lasagna

My mother used to make the best lasagna I had ever tasted!

This statement is still true to this day.  I make my mom's lasagna all the time, but today, we went rogue...and tried something different.  

This meal started out as a mish mosh, and kind of planned in stages.

The original plan was to recreate the asparagus and cream cheese tart, but we forgot the recipe.  On the fly we discussed options.  What we decided on as to make Jamie Oliver's tomato sauce, and create my mom's lasagna around it.  That seemed good on paper, but I didn't have my moms recipe on me either, so we flew by the seat of our pants, and guessed at the ingredients.

We added mushy rooms and ground turkey to the tomato sauce, and I sort of made my moms cheese mixture for lasagna (I emphasize sort of).  Barillo has a lasagna pasta that I had not seen before, that looks like flat sheets of dried homemade pasta, cut short, specifically for 9x13 pans.  I did several layers and doubled up the pasta on some layers.  This detracted from the flavor.

I also added ONE layer of spinach, and I don't think this was a positive element either.

The lasagna was tasty and extremely edible, but I need to make my mom's soon, to remind myself what lasagna is SUPPOSED  to taste like.

Dutchie helped and made the turkey & mushroom sauce, then I layered everything up.  I paired with a simple salad of exotic greens, halved grape tomatoes and blue cheese crumbles.

I took some of our leftover rosemary/potato bread and sliced it thin and used olive oil, garlic and parmesan cheese.  I broiled this to make a crisp garlic bread.

Doing this reminded me of how much I enjoy eating crunchy, cooked parmesan...especially parmesan crisps which are merely melted/crispified small mounds of cheese that are a little slice of heaven.

Even though this doesn't taste as good as my mom's....I still can state with confidence and some amount of cockiness that the Father Successfully Fed his Flock