and that’s how these relationships usually work with the very young and the very old.  I suppose we could try to be less boring.  There’s a thought.

– I love quiet evenings inside where it’s warm, a hot drink before bed, reading until the kindle falls out of my hand and I can’t keep my eyes open.  Simple pleasures.  I’ve already said boring, no reason to repeat it.

This month always seems to go relentlessly on and on until you swear it’s never going to end.  Sort of like a pregnancy in the ninth month.  My doctor told me she’d never heard of a pregnancy that didn’t terminate (how reassuring) and I guess that applies to Januaries as well.

Two days down, eleventy seven to go.

Last Supper Last Night

Do you know how many vegetables you can hide in lasagna?  Many, many…is the correct answer.  I used to make things like this all the time so that my kids wouldn’t die from malnutrition and so that I didn’t have to listen to their long litany of lists of vegetables they didn’t like.  Turnips, for instance.  My mother in law once cooked us a liver and onion and turnip meal which my daughter described as a child’s nightmare supper.  I thought it was delicious.  My kids did not inherit my taste buds.  They had to develop them, with a little help from their devious mother.  Now of course there is no need to disguise these gorgeous vegetables but I continue to do it anyway just because I can.

Come to think of it, this also works well for spouses who still think the only vegetables worth preparing are canned kernel corn and mashed potatoes.   Yes, I married one of those.  Now he eats a much wider variety than he knows or even suspects.  Spaghetti sauce and chile and cream soups are other clever places to load up with vegetables.

But yesterday it was a New Years Eve lasagna surprise that satisfied my creative vegetable hiding urges.  There’s white onion and garlic cloves in the chopper, with yellow, red, and green peppers, celery, zucchini and bok choi waiting their turn.  Sometimes I add a carrot or a parsnip.  Really, just about anything goes.

Because this is what it looks like simmering away in browned lean ground beef and a jar of chunky vegetable tomato sauce.  I call this death by vegetables.  I don’t really, but this picture makes it look like it a big pot of God only knows what.  At this stage I added some vegetable and roasted red pepper seasoning and salt and pepper.

Okay!  I use the oven ready noodles that don’t have to be boiled.  I can’t find them in gluten-free but I figure all that other good stuff cancels out their badness.  I am very skilled at rationalization when it suits me.  One layer of the lasagna is beaten eggs mixed with cottage (or ricotta) cheese and lots of chopped spinach.  I buy big bags of fresh spinach and freeze them.  The frozen spinach is easy to crush and crumble so it takes up less space and works great in smoothies.  Or in any kind of hidden vegetable concoction.

I think the layers went something like this.  Sauce, noodles, cottage cheese mixture, noodles, sauce, Parmesan cheese, noodles, sauce, two full bags of grated Italian mix cheese (mostly mozzarella). This of course makes a pan so close to over flowing that you have to rummage around for a big cookie sheet to place it on when you bake it (covered with foil at 350 for about an hour) because otherwise it will bubble over and then you’ll have to clean your oven, and nobody wants that.

I have a recipe for lasagna that substitutes steamed cabbage leaves for the noodles.  Doesn’t that sound amazing?  One gigantic unrolled cabbage roll!  But that’s a bit too much of an experiment if you’re having company, even for me.  I’ll save it for W, even though I know already he’ll be less than impressed.  Unless I throw in a can of corn.

I used the broiler to brown the cheese.  There’s nothing like hot bubbly browned cheese to camouflage whatever disaster lurks beneath.

Of course I didn’t take a picture of the uncut perfection and of course mine was the only slice that fell to pieces on the plate.  The salad came from a bag and included cranberries and pumpkin seeds and some other strange but delicious green things.

There was enough left over for our daughter to take home (and possibly feed her dog for a week).  But it was pretty good, so the dog might be out of luck.

It was a good last supper for the last day of last year.  Today I’m going to use my homemade chicken stock and make my first vegetable soup of 2015.  It may or may not contain turnips.  No one but me will ever know.