La Lasagna is Italian for The Lasagna

Back when I attended the College of Weight Watchers, I'd get a little low fat recipe card each week to make eating healthily easier and more delicious. Most of them were for fancy green beans or some freaky meatloaf, but the recipe for veggie lasagna, with fattening modifications of course, is one that has worked its way onto the list of 10 Things I Can Cook Really Well.

Every time I make this at home Mack eats through the entire pan in a day. And when I make it for parties or when we have friends over, I always get asked for the recipe. Which is fine except the recipe I have is the WW one and it's just not as good as the one in my brain.

So, for all those who want to know and for those who just need something to read right now, here's my La Lasagna.

Ingredients

12 lasagna noodles
2 jars of spaghetti sauce
8oz. packages of mozzarella cheese
1 tub of part-skim ricotta cheese (the normal size)
veggies you love (I get 1 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, 1 head of broccoli, 1 package of sliced mushrooms, and 1 green pepper... sometimes I do tomato slices or black olives)

The WW recipe says you can just construct it and rely on the sauce to cook the noodles... but sometimes parts don't cook all the way, so I throw my noodles in the pot and boil them while I chop veggies. Just make sure you stir them until they settle in the water so they don't stick together.
Chop your green peppers and broccoli into tiny little pieces and slice the squash into discs. The veggies can't be too bulky or else they won't lay flat and La Lasagna will be Una Mess.
I sometimes spray a 9x13 pan with olive oil but sometimes I forget. Either way, you need a 9x13 pan and you need to spoon some of your sauce favorita into the bottom of it. Just a thin delicious layer. (I buy Chunky Ragu Mama's Garden Recipe or something like that for $2.50 because it's cheap and I can use the leftover sauce for homemade pizza.)
Then, and this part is very important, put a layer of noodles on top of the sauce. Don't let how complicated that is scare you away from this recipe because it is worth it. Be sure you sort of squeeze off the extra water or else your lasagna might be a little juicy. And by squeeze off I mean squeegie it with your fingers. Also, if the noodles aren't all the way done, that's okay. They'll cook the rest of the way in the baking process.
After the first layer of noodles, you need a layer of veggies. I usually start with my zucchini and yellow squash because I studied food infrastructure in college and am an expert in sturdy vegetable foundations. On the day I made this lasagna I felt like mixing it up a bit and sprinkled on some green peppers. In college they called this "avant garde," which also happens to be the name of an annoying font.
Then put a layer of sauce on top.
The put another layer of noodles, a layer of ricotta cheese, some veggies. (I usually pair broccoli and green peppers with my ricotta layer because, again, it satisfies food infrastructure requirements.)
Put a layer of sauce on top, another layer of noodles, and a layer of mushrooms and green peppers or whatever other veggies you have. This is where I get confused and just sort of wrap things up regardless of where I'm at in the pattern.

At this point you should be out of veggies with three noodles, some sauce (I'm usually cracking into my second jar at this point) and some mozzarella cheese left. Since you want to cap the dish with a layer of noodles, a layer of sauce and a layer of mozzarella cheese -- in that order -- go ahead and arrange that on top.
Put it in the oven at 350-400ish degrees. I don't really know what temperature. Bake it until it smells good and you get hungry. Then check it, and if the cheese is the way you like your cheese to look, it's ready. It should cook for about 30 minutes to cook the veggies, so if your cheese is cooking too fast, lay a piece of foil loosely on top to keep it from burning while the veggies cook.

Let it cool before you cut it or it will be a little drippy and won't keep its shape when you serve it. In our house it gets cut within seconds of leaving the oven.
The best thing about La Lasagna is that you can put it all together the night before, cover it with plastic wrap, throw it in the fridge, and then the next day just toss it in the oven and act like you've slaved away all day.

The Holiday Spirit

Fine. Los Angeles doesn't naturally have any holiday spirit. Fireside chats and the first snow are sort of like jokes about Mars. Why would anyone need fire? And snow makes it cold.

But this year, I wanted it.
And despite his initial resistance, Mr. T fell for it too.
It was like the best day ever.

Holiday Discoveries

I can always tell which of my friends have the baby itch based on the Christmas card they send. The tell tale sign that next year's card will feature a bundle of joy is a Christmas card with a festive pet on it.

Maybe it's just the dog with a Santa hat or maybe it's a "family" portrait with the pooch before it becomes old news, but that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

In other exciting Christmas card news from the Random Thought Laboratory that is overrunning my mind, I found this today.
Is it just me or does that Santa baby freak you out? Kids are cute and it's fine if you want them to be on your Christmas card, but prop a baby up for goodness sake!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

No, there aren't any lights sparkling off my eave. No, we don't have a Christmas tree twinkling in the window. No, the temperature hasn't dropped below 65 for more than three days in a row...

And yet, it's never been so festive outside. How could this be?

I don't know. Maybe this FREAKIN POINSETTA TREE that's on fire on my way to the beach is the culprit?!!

A Poinsetta tree... Wonders never cease.

So the aunt who used to "make her own cigarettes" came to visit...

My mom's littlest sister, my Aunt Tina, and her husband, a gas factory named Uncle Tony, headed West last week to commemorate their 25th anniversary. Since they hadn't been on a plane together since their honeymoon, the trip was long overdue.
I had to work during the days while they were here, but we spent the evenings drinking beer and overeating delicious food. Tina taught me how to make homemade pizza crust, and Tony showed me that Mack's gaseous output is actually "girlie." Then, sometime between 5:30 and 8, they curled up on the sofa like giant cats and slept to the rhythmic beauty of Tony's Large Man Snores.

On the weekend, though, I got to get in on the vacation fun. Tina & I headed to the Huntington Botanical Gardens while Tony hopped a bus to Sears to get new loafers. Prior to our garden outing, Tina had been impressed by the snapdragons in my yard, excited by the landscaping at the Venice Canals, and enamored with the foliage on the walk streets in my neighborhood. Once we went to the Huntington Gardens, however, Venice lost its botanical superiority and started to feel like old bread.

Orchids may be hard for most people to grow, but clearly most people aren't in charge at the HBG.

The rose gardens made me feel like a queen in her court, and the Dame Helen was the most delicious smelling one. Can you believe roses bloom in December?This is a bad picture of the Chinese garden. Imagine if it was a good picture. That is how awesome it is. There's also an Australian garden, a Japanese garden, a subtropical garden, a palm garden, a Shakespeare garden and a succulent garden.

In case it's not obvious, something about the succulents made this my favorite garden. They're so dangerous and so weak at the same time. Like puppies and newborn babies.See what I mean about the dangerous.
This is a century plant. No, it is not about to eat Tina alive. It's what happens when agaves go wild.

We also went to El Matador Beach this weekend. I first went there to remove a layer of guilt that came with an unusual hangover, but today I finally discovered what all the real buzz is about. I thought I saw the "caves" on my first visit, but today Tina, Mack and I scooted around rocky outcropping after rocky outcropping, crawled through uncertain holes and eventually found our way to an actual real live ocean cave. Then, my inner mother warned me that if the tide came in we'd be stranded forever and die alone, so we headed back to our "cave" and grubbed on a picnic lunch.

Mack introduced Tina to the famed Sea Vaginas.

Just call us Lewis & Clark.

Basically we are pirates.

Beach picnics in December. Thank you California.

We headed back to Venice so T&T could catch a sunset while they're here, and they got a doozy of one. Sailboats, crashing waves, soaring birds. It almost even made Mack feel romantic. Almost.

What Happened in Vegas

Kristin, aka Miss Perpetually on the Ball, scooped me on my trip to Vegas last weekend. Maybe that's because she didn't have to sit in traffic for 8 hours to go 288 miles when the weekend was over. Yes, that is an average of 36mph.

Before the worst road trip experience of my life, though, there was a lot of fun to be had. Kristin shared the basics, so let me clue you in on the details...

Kristin, Will, Holly & Jim Beam welcomed me to their Vegas mansion just like they used to in the Dirty Dirty. In the olden days a house the size of my entire apartment complex and a yard the size of a house would have seemed like business as usual, but since moving to LA, anything that is free standing, has extra rooms and has more than 8 feet of grassy area around it, it's like a domestic playground. I had my own room... not an office that is converted for guests, but a room dedicated to hosting guests. Awesome. And I can also now vouch for the number of mirrors in her house. Holy cow. Every time I left the bathroom I felt like someone was following me, but it was just... me reflected 3000 times.

Visiting Kristin & Will is as fun in Vegas as it ever was in Atlanta. On Friday, we woke up and started cooking Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey Kristin bought came with gravy, but the smell started to react badly with the night before that was still in our heads and stomachs so she tossed it and crafted her own recipe. All you really need to know about Thanksgiving at Kristin's is that it comes with gravy. I could have just eaten the gravy and been satisfied. I put gravy on everything on my plate, then put another layer of gravy on my plate, then sopped up the gravy on my plate with gravy soaked deviled eggs. I know, it sounds gross, but it was sooo good. Gravy.
Games are always a part of visiting Kristin and Will, and since they had the foresight to bring cornhole with them out West, I was able to fine tune my skills so that this year I can scream, "FOUR IN A ROW" in Lisa's ear while she's pregnant and trying to sleep. She loves when I do that.

Before we could get started though, Kristin had to go on a massive crap expedition and pick up a year's worth of Holly poo. Holly is in her grandma stage of life and putters around the yard with an expression on her face like, "What is that smell?" and we're all like, "Hollins, that's you!"

To keep things fair, Will brought out the rules from the American Cornhole Association, which he has assumed the presidency of. There wasn't a clause that said anything about how to play when the beans have absorbed rainwater and are more like beef bricks than bean bags, which is probably why I was able to kick Will's ass. I'm just sayin'.

We also broke out Jenga, which I lost, and A to Z, which I perfected when I used to play teams with Sarah and, thus, won. Man, Kristin is so cute when she's mad that she will never beat me at A to Z.

Now that Kristin & Will live in Vegas and since there are more amazing things than Dave & Busters to go check out, we headed out to Red Rock Canyon. There's a loop you drive around to all the main attractions, but there was one hike in particular that was just off a "dirt road" that we decided to check out. The hike was described as having the "most significant feature" in the canyon and didn't require 3 hours to do. Sounds perfect, right?

So we headed down this "dirt road," which was really a rocky mess that made it painfully obvious I've eaten too much gravy so far in this lifetime and that gave Kristin an opportunity to hone her off-roading skillz.
We made our way up the trail, trying to keep our pre-death panting under control so as not to worry those around us. It was beautiful.

We finally came upon some red rock which was dramatically different, and the trail sort of ended. After much discussion, we all agreed that this does not qualify as "significant." Pretty, sure. But significant? No.
We asked some other hikers who were coming toward us if there was anything good up ahead and discovered that there was a 400 foot drop off that wasn't too far and that was worth the extra walk. We decided to go for it, and it was definitely worth it. Sure the cliff thingy was nice, but watching Kristin butt hike to the top was the highlight for me. I had no idea she was so afraid of heights.
We did the obligatory timer photo to commemorate our cumulative efforts, in case the hike back down killed us. We had to do two because in the first one, Kristin had her arms around Will and I and she didn't want to "be the armless person" in the photo. You can't argue with that. So instead we look like the people who aren't sure what to do with their arms while Will looks all Obama-esque and like he just had some tea.Visiting Kristin has always been one of my favorite ways to get the hell outta dodge. I've visited her in her dorm room in Athens, in her houses in Atlanta and now in her new home in Vegas, and every time I visit I have an absolute blast. Thanks for being such good hosts and for letting me eat all of your candy, Kristin & Will. I love you and am so glad you're within driving distance!!

Something to Be Thankful for

The day before the day before Thanksgiving it rained here.

The day before Thanksgiving I got out of work while it was still daylight and decided to stroll to the beach to see how it behaves after a day of rain. Here's what I found out.

They bring a dune's worth of sand to the beach in the winter to keep it from washing away and it makes a beautiful place to stare out at the ocean.

The tide surge looks like it doubles in size.

You can actually watch weather come ashore.

People can still swim in late November.

It practically rains rainbows.

In a lot of ways, I prefer the bad weather beach.

Dulywed: Year 2

Dear Mack,

It's fitting that the second anniversary has a gift association of cotton. Because by the second year, you sort of feel like a slave.

I'm not just saying this about me either. Sure, I feel like I am the designated master of every dirty dish and needy bathtub that comes into our lives, but you are the one who must deal with the wrath of that master. I get annoyed by the obligations of life, and you, in a happy choreless oblivion, have to be my whipping boy.

I think this is what people mean when they say you've got to "figure it out."

We've been quite literally consumed by life the last year... you are a genuine nerd majoring in the all-important subject of biology and I am unrelentingly surrounded by egos I resent and emotional responses from women. None of this is bad, but it makes for strained dinner conversation when one wants to discuss mitochondria and the other wants to discuss feelings.

Last week, when we went out for your birthday dinner, I told myself to just shut the hell up and let you talk about whatever you wanted to talk about. I told myself that no matter how boring it was, I would listen. I would listen attentively. And I would participate in the conversation. The first 11 minutes were, at best, painful, but once I broke through that initial barrier, my god. You are fascinating.

It's like that dinner we had at Dudley's when we were dating. Beth's son was our bus boy and we ordered champagne and you told me about Beethoven and Chopin and their struggles and brilliance. I loved you that night for being more incredible than any man I've ever met, and last week, as we sipped margaritas and ate chips and salsa and I listened to you go on about science, I felt that familiar feeling of adoration. Your mind is a gift. It's all consuming and intensely focused and sometimes so in its own world that it doesn't remember the vomit you left on the shower curtain, but it is enchanting. You're a little mad scientist prince charming, my own personal Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Last year I was all about money (isn't the first year paper?!!), but it seems that this year, I'm all about chores. Some may say that is a deflection of a chronic personality disorder, but I think it's progress. I've given up the fight over funds and, even though your mom has to give you allowance because she saw the text message where you had to ask for $4 for El Pollo Loco, I'm settled into our financial position. Because all the times I thought it'd collapse, we made it through. And better than that, we're getting ahead, little bit by little bitty bit.

With the financial strain off my mind, my next wifely focus is the home. You want to preserve white walls, so redecorating is out. I want to keep my waistline from breaking a personal record, so cooking is out. It's no wonder I get batshit insane when the trash needs to go out for 4 days running. I'm trying to find the balance between nice and nag, but since I've only been practicing a year, I hope you'll bear with me until I get the hang of it. Or just buck up and take the trash out when you see it's about to attack you.

Speaking of attack, this teabagging phase you're in, it can stop any day now. And even though I may be laughing when you do it, I'm screaming bloody murder and crying like a baby on the inside.

Which is exactly how I've felt these last two years. A mix of damaging shouts, manic laughter and penetrating tears. You are a hurricane of a personality, a force to be reckoned with, a brilliance that can only be absorbed. You make every day positively worth living and a little bit suicidal. And while some days I want to kill you, you are the reason I want to wake up on most of them.

I love you. Pop. Happy Anniversary.

Makes me embarrassed that I sat in line for hours to get midnight tickets to Episode 1

A Family Tradition

Lately, Mack and I have been going to a little diner up the road from our house called Cafe '50s. It's got a jukebox and records on the walls and shakes with whipped cream on top. It also has an egg scramble called the La Bamba for $5.95 which can be credited with my recent 5-pound weight gain.

Across the street from '50s is a little pet shop, so after we eat, we've been stopping in to look at the corn snakes and pistol shrimp and snapping turtles and little baby bunnies. During our first pass through it was a pretty typical pet shop, but on our most recent visit, we started to notice its creepy underbelly.

Like this thing.
Know what it is?

Would it surprise you to know it's a freakin' shark egg? Because it blew my mind.

Here I'd gone 30 years thinking sharks were mammals, believing that they shot out baby sharks like killer whales shoot out baby killer whales. But no, they're egg layers. Just like a bunch of chickens.

As if that wasn't enough to make me stand there slack jawed in the middle of the pet shop, then I looked more closely and holy crap. There was the egg yolk, an umbilical cord and a little shark swimming around in that sack acting all frustrated that it couldn't get out.

Dulywed: What's Beneath All Those Vows (a series)

One of my favorite things to do is watch television. Shocker, I know.

I like to lounge on the couch, relax into reality shows and feel good about myself. Being married has made my television indulgence even better.

See, now I have a handsome man to fetch me things.

He comes out of the bedroom and heads into the kitchen. The words, "Will you get me some water?" come out of my mouth as he makes his way.

Normally he's very accommodating, probably because I feed him. But the other day, in the midst of my completely relaxed state of mind, he revolted.

I tried to use a whiny voice to sway him, but that only escalated the revolt. Next thing I knew, he had me mounted, arms pinned, and he was scaling up.

Up toward my face. With his crotch. In boxer shorts.

Yes, my husband decided to settle the score by teabagging me. I am as horrified as you are.

Just another Friday in Los Angeles

Woke up to shout of husband's phone alarm.

Curled into his armpit to get a few more minutes of sleep.

Felt morning wood in my butt cheek.

Forced my way out of bed and into the shower.

Hated getting wet and starting all over with self maintenance.

Called Leiah and listened to Ben yell "MOMMY!"

Felt love surge.

Climbed onto scooter to head to work.

Gloated internally that it was Nov. 13 and warm enough that I'm riding a scooter to work.

Worked.

Suggested Freedom Friday lunch break to colleagues.

Headed to lunch of jerk enchiladas, fried plantains and cantaloupe juice.

Walked along the beach.

Practiced tight rope walking.

Came back to work.

Worked.

Had tea.

Scooted home.

Ate veggie lasagna.

Sipped wine on the porch.

Enjoyed my lot in life.

Huxtable Residence...

I grew up watching Thursday night TV back in the '80s. Instead of Friends, ER, or My Name Is Earl, Thursday night's must-see TV back in the day was Family Ties and the Cosby Show.

I gave up on the Cosby Show in favor of Roseanne in the '90s (she came on at 9pm, so I credit her with getting my bedtime extended to 9:30)... probably because in my mind I was Darlene and Shannon was Becky and FINALLY SOMEBODY KNEW WHAT IT WAS LIKE.

No, I'm not gay. Still.

The Cosby family was sort of off my radar until Liz moved to Kentucky. I was used to going to sleep to Law & Order or Forensic Files, but when Liz would stay the night, she'd ask, "Can we please fall asleep to something that's not murder?"

Fair enough. So we watched the Cosby Show.

Tonight, after I came home from 13 hours of work during which I got absolutely nothing accomplished, I turned on the TV, tried to forget that tomorrow will be just as annoying, and settled into that old, familiar family.

The Cosby Show should be on TV today. As should Family Ties and Roseanne. Dirty, Sexy Money and Lipstick Jungle just don't make kids the way the '80's lineup did.

How did this happen?

The last time I saw Renee she looked like this.
Now she looks like this.
Where is my niece and what have you done with her fat stores?