I am big fan of cooking. I love experimenting and trying out new recipes and just having the satisfaction of eating a home cooked meal. The other day my roommate and I decided to try something neither one of us has ever tried to make on our own before…. Lasagna. Now I have always helped my mom make lasagna and I am a big fan of the dish at restaurants. Hell I am Italian, I like several different types of pasta dishes and this is definitely in my top. So my roommate and I out of curiosity and hunger decided to give it a try.
We made our way to the local grocery store to pick up the ingredients for the meal and laid out all the essential dish wear and got to work. Following the recipe to a point, we were off to a great start. I was in charge of cutting up the ingredients and Caroline was in charge of cooking them. We had music going, rich smells of onion and garlic were filling the room until I noticed the noodles weren’t cooking properly. They were sticking together and looking a little over cooked.
I asked Caroline what she thought and she said that maybe we weren’t supposed to cook them. I started to question whether we were supposed to or not but even if we were or weren’t supposed to cook them, the noodles were ruined and we needed more. I decided that I would run back over to the store and get a new box to try again.
It was already hot in the kitchen so walking outside in the month of July on a hot summer day in Chicago was not helping either. I was sweating while speed walking to the store and was regretting my shoe choice of flip flops because it was not only slowing down my pace but also beginning to hurt my feet. Now the first store we went to was Trader Joe’s but instead of walking up to the second level there was an Aldi right next to it on the first floor and I was in a rush. So I ran in and out in about 5 minutes and began my journey home. While walking home I noticed on the box that you had to cook the noodles! When I got home I yelled to Caroline that we were fine and that we could use the noodles. I walked into her holding up the box pointing at the fine manuscript saying “Ready To Go-
No Need To Boil Noodles.” I just stood there with my mouth open in utter disbelief…. “You have got to be kidding me.” We laughed at our stupidity for a good minute and moved on and started over with the noodles.
We were almost done cooking when Caroline read the last part of the recipe which was to cook the lasagna for 25 minutes with tin foil covering it. We both looked up and we both knew what was wrong. We didn’t have any aluminum foil. This time it was Caroline’s turn to venture out and get us what we needed. She ran to 7/11 and I stayed and made sure the pasta this time was cooked properly. I burned myself several times mixing the pasta with scalding water splashing all over. A few swear words and several loud screams were thrown around, probably concerning the neighbors but all I could think about was this dish better taste good. When Caroline came back it was time to piece everything together.
Now the biggest obstacle of all was where we were going to do all this. Our counter space isn’t big enough to begin with and was already covered with our mess from preparing it and on top of it we don’t have a kitchen table just yet. So we improvised and dragged our tiny coffee table into the kitchen and set up everything on it. Caroline and I burned our fingers on several noodles placing them in but we had finally gotten everything together. Then we stuck the dish in the oven
and set the timer and sighed a breath of relief until we turned around and saw the mess we had to clean up. But first things first, we needed to cool down because the kitchen was about 10 degrees hotter than any other room in the house including outside. We busted open the back door and cooled down on the back porch asking ourselves why the hell we decided to make this dish and put ourselves through all this stress.
Cooking anything takes a lot of time and patience. You can’t rush any recipe and you have to be willing to put in the work. Yes, there was a lot things we did wrong in the making of this dish and definitely learned a lot from it with a few minor injuries along the way, but the end result was totally worth it. The lasagna turned out great and I must say just a few more times and I will have it down for keeps.
Girl On Kenmore 