It’s that time of year again! The snap is in the air, the leaves are changing, and it’s time once again to make apple cider. For the past 3 years we’ve gotten together with my wife’s family to participate in making as much apple cider as we can with as many apples as we can get. It’s an all day event, which usually last into the dark of the evening. This year was no exception.
The Shredenator
When I got married, my wife brought along some recipes. One of those was for a dish called Swiss Cheese Chicken. It really was just a good, simple dish – and I love it. Last night was one of those nights that I actually had some time to cook dinner – I love cooking, no doubt about it, I do love it.
In fact I remember one time, I had just started dating this girl – but she had been asked out to some school dance before we started going out. No biggie, but here’s the catch. She asked if I would cook them dinner – I said “Sure!”, because I love cooking. At any rate, as I digress here…
So moving on to the actual dish. The prep time varies because if you have frozen pork chops then they’ll take awhile to defrost – I don’t like to use the microwave to defrost, because it can cook edges and turn out gross, I like to let them sit on the counter or if I’m pressed for time use hot water to thaw.
So it’s Saturday night, and I’m feeling alright. But I’m bored, and I’ve been kind of coped up too long in the house. Then came the critical question “What should we have for dinner?”. I hate that question, because it’s generally at the point where I’m hungry and ready to just call it and go somewhere for food that makes me and the family ill or that we could make for a whole lot cheaper (yes, I’m pretty addicted to going out to eat, even with all it’s pit falls and side effects).
My wife suggested Lasagna – and I do love it, but it takes so long and I didn’t think we had all the ingredients for a yummy batch, but really when has having the right ingredients ever stopped me? So here we go, the relatively quick and easy lasagna…
I started with what I had for noodles, turns out we had a box of over ready noodles – that means no boiling. I used 9 noodles for 3 layers and started by laying down 3 on the bottom of a 13×9. This brings up an issue (and it goes right along with hot dogs and buns – you know, too many hotdogs, not enough buns so you end up buying more buns when you don’t need them, Why can’t they make a normalized noodle size? Too short for a 13×9 but too big for a 9×9, what gives!!!)