I Made Lasagna Again

I made lasagna before, with no-cook noodles, which is awesome if you don't want to spend any extra time cooking noodles. I made it again tonight, but I just want to post some pictures & suggest some changes to the recipe.

I always seem to have more of the cheesy-egg mixture than I need, and less of the ground meat-sauce mixture than I need. So I'm going to change up the amounts accordingly.

For the cheesy mixture:
24 oz cottage cheese
1.5 c mozzarella cheese
1/4 c parmesan cheese
2 eggs
2 tsp parsley
Salt & pepper to taste

For the meat-sauce mixture:
I roll of sausage/1 lb of ground beef
2 32 oz jars of pasta sauce

Then alternate between 1 cup of cheesy and 3/4 cup of meaty!

Egg + pasta flour volcano

Cheesy mixture

Lasagna in progress

No you can't have lasagna

Lasagna straight out da oven

I saved the best for last. There's a picture of my delicious plate of lasagna on the left, and my asshole dog on the right, surreptitiously not-begging. Seriously, his head is just planted on the chair next to me and he is just standing with his head wedged in there. Like I'm going to be all like, "Oh hey! Didn't notice you there! Since you're being SO GOOD and NOT BEGGING, here's my plate. No, take it - I insist! You deserve it." Pit, please!

Guacamole by Mortar & Pestle

Last weekend Dennis and I met my parents for dinner at this Mexican restaurant called El Dorado. My dad ordered some guacamole and the waitress actually wheeled out a cart and made it for us at the table. It was pretty awesome, and Dennis was very taken with it. I deduced it after he asked me to get us a mortar & pestle while I was at Marshalls this week. I have mad deduction skills!

I got us some stuff to make guacamole and so tonight we made it. I learned from the recipe that guacamole comes from two Aztec Nahuatl words - ahuacatl & molli, or "avocado sauce." Interesting stuff!

Ingredients
2 avocados
1/3 red onion
1-2 hot peppers (I used 1 jalapeno and 1 purple coffee pepper)
2 tbsp cilantro leaves, finely chopped
1 tbsp lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
Dash of pepper
1/2 tomato (about 1/4 cup)

This is pretty basic. Just put all of the ingredients in the bowl and mash them up! If you don't have a mortar & pestle then you can use a fork to smash up the avocado. My dad told me to watch the waitress cut up the avocado, which was great because she did it way more quickly and efficiently than I used to. Well, never again!

She sliced it in half, longways around the seed. Then to remove the seed, she just whacked it with the knife so it got stuck, then pulled it out with the knife.

Neato!

Once the seed was out, Dennis just scooped the avocado out with a spoon and dumped it into the mortar. Then he started pestling.

Action shot!

Close up

 Then we added all the other ingredients and pestled some more. Annnnd scene!

This guacamole was pretty awesome and very easy to make. One quick tip - the recipe said don't add the tomatoes until right before they are being served. I'm guessing the tomatoes go bad more quickly than the rest of the ingredients. We put half of the recipe in a tupperware in the fridge, then added the tomato to the rest and pestled that as well.

Here is the link to the original recipe.

Prepping for Some Guacamole!

So I didn't actually make anything new for this post, but I wanted to talk about some stuff so I made up a post for it. First of all, look at my peppers.

The green ones are jalapenos, and the orange & red are... wait for it... PURPLE Trinidad coffee peppers. Say what? I read on some forums that they mature and turn red, but they have been turning orange also. This is insane. Note - they are still hot as all hellfire.

I said I didn't make anything new, but I did make something... more pineapple salsa. I had some on top of salmon last week and I was licking the freakin plate afterward (that is a slight exaggeration). However, I only used purple peppers in it, and I added more than last time. I was seriously coughing while I was cutting these peppers because they were so hot they invaded my face. I had to step back from the counter... that is actually NOT an exaggeration. I'm a little scared to eat this salsa, but I will be brave and keep some milk and bread nearby.

Don't look directly into the orange flecks!

For some reason, stores only sell cilantro in boat-loads so I have a ton of it left over. Dennis & I are going to make guacamole on Friday, so we'll use some more for that, but I still feel like I need to find more recipes that use it so it doesn't go to waste. I looked up how to preserve cilantro online and I found this: put it in a glass of water and stick it in the fridge. Easy peezy.

My cilantro bouquet

The last time I made mango avocado salsa, I saved the avocado seed and cared for it and loved it and stuff, and now it's a big avocado tree! Ok not really, but I did stick 3 toothpicks in it and suspend it in some water.

That was over a month ago, maybe 2 months ago, and since then the bottom has cracked open and roots are coming out! OMG! I even had to move it to a bigger glass so the roots could expand. I just have to wait for a stalk to come out of the top and then maybe I can put it in a pot with soil or something. Yay.

Wouldja look at that? Awesome. It's a bummer though, because I have read and heard from people that they rarely bear fruit. Sad. Well maybe MINE will be the one exception. :) That's all for now, ta-ta!

Sweet Potato Fries

Today I went to Whole Foods, or as my dad calls it - Whole Paychecks. HA! I have a $100 gift card there which is the only reason I went... otherwise I dunno if I could afford it. Actually it is not that bad because I try to only buy produce. If I bought half of the crap they sell there I would have burned through that $100 by now, but shockingly I have gone twice and STILL have money left over. Boo ya!

While I was shopping I realized I was getting a little hungry and I was in the mood for some sweet potato chips. I grabbed the least expensive bag and held off til I got back to my car to chow down. Mmm they were yummy. Then I thought, why don't I just make my own fries at home? I have a sweet potato at home leftover from another recipe so I thought it would be a piece of cake. So I read a bunch of recipes to make chips that all said the chips had to be cut super-thin. Then I decided since I suck at cutting things that I should try to make fries instead.

The commenters on the recipes for fries all bemoaned the fact that the fries never quite got crispy enough, even after various creative changes to the recipes. I had wanted to bake the fries, but everyone said they just turn out mushy so I decided I'd have to give in and use the deep fryer. Someone suggested that you soak the fries in ice water before you put them in the fryer because it removes some of the starch, which I guess means that starch = no crispy. However, if you do this MAKE SURE you dry the fries off before you put them in the fryer. Water + hot oil = big mess.

Chillin... heh heh.

I remembered that my uncle Blake gave me a tip recently that I had totally forgotten about. He said the trick is to fry the sweet potato fries once at 350 for a few minutes, remove them, then fry them again for a few minutes at 375. I couldn't remember what times he said so I kind of just played it by ear. My fries turned out browner than I would've liked, but they were crispy. I think next time I will have to cut them a little bigger and adjust my fry time.

I ate them with some salt, ketchup, and malt vinegar. They were pretty tasty. I'll try this again and update with the results if they turn out any better.