What I did on my Summer Vacation (or this weekend as the case may be)

Some how I got it in my mind that it would be a good idea to make an entirely home made meal for all of our friends this weekend. I've made many a meal for the friend family in the past, usually utilizing the "cream of something" mixed with "stuff" casserole method and some sort of store bought sugar ladden dessert to finish it up. All cream of something/stuff casseroles are met with cheers and accolades, something I never get tired of, but has felt somewhat less than satisfying as of late.

Becasue I have been spending so much time perfecting my new DIY (do it yourself for those who aren't up with the hip lingo) lifestyle, and haven't had much of a chance to show it off, I wanted to do something particularly special for this friend family dinner. Lasagna is my favorite food, ever. I'm basically Garfield, including the whole food shoveling, "I hate Mondays" kind of attitude so it was pretty obvious what I was going to make. Lasagna is also easy to make en-masse and as we have upwards of 13 people over for these dinners, it seemed the best option.

When planning the meal, I wanted to really stretch my DIY awesomeness and decided to make not only the sauce from scratch, but the cheese, noodles, the salad dressing, the pie, the french bread, the garlic butter and the whipped cream. I googled the shit out of my work computer, made list after list, consulted my other DIY obsessed friend Laura, and came to the conclusion that it was not a truly insurmountable task to do this myself.  So, we went shopping.

Money wise, this was not too draining a process. The entire meal, for 13 people ended up costing around 85 bucks, mostly becuase I screwed up the cheese twice and wanted to keep trying it until I got it right. I also bough all kinds of fresh and organic produce and raw milk (5 bucks for a half gallon) at my local co-op so that kind of put a dent in my budget since i had to buy 2 gallons (4-5dollar bottles) to keep trying the damn cheese. If you are a seasoned DIY-er and have a vegetable garden/herb garden, or your own milk producing animal (goats and cows are the reccomended) the you can dramatically cut the cost of this meal because you will already have the high ticket items.

I started the process Friday night with my friend Cari expecting that the cheese would be my biggest challenge and she has a way fancier kitchen than I do having just bought her own grown up house instead of my decidedly less grown up rental with the rinky dink kitchen. We followed the directions and the first ball of mozzarella came out perfect, albiet a little lacking in the salt department. I reccomend adding at least 2 tsps to the recipie to make sure you get a good flavor. Also, the 1o dollars worth of milk only yielded enough cheese for half a layer of lasagna.

We decided that because we hadn't made enough cheese for the whole endeavor, and it had only taken about 30 mintues to do, we would run to the store and try again. We bought two more gallons of regular whole milk this time and tried again. After several burns and finding ourselves, and her new kitchen covered in whey, we ended up with a pile of crumbly cottage cheese and two pissed of milk maids.  We learned two things from this failed batch of cheese.

1) Pasturized milk is NOT going to work no matter how much cheaper it is than raw milk. When the milk is pasturized it kills all that good bactaria and breaks down the milk to a point where it won't bind correctly. Obviously, i don't know the chemsitry of it all, but i'm sure there is something all science-y that can be said about why this didn't work.

2) making double batches is a bad idea. I am the queen of double, and even triple batching just about anything. Because I'm always cooking for around 10-15 people, I have to adjust recipies constantly. Not usually an issue. This time however, it was. I went to the co-op again and shelled out another 20 bucks for raw milk, thinking that my issue the first time was solely milk based as the Google Gods indicated. I went through the process again Saturday morning and it started out just as it had during the creation of the successful batch of cheese, but then we ended up back in crumbly cottage cheese land again. More swearing. I haven't confirmed it, but I'm 99% confident that this was due to doubling up on the rennet and the citric acid. When you double, you double right? wrong. Apparently, with cheese making its best to do it 1 bit at a time.

All was not lost and I turned my 30 dollars worth of crumbles into a ricotta like substance by mixing it with egg and used it anyway. It melted and it tasted great, but it certainly wasn't as pretty as the correctly made ball of mozzarella from Friday.

After the debacle of cheese making, I was feeling a bit discouraged and decided to get the bread and pie going. Making french bread is super easy, especially if you've mastered the making of other types of bread. It has a longer rising time than the wheat bread I normally do but turned out so beautiful and made my house smell fantastic. I gave the kids a jar of Heavy Whipping cream and garlic with a marble in it and set them to the tast of making garlic butter. They shook it for about 5 minutes and got bored, so Sarah and I took turns shaking alternately and in the end we had a beautiful, smooth home made garlic butter that was delightful on the fresh bread.

The pie was a simple Key Lime pie recipie (not green btw, also, key limes are acctually a type of lime, i always thought it was Kiwi Lime, shows what i know) with a grahm cracker crust. Jonny, our resident idea guy thought it might be good to incorporate a little coconut extract into the whipped cream and OMG was that brilliant. Even those who didn't like coconut agreed that it worked so well with the tart key lime pie that they couldn't stop picking at the bowl. I used the left over whipped cream in a chocolate silk pie the next day, also quite delightful.

The pie and bread re-invigorated my spirit and I got the sauce going as well as the noodles. The sauce wasn't too hard, but I was surprised at how little my 20 tomatos yielded. I had exactly enough for my lasagna and I had bought baggies expecting to be rolling in the sauce for the next week at least. If you want sauce to spare, i reccomend going to a U pick or a local farm and buying up a flat of them and just spending a day boiling and peeling tomatos. Bright side, it smelled amazing and tasted even better.

While the sauce simmered I got started on the noodles. I had always heard that pasta making was no big thing and figured my lack of appropriate tools would not be an issue. I was wrong, as I tend to be. You have to have a pasta press, or at the very least, a rolling pin to do this properly. I had neither. I had a wine bottle. I made my little flour pyramid and my eggs fell out, making a huge mess, and even though i followed the directions, my pasta came out really dry and crumbly. I messed with it, adding more egg and even a little bit of water near the end and finally had something i could work with. The wine bottle rolling pin and I fought it out for about 2 hours and I was left with enough pasta to make three layers of lasagna. I realized that they were a little thicker than they should have been but decided enough was enough and I would just have to make due.  I am not undertaking that again until I have the neccessary tools for the job.

After assembling my lasagna, mixing my dressing and smoking a well deserved ciggarette the guests showed up, generally marveled over my DIY prowess and enjoyed the fruits of my 10 hours+ in the kitchen. It was agreed that the meal was a resounding success, though the noodles were a little too thick (never again wine bottle, never again)

So, do I reccomend this under taking? yes. If for no other reason than you can look at this phenomenal meal and say out loud, "Look what I did!" What I do NOT reccomend is serving it to your terminally negative 5 year old who will immediately request maccaroni and cheese instead. Apparently the pasta being brown (whole wheat) made her concerned that it was made of doody. Whatever.

I'll post recipies with pictures later this week.