lasagne two ways and biscuits

Meal: lasagne, salad, herby biscuits, snickerdoodles
Cooking time: about an hour and a half prep time, plus some baking time
Cost per person: about $2.50 each
Local ingredients: lettuce, milk, eggs
Organic ingredients: flour, spinach, tomatoes
Leftovers: about half the red sauce lasagne, three biscuits, and salad (the biscuits got eaten by me for lunch Monday, and the salad provided most of Sunday night’s dinner, along with some leftover lasagne, which lasted several days)

Saturday night we had my two sisters and my cousin over for board games and dinner. All the recipes were from my big red Betty Crocker cookbook.

We made two lasagnes: one with TVP and red sauce, and one with white sauce and spinach. (Small confession: I have been fiending for spinach lately. I finally broke down and got some for the lasagne on Saturday night. Yes, it was from California, thus eatting into my gratuitious food miles for awhile. Yes, it was organic. Yes, it was utterly delicious.) The pasta recipe was our standard recipe, and two 8×8 pans of lasagne took the entire recipe. The red sauce lasagne took about a cup of dry TVP, which made about 2 cups of hydrated TVP (cover TVP with boiling water; wait.) You can do a lot with TVP, and it would be better if I started learning how to do things with it instead of using it plain, but in the highly spiced tomato sauce, plain TVP was fine. Thanks to the advice of multiple people, I did not boil my noodles this time, and they turned out great.

The white sauce was dead easy. Melt two tablespoons butter (or heat two tablespoons olive oil, which will make a lovely rich sauce) in a small saucepan. Add 2 tablespoons flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper, and combine well. Reduce heat and slowly add in a cup of milk, stirring weel after each addition to prevent lumps. Bring to a boil and boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add a touch of garlic powder and nutmeg.

The biscuit recipe was my stock biscuit recipe; I added some parsley, garlic powder, and pepper to make them more dinner like.

The snickerdoodles were a treat:

- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup stick margarine or butter, softened
- 1/2 cup shortening (I used vegetable oil. They tasted great.)
- 2 large eggs
- 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- sugar
- cinammon

Heat oven to 400. Cream together sugar, butter, shortening/oil, and eggs. Add in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. You will not have your standard creamy, almost liquidy cookie dough. You will have a bowl full of lumps. Do not despair. Mix up some sugar and cinammon in a bowl. Take some dough, roll it into a ball, and roll it around in the cinammon sugar. Place cookies on an ungreased sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes (I like mine on the shorter end of that range). I made a half batch and got 2 dozen cookies, most of which vanished Saturday night.

I made up the lasagnes in the afternoon before people got here; I made up the biscuits right before everything was due to go in the oven (and discovered that saying “Well, I’ll just put in the biscuits at 350 and cook them with the lasagne” doesn’t work. They really do need to be cooked at 400.) The salad got thrown together while the lasagne had come out and the biscuits were browning. I made up the cookies during a break between games.

This coming week is spring break. This means catching up on blog posting, and trying new recipes. :)