October 1, 2012

The oven and stove ran all day. My lasagna took the bulk of that.  Starts with the sauce, a stock pot filled with tomatoes that completed their ripening in the living room.  Also carrots, zucchini, garlic and herbs from the garden – the onions and red wine were purchased.  It simmers for about 5-6 hours on the stove and reduces in half.  A rich tangy sauce that is WAY more work than reasonable for what it produces.  This is slow food at its best!  In addition to the base and top layer of the lasagna, this batch yielded 4 additional pints for the pantry.

In the meantime, 2 cookie sheets with sliced tomatoes roasting in the oven, an hour or two longer process than the sauce.  After roasting they go into the freezer for future pizza topping!

The lasagna…two layers of filling, one with roasted vegetables from the garden.  This one has peppers, brussel sprouts, carrots, garlic, a few remaining green beans and more of those purchased onions (gotta figure out how to grow onions!) This is my third lasagna for the season (last time there was a pesto layer).  Perhaps I need to branch out but it’s a nice way to use a lot of garden goodies and lasts the week and more! The second layer for this one was squash.  

The remaining delicata squash that were a little underdeveloped and then a little frost bit.  They won’t store long so we are cooking them up. They are a little starchy which is not like delicata at all. It must be related to one of the less than ideal conditions mentioned above.  The baked squash is mixed with ricotta cheese I made from farmer Ed’s milk.  We had extra again, Dottie has been working overtime! Between the sauce, the cheese and all of the baking and roasting, this lasagna is priceless!

An unplanned addition was the wild mushroom and rice soup. I had a small bag of honey mushrooms from my class this past weekend.  I had planned to put them I in the lasagna but was afraid they would get lost in with everything else.  The foraging experts recommended soup, since they need to cook 15 minutes in order to be palatable.  These are a variety of mushroom I would not put on the table on my own.  There are too many look alikes, including the little brown mushroom that can kill a grown adult single handedly! The wild rice in the panty, along with the left over bacon in the fridge, and more whole milk from Dottie, made for a lovely soup. Again, the herbs; oregano, garlic, celery and rosemary – all from Nammah’s garden!

For dinner I picked a beet and some arugala (still standing!) and added goat cheese and walnuts for one of my favorite fall salads!  In the kitchen all day!  No wonder my legs and back are tired. How did grandma do it?