{"id":3046,"date":"2011-01-24T02:07:23","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T07:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=3046"},"modified":"2011-01-24T02:11:28","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T07:11:28","slug":"cooking-for-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=3046","title":{"rendered":"cooking for two"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NOTE: Karen, Amani, and anyone else who&#8217;s a little squeamish about food practices might not want to read this post.<\/p>\n<p>SECOND NOTE: This would not be my methodology if there was company coming over, so please don&#8217;t be scared, Sarah.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to make lasagna for a while. It&#8217;s one of the few dishes I&#8217;m any good at cooking.<\/p>\n<p>Step 1: Assemble ingredients.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p>Ingredient 1: Lasagna noodles. Is there an open box? Yes! In the cabinet. Let&#8217;s see. Three and a third noodles will not get us very far. I know I bought two boxes before the tree-trimming party that we ended up not using. Where would those be? Okay, here&#8217;s one of them. [The second will not be noticed for several more hours, despite its equally obvious location.]<\/p>\n<p>Ingredient 2: Sauce. I bought a jar of baking sauce back in the fall. Yep, here it is on the floor. Maybe I&#8217;d better rinse the dust off it before I open it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Ingredient 3: Ricotta. Hmmm&#8230; I stopped Rudi from throwing it out last week. I hope it&#8217;s still good. Maybe I&#8217;d better check before I open the jar of sauce. Good, it hasn&#8217;t been opened before. Nothing growing on it. Bodes well. It doesn&#8217;t smell funky. Should I taste it before I look for the mozzarella? Nah, it&#8217;ll be fine&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Ingredient 4: Mozzarella. Let&#8217;s see. Here&#8217;s the store-bought stuff we bought last winter. Best by &#8230; February <em>2010<\/em>. It <em>looks<\/em> fine. Let&#8217;s open it up and get a closer look. Smells fine. A little rubbery, but it was supposed to be a dry one to begin with. I guess this I&#8217;d better taste. Bland, but that&#8217;s storebought cheese for you. Where&#8217;s the farmers&#8217; market mozzarella? Okay, here it is. Hmmm&#8230; Did it dissolve into yogurt-like goo? Ah, no, that&#8217;s just the accumulated water and whey. Dump out the liquid. Oh! It&#8217;s little mozzarella balls! Rinse. Rinse. Rinse. Rinse. Is that enough? Rinse. I&#8217;d better taste these, too. Hmmm&#8230; A little &#8230; sharp &#8230; but I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d call them bad. <\/ul>\n<p>Step 2: Arrange ingredients in layers until the pan is full.<\/p>\n<ul>\nNoodles. Ricotta. Sauce. Storebought mozzarella. Noodles. Ricotta. Hmmm&#8230; It smells a little strong. Should I have tasted it before we started? Nah. Well &#8230; maybe. Okay, fine. I&#8217;ll taste it now. That&#8217;s &#8230; well, I can definitely see why Rudi had to burp the container. Good thing I didn&#8217;t wait any longer to make this. Is it still good? Well, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d call it <em>bad<\/em>. I wish Rudi were here to taste it and tell me. He&#8217;s so much better at this. Oh, for Christ&#8217;s sake. Either you&#8217;d eat it or you wouldn&#8217;t. Fine. It&#8217;s fine. Sauce. Storebought mozzarella. Noodles. Ricotta. Sauce. Farmers&#8217; market mozzarella.<\/ul>\n<p>Step 3: Cook. Either set a timer or plan to make adjustments when a major event, such as Rudi&#8217;s arrival home, pulls you out of your book. Cheat on the cooking process by getting him to take the tin foil off the top.<\/p>\n<p>Step 4: Warn your partner that the dinner you&#8217;re serving at 11:30 at night might be total crap. If it is, you reassure him, there&#8217;s more bread and you can just chuck the lasagna out.<\/p>\n<p>Step 5: Serve with garlic toast. It tastes fine (although apparently as mozzarella ages it gets less melty), and Rudi goes back for a second piece. Score!<\/p>\n<p>Step 6: Do not get sick. This is proof positive that there is nothing wrong with your methodology.<\/p>\n<p>Epilogue: I wanted to fact-check for this post, so I checked the sell-by dates on the farmers&#8217; market cheeses. The ricotta had a sell-by date of mid-November and the mozzarella was the end of October. So they were fine, really. Really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NOTE: Karen, Amani, and anyone else who&#8217;s a little squeamish about food practices might not want to read this post. SECOND NOTE: This would not be my methodology if there was company coming over, so please don&#8217;t be scared, Sarah. I&#8217;ve been meaning to make lasagna for a while. It&#8217;s one of the few dishes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>cooking for two - sprite writes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=3046\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"cooking for two - sprite writes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"NOTE: Karen, Amani, and anyone else who&#8217;s a little squeamish about food practices might not want to read this post. 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