A Lasagna That Worked, Finally
November 2, 2025
I am a person without a reliable lasagna recipe. Over the decades, I’ve tried to make them, but, weirdly, have never had much success. Being fall, I ran across a recipe for pumpkin lasagna rolls and thought that sounded good. Tried it and it worked.
The sauce is onions, garlic, fresh whole sage, pumpkin spices, flour, pumpkin, milk, parmesan, s/p. The filling is ricotta, mozzarella, egg, pumpkin spices, red pepper flakes, s/p. Cook noodles, and then stuff them with the filling. Spread sauce on bottom of dish, lay the stuffed rolls on top, put more sauce on top and then a mix of mozzarella and parm. Bake covered, then uncover to brown.
Not bad.
Missed a shot of the final. But it was beautiful.
Uh… No
October 12, 2025
If one combines the above ingredients, a healthy version of a homemade Butterfingers candy bar is supposed to be the result.
That was not the result.
Continuing my bold tradition of trying new recipes on dinner guests yielded yet another fail. I was okay with that as we had two backup desserts (both of which we served). But sheeesh, these Facebook Reels cooking videos are killing me.
Oh, here’s what the Butterfingers looked like when done:
It’s in an 8″x8″ glass pan and will spend 4 hours in the icebox setting.
Here’s what I did: Heated peanut butter, maple syrup and molasses over a low flame until it boiled, added some vanilla and a sprinkle of salt. Added that to a bowl of cornflakes, mixed it well then pressed it into the pan. Melted chocolate with a bit of butter and spread that over the top.
As I said: uh… no.
Not Fried Fried Rice
October 9, 2025
You cook a batch of easy rice cooker rice, spread it on a sheet pan, add chopped carrots, onions, scallions and salt/pepper. Then sprinkle with sesame oil, soy sauce, some garlic-infused melted butter, and some sesame seeds. Make two wells and crack eggs into those. Bake in a hot oven for 15 mins.
Cut up the well-cooked eggs, toss it all together and serve. I’ll reduce the salt next time, otherwise yummy, crispy.
Almost Two Quarts
October 7, 2025
So this is what became of the arm load of basil Jim brought in from the garden a couple days ago.
It generated 15 cups of packed basil leaves, enough for three batches of Ina Garten’s recipe.
The pesto making begins…
Her recipe is slightly different than pestos I’ve made in the past.. but not much. Hers has walnuts and pine nuts, and she adds a fair amount of salt and pepper. She also may use more garlic than most. I ended up not using as much oil as she called for.
But look at this!
I figure each of those is about 1/2 a cup. There are 14 of those, plus the nearly 1 cup of pesto I set aside for last night’s dinner. That’s two quarts.. which oughta last us the winter. Into the freezer these have gone. I left the parmesan out of the ones I’m freezing. I’m thinking about 2T of grated parm, added just before serving, will be about right.
That’s what we did last night and it was perfect! Here it is, pre-parm garnish.
Mind Diet Mousse
September 7, 2025
Lots of talk these days about anti-dementia food choices. The MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) diet is the preferred strategy. It’s a hybrid of the Mediterranean and DASH diets. They are all about upping fatty fish (salmon, sardines), berries (esp blueberries), olive oil, dark leafy greens (like kale, chard, spinach), nuts, seeds, spices (turmeric, cinnamon), whole grains (oats, brown rice), cruciferous veggies (broc, Brussels), and poultry. Have I left anything out? They like foods high in antioxidants and polyphenols. They want you to minimize (or eliminate) red meats, butter, cheeses, sugar, and especially, ESPECIALLY processed foods.
We do that, mostly. I’m still sussing out whether my protein powder of choice is a processed food (most are, but the Transparent Labs brand may be okay). I’m also trying to figure out how much of the good stuff (cheese, butter, sweets) you can allow yourself, especially if you prioritize the MIND diet foods.
With that in mind (so to speak), Madeline’s theme tonight for our quarterly Dining Divas gathering was the Mind Diet. For her main dish, she made a Mediterranean chicken dish with rice and kale. Carol brought tsatsiki, olives and pita; Tracy brought roasted sesame carrots; Rissa brought a salad with a raspberry vinaigrette and I brought up the rear with this:
The photo is a pre-garnish version of the MIND Diet’s chocolate mousse. It’s made with — don’t gag — avocados, dutch cocoa powder and maple syrup (and a wee amount of vanilla, milk, salt). It was not sweet enough for me, so for that garnish, instead of pomegranate seeds, I used candied spiced walnuts and pecans (which I made, that had maple syrup, molasses, olive oil, and spices). I also served a MIND Diet version of banana bread (oat flour, ww flour, barely any sugar, but otherwise a common assortment of banana bread ingredients). None of that was exceptional, but all reasonably tasty and certainly checked a lot of MIND Diet boxes.
I’m satisfied that Jim and I eat well enough. Though I’m not planning to make that mousse again.
Spaghetti Alla Nerano
September 5, 2025
A few days ago, I came across a cooking video where a heavily accented man makes a simple but fantastic looking pasta dish with fried zucchini. I watched it probably 5 times and decided I wanted to make it (as I do). The dish is Spaghetti alla Nerano. We made it last night.
Turns out this is a signature dish of Amalfi region of Italy. It comes from a coastal town called Nerano on the edge of the Sorrento Peninsula (near Naples). Just a few key ingredients: olive oil and butter, the fried thinly sliced zucs, pecorino romano cheese, parmesano-reggiano, garlic, basil, s/p. Here’s what they say about the cheese:
Traditionally, spaghetti alla nerano is made with Provolone del Monaco, a semi-hard cheese that’s difficult to find in the US. Your next best option is caciocavallo, but I had a hard time finding that as well, and the guy at the cheese stand told me to go for the third best, which is pecorino romano.
I got all the way through the prep and, as I was cleaning up a bit before the cooking began, split open the end of my right index finger when grabbing the slicing blade of the food processor. I bandaged it up and asked Jim if he’d do the cooking part. I was delighted he said yes.
The thinly sliced zucs (on right) are fried in the olive oil til browned. Butter is then added to the oil, garlic is smashed and infuses the olive oil/butter, then removed. Then the undercooked (just below al dente) spaghetti is added with some pasta water, the zucs come back, more butter’s added and finally the cheeses, which makes a rich sauce. Torn basil is thrown on top.
And the finished product:
It was honestly so good (!) and so..different. Very rich. Will make again.
Thanks Maribel!
June 28, 2025
I feel all Sunset Magazine-y.
Picture this: smiling people, casually standing around a kitchen island, drinking cocktails and wine and laughing, eating gorgeous looking appetizers, while the host puts the final touches on dinner.. music playing (though not too loudly, in deference to Jim who believes people need to be able to hear one another… lol).
Backstory: tonight it was our turn to host what is becoming a nice dinner eightsome — Carrie & Marc, Joe & Janet, Pam & Bill and Jim & me. Since Jim and I had just returned from Spain, France and Portugal, we decided to cook some somethings from said countries. As we’d had such a fantastic culinary experience at the Terra Hotel in Bonansa, Spain, courtesy of proprietor and chef extraordinaire Maribel, we decided to replicate (or attempt to replicate) a couple of her dishes. We built a menu around her very picture-worthy cold squash soup and an equally picture-worthy zucchini carpaccio. I should say that when I contacted Alejandro and Maribel, Maribel was delighted to share the approximate ingredients of both of these dishes, but she generally cooks by feel and couldn’t provide the exact quantities. So we improvised as best we could! I’d taken photos when in Bonansa and, amazingly, we got very close to her presentation on both.
Rounding out the menu:
Cocktails: Joe was the cocktail meister and brought ingredients for three different concoctions reminiscent of the regions of travel… I can’t even begin to describe, but I loved the two I had!
Appetizers: I put out some Mediterranean cheeses and olives, and Carrie brought a traditional Spanish shrimp tapa. Incredible.
Soup course: Jim made Maribel’s chilled butternut squash soup w/ roasted pepitas, an edible flower, and a corn cracker.
Dinner: I made a Mediterranean-style baked salmon with tomatoes, olives, red onions, capers, lemon, garlic, herbs (it was an impressive slab-o-salmon surrounded by vibrant color) and smashed roasted tiny red and yellow potatoes. And this is where we served the zucchini carpaccio.
Dessert: Jim’s cookies (two kinds), garden strawberries, and Pam’s amazing fruit crisp w/ ice cream and sorbet.
I, myself, did not take photos during the evening.. but Pam did.. so here are some shots of tonight’s dinner party (I guess I can call it by its fancy name).
[Fun fact: Pam was actually the food editor for Sunset Magazine sometime in the 80s.]
No pic of the salmon or potatoes, but here are the ingredients I prepped earlier in the day
Joe bartending…
My favorite of my two cocktails used these ingredients:
Jim and me assembling the cold soup…
Our finished version next to Maribel’s…
Here’s a side by side of our zucchini and Maribel’s:
Not bad, huh?
And here we all are:
The one picture I took tonight…
National politics did not come up once. Now that’s a nice evening.
Who Turned Out the Lights?
February 11, 2025
I’d just finished making dinner, had just served up the plates, and Jim and I were just about to carry said plates to the table.. when poof, the lights went out. (Turns out, a tree fell on a PG&E line down the street and knocked out power for 226 of us.)
I grabbed my phone-slash-flashlight to illuminate my way over to the candles, selected a few and fired them up, then sat down to eat.
It was a pretty decent dinner. I’d cleaned out the freezer earlier in the day and decided I needed to make something for dinner that made use of a frozen pie shell, a packet of frozen Italian sausages, and a bag of frozen butternut squash. I entered those ingredients into the googles and came up with “Butternut Squash Quiche with Italian Sausage and Sage.” (wow.. you go googles). I still had to go the the coop for eggs, cream and goat cheese .. and salad stuff, but was pleased and amused by the whole execution.
Not bad. Especially as that pie shell was easily 3 years old and had been a nuisance in our freezer pretty much all that time.
We spent the rest of the night next to the fire for max warmth and coziness.
We went to bed kind of early (for me), and power came back on at about 11:00.. just four hours of dark/coldness.
Souper French Onion!
February 1, 2025
I’m loving the French Onion soup I made tonight..
Took about an hour to carmelize 3 large white onions, but after that, the rest was easy. The hour gave me time to prep the rest of the dinner.
Life of Wry 