Wednesday, March 3, 2010

March at Last!

So, it's finally March. February felt oddly long for me, but March is bringing a lot 0f change. New season, new course at uni, new plans, and so on. Oh, and now having to pay full price on public transport because apparently postgraduate students aren't real students *gripe*

Now while I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year and the coming month both, seemingly everyone else I know has taken it upon themselves to get sick (probably has something to do with that lovely alternation between searingly hot and cold and rainy that my beloved city tends to do so very well). As of right now, I do not have this dubious honour, and am attempting to continue on in this way by employing my three proven ways of staying well: resting, staying warm, and good food.




Homemade lasagne (vegetarian of course). Looks awesome, does it not? And it tasted even better...

I was particularly pleased with this one because it was the first time I'd tried my hand at lasagne, and I didn't use a recipe. I've noticed that more and more these days I tend to rely less on recipes. What I do instead (and this is made So Much Easier with the internet, and the wealth of information that it provides upon the simple entering of a few choice words into Google) is find a handful of different recipes for a dish, read through them, take note of the key points, and then make my own version. I did the same thing day before yesterday with homemade toasted museli (which may warrant a blog post of its own in the near future, so awesome was the result). While this method might not be for everyone, I'm finding it works really well for me. I'm very much of the opinion that one of the best things about cooking yourself is being able to tailor recipes to suit your individual likes and dislikes, and this method lets you do this while hopefully making a minimum of fatal errors (and while I dearly love doing my own thing, I'll be the first to acknowledge that cooking does contain a great many non-negotiable rules).

At any rate, for all those playing along at home, I filled my lasagna with instant dried pasta sheets, basic tomato sauce (made from onion, garlic, passata, bay leaves, olive oil and a slurp of some gifted red wine that was, ahem, not really a desirable drinking option, with some baby spinach tossed in at the end), thinly sliced zucchini and pumpkin, and a small amount of grated mozzarella cheese. I topped it with more sauce, poured some extra passata around the edges (because I was clever and didn't make enough sauce), and then topped it with some more cheese and some dried basil and oregano. Once it came out of the oven, I put some fresh basil on top, because I am a fiend for basil. And I lived off the leftovers for three days. Happy Anna.




In knitting news, the boy has been walking around wearing several shop bought scarves. As you can all probably imagine, this simply will not do. It's been a while now - I think I can tempt fate and knit him one. After all, they call it the "sweater curse", not the scarf curse. I am planning on knitting this scarf in the worsted Malabrigo pictured above, just like this version.

Yes, I think I might be in the middle of a bit of a cable binge. Oh well - at least there will be pretty things by the end of it.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

'worsted'? It looks quite bested, to me!

Okay, cringe, sorry.

choperena said...

Pish posh, a scarf is closer to a swatch than it is to a sweater. There can't possibly be a curse associated with something as trivial as a dishcloth!

(and since this is the internet, I will disclaim that the previous statement was sarcasm, filled with wishes for good luck, and noting that the texture looks awesome!)

Abby said...

Looking at the torturous photo of your lasagna has me thinking (torturous because I can only look and not eat) that someday, in a futuristic sci-fi alternate reality, we will be able to feed each other via the internet. Until then...

And speaking of the future, the future scarf looks great, very manly.

Unknown said...

Awww. Scarfy goodness!
Do you qualify for a low income health care card? That's how I get concession travel as a postgrad.

Shannon said...

Wow, that lasagna looks delicious, and I'm so excited about seeing your new scarf! Just so you know, I had to change the url for my blog, and so I also changed the title, but it's still the exact same blog, if you've been following me. That Mal worsted looks downright fabulous.

Shannon said...

Oh, and also, I tagged you for a little game that I did on my blog in my latest post, if you'd like to participate.