Carbo-loading

The other day I was flipping through (ha! I mean... poring over every minute detail of) one of the many home decor magazines I subscribe to that pile up at Sherri's house. Sherri is so awesome that she actually brings those piles of magazines to me in the UK. They might not take up that much room but let me tell you those babies will easily put you over the weight limit. Anyway, at the back of the Nov 2011 House Beautiful, in the "Kitchen of the Month" section, I came across a recipe for Lemon-Ricotta Lasagna. I instantly had a "I WANT THIS" feeling about it, never mind the fact that I don't even like lasagna and the fact that I have a rule against making anything that I haven't seen a picture of first. It surprised me even more considering my last experience with lasagna was at the home of our dog walkers (who are vegetarian), where it was filled with pretty much every vegetable I DON'T LIKE. Ugh. I'm shuddering just thinking about it. I don't even think it had cheese. My rule about lasagna is: if it doesn't have meat, it should only have cheese, and red sauce, and noodles. Nothing funky. Take note everyone, in case you ever feel like making me lasagna.

My favorite part about this recipe is how the ricotta is blended with lemon juice/zest and basil. It is so good! It keeps the ricotta layer from being this strangely-textured, tasteless mush. Also, I liked how the tomato sauce is kept simple without any gross herbs (yes, I am 9 and don't even TALK to me about rosemary or fennel). And my other other favorite part is that you don't need to cook the noodles before you put it all together. There is also cheese. Like, a ton of cheese. I also want to point out that the recipe says to use a 9in round casserole, which seemed like sheer madness to me considering lasagna is rectangular so I used a 7x10in (roughly) rectangular dish from Ikea. I expect nothing less from a person who is quoted as saying "we felt the kitchen deserved a La Cornue", which means they paid $40,000 for a stove. Which means they haven't even HEARD of Ikea.

You think that looks good? This is what it looked like the next day when I reheated a piece in the microwave. So look at this pic, and then imagine something about 10 times better. I make a lot of food that is pretty good, not amazing, but definitely edible, but this lasagna was off the charts in "did I really make this?" territory.

Maybe because I haven't had lasagna in so long, eating it really reminded me of carbo-loading team dinners in high school the night before a cross-country race. Not that I ever ate lasagna back then either. No, back then I normally requested some plain spaghetti from whichever mom was hosting the dinner and proceeded to douse it in ranch dressing. That's how I rolled back then. Pizza dipped in ranch for lunch at least 3 days a week (including race day), pretzels with nacho cheese, rice with teriyaki sauce, and cinnamon rolls. And Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supremes (YES). Also, on Thursdays (post race-day "long slow distance" easy days) my friend Lauren and I would stash some cash in our running shorts, separate ourselves from the rest of the team, "run" to an Italian restaurant by school where we would help ourselves to a huge pile of spaghetti with what I remember to be a to-die-for tomato and mushroom sauce and garlic bread.

Somehow (I think running uncounted miles per week had something to do with it), even with the most ridiculous diet ever, I managed to be about the size of a small twig. For the first couple years of of high school, I wore Gap KIDS you guys.

And then I went to college, stopped exercising altogether, and ate a steady diet of grilled cheese (with American cheese obvi), pancakes, cookies, Coca-cola, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and 1in thick quesadillas and wondered why I gained wait. On the plus side - I could finally fit into J.Crew, which I think we can all agree is a Good Thing.

PS Flight to the US at 6am on Thursday!