From Scratch Week One

The good:

I made this meal from "scratch". It is lasagna, salad and bread. It was good, although a bit salty (Chris thinks this is because the recipe called for ground beef and ground pork and I substituted italian sausage). Everyone helped (slightly), and we did in fact consume the meal lovingly at the table.








The bad:

The whole impetus for making lasagna (as opposed to some other meal that I am more familiar with making) was that the boy had wanted to make it. But by the time I had come back from the store with the needed ingredients, he had a friend over and a sleepover planned very little interest in browning sausage and boiling noodles. I got him to shred some cheese. In fact, as far as "family involvement" that is what everyone did. The girl and Chris also grated some cheese. I did everything else.

Also, I cut my finger rather badly on the stupid mandolin whilst trying to slice carrots for the salad and the stupid pan overflowed a bit in the oven, resulting in a mess in said oven as well as a smoky house.

The indifferent:


This is all the ingredients I used that I had to open a package, box or other container for. It seems like a lot. I did not grow tomatoes, they came from a can. I didn't bake my own bread, I did not raise the chickens that the eggs came from, nor did I create my own cottage cheese. I also didn't make my own noodles. Is this still "from scratch"? I don't know. What I can say is that it took me TWO HOURS to make, and that is time I definitely could have spent reading or pursuing any number of other pursuits more enjoyable than this one.



Overall, a mixed bag. I'll try again next week (actually, next week Chris is on deck for the scratch meal, he is going to do something with these really thick pork chops we have in the freezer).

Lastly, here  is a picture of my dog. Because he is cute and because I got a new camera and he has been the quite unwilling subject of many photos for the past week or so. This one I found particularly amusing... this is the face he makes when he thinks he is in trouble, or when he is about to get medicine (he was neither in trouble nor about to get medicine when I took this picture, but he seems to think that getting his picture taken is its own brand of trouble and/or medicine).