Sunday, April 27, 2008

First lasagna



I think I have mentioned before that Wife makes the best lasagna. I really like it. I think that her secret is that she makes her own sauce. I found a recipe in a newspaper years ago that really turned out well. It was an old family recipe that a columnist was writing about because her grandmother that passed on to her had passed away. It was an incredibly vague recipe with no measurements included. For example, the most precise instruction was the amount of garlic to use. "heat some olive oil in a large saucepan. Break up some garlic into the oil and let simmer for a while. Capture all of the garlic and throw it away." Anyway, once Wife had figured out what measurements of what that she wanted to use, we harvested all of the tomatoes from the garden and made gallons of sauce. When everything was said and done, we had 57 quarts of sauce canned with either ground beef, venison, or turkey sausage. The turkey sausage version became the lasagna sauce. And when she makes lasagna, it is all we can do to not finish the pan the day she makes it. I may be in physical pain from eating two or three plates and will still nibble on the pan.
Well Kat is getting old enough to try more solid foods and I decided to introduce her to the best lasagna she will ever have. I reheated a bowl from the freezer and put a tablespoon aside for her. She ate a couple of cheeri*s while I inhaled my serving, then I cut it up into strips and mashed everything up as fine as I could. Then came the experience of alternating between feeding her and letting her pick up stuff on her own and try and get it into her mouth. Trust me when I say that I did much better than she did. She would pick up a noodle and put it in her mouth but not let go of the noodle as she moved her hand away. So she would taste, but not eat, the food she put in. She usually dropped it either back on the tray or into her lap.
In spite of all this experimentation, you can see from the picture that this wasn't a particularly messy experience. Altho, I am a complete idiot for doing this while she is wearing her best white sweater! Judging from the smile on her face, she thought it tasted pretty good. And she is right.
This Tuesday, I want to try spaghetti. That may be messier.

2 comments:

crazymumma said...

prepare for noodles EVERYWHERE. it seems to become a bizarre sensory experience for them.

She is gorgeous.

ps. I leaned on Den.

11111111 said...

I love lasagna! I'm sure your daughter will enjoy eating spaghetti--the long strings will be a challenge to eat. She'll likely be eating them off of the back of her hand as she wraps them up in her fist.

By the way, what's a "quart"?