Back To Basics With A Bite Of Lasagna

Slow cooking my sauce for lasagna.

3 layer lasagna all put together. I put it into the fridge for later, it's for Mark, my mom and the girls tonight. I will be going to a dinner party and will be sure to take pictures for my next entry. I only did 3 cheeses this time; fresh grated mozzarella, parmesan and ricotta.

I often wonder what baking was like when they didn't have blenders n' such. So I wanted to make cookies today and experimented by hand mixing my batter. It took a while and my arm sure did get a good work out. The cookies themselves taste wonderful, they're peanut butter chocolate chip chunk. A recipe that has a bit of a different after taste to them b/c it has cinammon. Haven't used it in years. Anyways, they were good, but they sure came out flat. Could have been because my butter was too soft I think.

Back to the back to basics part, I always think - what if we lost power for a while and didnt know how to do anything because a machine always does it for us? I prefer to knead my own bread, thats what makes it mine. I prefer to stir my own chocolate and whip my own creams and frosting and such. I find it's a better learning experience.

I also recently acquired Marks grandmothers recipe box. I haven't had time to go through it thoroughly and I don't want anyone to look at it yet b/c I'm a die hard fan of family/secret recipes. What I have found so far is that just in the last 50 years, we have lost touch with real baking. I find recipes and the steps are so darn basic, I wonder how they evolved into such complicated procedures. So I plan to do a little tribute to Martha and her 94 years of cooking and baking skills by trying out her recipes one by one as I find time and to follow them exactly as she wrote them - or didn't write them! It should be interesting and it will be a good lesson. I am very excited about this little project. If things go well, I'll have to take her samples and see if she recognizes them..