This isnt a food blog. I am a dad parent trying to help bring up my two kids. It is about me and the topics of modern dads with their kids. However, I seem to be thinking more about food these days. I dont know why it should be a continuing topic, but... here it is again.
As I said in my last post here, I dont want to spend TOO much time in the kitchen. There is a limit to it. (But admittedly in the last couple weeks I have spent no time as I have had to work in the shop every day, but maybe that will swing back come next September. It can change again). Three hours is the limit really. I like Mexican and Italian food and they are easier to prepare, and everyone likes them.
My old specialty was Lasagne and now it is becoming homemade spaghetti sauce with spaghetti. There is a degree of trial and error when you are making the meal for the first times. For instance I used grated pork meat one time for the spaghetti sauce and that did not taste the same. Grated beef it had to be. My daughter didnt like the grated pork, but i had to agree with her. But as much as I would like to experiment with the recipe and add this or that or take away this, I just cant with my daughters.
I have been making Lasagne now for about three years. I have it down so I can kind of make it in my sleep. But, no I cant. Because i have to be careful of everything along the way to make sure it is done correctly. Listen now on the process and what can "go wrong".
A long time ago I learned I had to make it only one way. I couldnt experiment with spinach or other cheeses or other meats, they had to stay the same. I used salami ham once and my wife complained and said dont use the cheap salami ham. You have to use the real ham. Dont cheat on the ingredients just to make it cheaper. (Boy, she would have been fired a long time ago if she worked at a food services company. Making it more economical with lower priced ingredients is the name of the game). 
so many, but only one will work
I did get away with buying a cheaper lasagne but my daughters found me out once and said, "dont use that cheap lasagne noodle. That one isnt good." So what I did was get the expensive brand once and keep the box and put the bargain brand in the more expensive box. They havent noticed. The noodle which costs less is A LOT less. I just cant splurge all the time on the premium brand. It is twice as much money.
And I have settled on a gouda cheese. It is not too pricey but tastes good. I guess I would like to try a mozzarella some time, but that means extra pay and I am afraid by now that my daughters would complain and say, "what is that?". So I get a chunk of gouda.
Luckily the sauce and the yogurt are pretty steady and always the same and not difficult to make. I did once put my own spaghetti sauce into the lasagne sauce when I started my own spaghetti sauce making. It was so so. It wasnt extra time because I just used extra sauce from my spaghetti, but it means a spaghetti meal and then a lasagne meal and that is too much back to back. And the extra time and work wasnt worth it. The standard sauce was good.
Once I get down to the making of the lasagne I have to have checks along the way. The biggest let down and problem I have is that the bottom layer lasagne noodle is always harder than the other layers. I have experimented with more oil, or none, different cooking configurations, soaking the noodles first and other things, but nothing works or just messes up the recipe. And it isnt because of the brand of lasagne noodle as the more expensive one does just the same thing. This is a continuing monkey wrench in my creation.
What I do now is I let my younger daughter test the cheese and yogurt sauce before i put it on. I got into trouble a couple times with messing up that sauce. Too much pepper, too much salt, that is bad. Not enough cheese. Unless I make it after the girls go to school, I have to let her taste it to make sure it wont not pass her test.
I was getting bad comments from my younger daughter on the bad quality before that. In the end she would always eat two pieces (her allotment) and take one of Mommys pieces. Or else she saves two pieces for her lunch for the next day. After all the complaints she made, she always ate her shares AND the next days anyway. In other words, there was something wrong, but it was good enough.
These days my older daughter is complaining about my lack of cooking time length. "Cook it longer," she says. "You have to cook it till the cheese is browner in more places." "But I have been cooking it for an hour," I say. "It has to be cooked for an hour and ten minutes then. The cheese has to be brown on the top". The last time I made it and just put it in the fridge for them to cook before dinner. When I came home it was in fact cooked so that MOST of the cheese topping was brown, not burnt, but brown in more of the top. All the same she was usually taking two pieces and eating them. She always eats it by layers. She makes such a mess of it, it pains me to see my creation mutilated before it is downed. And some of it remains on the plate. The hard bottom layer is usually left on the plate.
I guess there are still some problems with cooking it and I cant cook it in my sleep. Still, a simple thank you, "it was a good meal" would be nice. But it is usually a twenty minute meal and run back to see who wrote on the phone messages to them. I guess it is too much to ask for a thank you. Kids dont seem to see the need to pet the egos of their parents, UNLESS they know they are going to get a serious yelling at if they dont administer praise or sorrys. But, I am not in that category.
Oh well. A lot of things parents have to do for their own joy and satisfaction. And only they know they got it right.
PS - I cooked it yesterday and my younger daughter said, "the ham was strange. But it was still tasty, but the ham was strange". She had half the lasagne.
Cook it yourself. And listen to great music while you do.
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