That Time I Attempted the World's Best Lasagna

Our kids and I agreed that lasagna provided the best solution for our gathering at our son’s house two days before Christmas. Most of the work could be done ahead—by me. On party day, it would be a cinch to pop them out of the freezer into his oven. Cleanup would be a breeze compared to a turkey. With one kid providing salad and another dessert, this mama’s job would pretty much be done.

You know where this is going.

I couldn’t simply throw together my ordinary open-a-can-of-pasta-sauce-don’t-measure-anything lasagna. Not when it was our Christmas dinner. And not with our foodie son-in-law around. I Googled “lasagna recipe” and what popped up but “World’s Best Lasagna.” World’s best? What could top that? I skimmed the ingredients. It looked doable and delicious. Three large pans would feed our crew, which meant tripling everything. Of course, the American recipe listed ingredients in pounds and ounces so again, I used Google to convert to metric. I made my shopping list. 

My shopping list(s)

I should have checked it twice.

In addition to two and a quarter pounds of ground beef, I’d need two pounds of bulk Italian sausage. My store had only one pound. The meat clerk advised I’d get the same product if I bought the links, slit the casing, and simply used the sausage inside. I did.

In the cheese department, I grabbed a large block of mozzarella and some Parmesan. The recipe called for ricotta cheese, but when I saw the price, I reached for good old cottage cheese instead. We could settle for the World’s Second-Best Lasagna.

Besides the lasagna noodles already in my pantry, I’d need 24 more. Lucky for me, one of the better brands was on sale for the same price as the store brand. The print on the box was written in Italian, but I saw a large number “24” on the front. What else could that mean but 24 noodles?

You know where this is going.

When I added the price of all my ingredients, it totaled $30 per pan or almost $2.50 a serving, not counting my labor. But hey, it would be worth it for the World’s Second-Best Lasagna. I happily looked forward to the next morning. Lasagna-making day!

Whoa, that's a lotta sauce!

That’s when I realized all that meat and all those cans of tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste would not fit in my biggest pot. No way. I do own a large stock pot, but I’d need that one for cooking 36 noodles. What to do? If I made the sauce in the stock pot, I’d need to ladle it into something else in order to cook the noodles. Maybe I should cook the noodles first and set them aside. But the sauce was supposed to simmer for an hour and a half. What to do? I ended up browning the meat in my large pot, then dividing everything between two crock pots. It barely fit. Boy, that seemed like an awful lot of sauce. I recalculated everything, confident my measurements were correct according to the recipe. I guess time would tell when I tried to fit everything in the pans.

 

More calculating

Next, the noodles. Uh oh. The box of fancy Italian noodles held only twelve. Why on earth hadn’t I grabbed two? Should I skimp on noodles and settle for the World’s Third-Best Lasagna? Hubby had the car, so I couldn’t just run back to the store. Would our neighborhood corner store carry lasagna noodles? I ventured the three blocks down the sidewalk, doubting they would. I was right. Oh well. It was a nice day and I needed the exercise. I walked the seven blocks to the next nearest store. No lasagna noodles. That settled it. I’d have to leave the assembling of the lasagna for the next day. You probably know where this is going, but I’m out of space. You’ll need to wait for the rest of my lasagna sagna. Er, saga.

To be continued next week.