Sunday and Buon Giorno

I woke up Sunday morning at 7:15 AM and put on a pot of coffee. I wasn't going to do breakfast, but then I remembered the 3/4 pound of bacon that's sitting in the fridge I need to use soon. So, I turned the oven to 400 degrees F and got out my cookie sheet and rack. I lined the cookie sheet with tinfoil (for easy clean-up) and put in the rack. The bacon went on, strip by strip, the "meaty" part of each strip being slightly covered by the "fatty" part of the next strip. This gives you chewy bacon (which I like) but just let each strip stand alone if you prefer more crunchy bacon. Then I liberally applied fresh ground black pepper (I love bacon with black pepper!) and, when the "preheated" signal went off, I put the pan in the oven for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile I emptied the dishwasher and cleaned up the few remaining pots from last night's dinner. I am contemplating today's main course, Sunday dinner: Three Cheese Lasagna with Meat Sauce. I had it all planned yesterday, but two things happened. First, the recipe I settled on contained spinach and, after last night's dinner, I am not sure I want to taste spinach again for a while (even though I do have leftover Spinach Stuffed Chicken to deal with, lol!) Second, I received the Cook's Illustrated magazine in the mail yesterday.

Cooks Illustrated is a magazine put out by the same folks who do the show "America's Test Kitchen" on PBS stations. It has NO advertisements and hundreds of beautiful line drawings, rather than photographs. They take either a theme (say roasted chicken or salmon) or a product (orange juice or serrated knives, for example) and test them, giving you their opinion of the best product or recipe.

Anyway, in this month's magazine (well, actually it comes every two months, but I'm not sure how to write that) was an article about a simple Italian meat sauce. It's a little more complicated and has fewer ingredients, so I am thinking of combining the two (leaving out the damn spinach!)

But, now the bacon's done. BTW, this is the easiest way to make bacon. And, cleanup's a cinch! If you save bacon fat (like I do) just take off the rack, pour the grease into a coffee cup and put it in the fridge. Let the remaining (or all of it, if you don't want to save it) grease harden a bit, then just crumble up the tin foil and throw it away. No muss, no fuss! Since I hadn't planned on breakfast, I am not bothering with eggs or anything. I just made two pieces of toast, applied mayonnaise, added three strips of bacon (broken in half) and ate my sandwich. The rest of the bacon went into a baggie and then the fridge, the bacon grease got saved and my tummy is happy.
Okay, so I gotta tell ya, I am sick and tired of cat hair! In spite of brushing Caley almost every day, I still find it on my clothes at work, in my nose when I wake up, on the couches and chairs, etc. So, today is a total house cleaning (my back be damned!)

All of the throws from the chairs in the living room went into the dryer with a fabric softener on "Fluff" to try and pull the hair off. The back room, kitchen and both bathrooms were swept, then wet-mopped. The living room and bedroom dusted and the floors were run over with the electric sweeper, and then the dust mop, sprayed with Endust. The dust mop got shaken off every few minutes on the front porch (a little chilly as I am in my shorts, T-shirt and slippers). Since I knew what efforts I would be putting forth, my shave and shower will come afterwards, as I am sweating like a pig. I did, of course, brush my teeth first thing this morning. Hey, I may be practical, but I'm not gross!

The floors now dry; I moved the chairs, the rolling butcher block and the trash basket back into the kitchen from the living room and finished the living room at about 1:00 PM. The throw rugs in the kitchen and main bath, along with all the kitchen towels and the dry dust mop head (I wash it, but let it air-dry or the plastic cracks, I found) went into the washer. Then I washed down the main bath (remember, I keep that until last so I always can use a bathroom, if necessary, lol!) At 1:40 PM, I decided I was finished and it was time for a shower (I skipped the shave). Nice and clean again, I laid down for a nap, not really expecting to fall asleep. But I did and woke up at 4:00.

Now, onto dinner! I won't bore you with all details, but it did involve using my food processor, so, as long as I had to clean it anyway, I went ahead and made some more sweet and spicy coleslaw, first.

So, the only additions I made to the Cooks Illustrated recipe was to add in two hot Italian sausages, with the casing removed, 1/4 cup of finely shredded carrots and 1/4 cup of chopped fresh basil. I also didn't have a big can of crushed tomatoes, but I did have one of whole tomatoes, so I used that after squishing each tomato with my hand. Sure, I could have used the food processor or even a blender, but that's fun! When it was all done simmering, I checked for season and it was perfect! I'm not kidding, either!!

The problem I had was the size of my lasagna pan. Most recipes call for a 9x13x2 inch glass dish, and I don't have one. The only rectangular glass dish I have is smaller, maybe 8x12x1 1/2. Then, I do have a stainless steel lasagna pan, but it's huge (and doubles as a roaster). But, that's all I have to use, so I did. Why is that important? Because this uses seven lasagna noodles instead of the usual five, which means that the layers are thinner than I would like, when using the normal amounts of meat sauce and cheeses.

Another problem is that I should have brought the ricotta cheese to room temperature, as when I tried to spread it, it was very difficult.

So, when all is said and done, I ended up with a very good tasting lasagna, albeit a little shorter than I would have liked, with an occasional thicker bite of ricotta cheese. So, I'd give it an "A" on taste, but just a "C+" on presentation.

I cleaned up all the pots and pans (yes, I still boil the noodles first, no matter what anybody says!) and then wandered in to watch my Sunday shows. I was amazed that the Extreme Makeover, Home Edition house shown tonight was built in Farmville, Virginia! Why is that so unusual? Because I've been in Farmville! It was about 7 miles from where Luanne lived when she first moved to Virginia. This is the second time they've built a house in a town I've been to (the first was Armada, Michigan)

I finished watching Iron Chef America at 11:00 PM and went to sleep.