The One Where I Finally Cook with Janet

My blog has become a big hit, you guys!  And by that I mean that my friends ask me about it all the time but don't actually read it.  Which is fine!  Because it leads to golden opportunities like being able to cook with my friend Janet.

Last night, Janet invited me to cook and eat with her (in an obvious attempt to become peripherally famous by being mentioned on this blog).  Lasagna was the chosen meal, which I have made exactly one time so I'm an old pro.  Janet invited me over at 6:15 and I arrived... to a freshly-awoken Kieley but sadly no Janet.  Janet was still at the store with her other roommate Caitlin.  They were delayed because Janet had forgotten the ricotta and had to go back while Caitlin held down the self checkout line for 25 minutes.  After she found the cheese and was on her way back to Caitlin, Janet had bumped into another woman, spilled ricotta all over the floor, found two older men to help her clean it up, and gotten a replacement; all the while, Caitlin bought and bagged $200 worth of groceries and made BFFs with the HEB guy who oversees self checkout. 

When they finally arrived home, Janet set Kieley and I to chopping and dicing.  The lasagna Janet made last night had squash in it, which apparently you can't chop without it being warmed up first.  While Kieley was microwaving the squash, Janet's spice grinder accidentally broke and the ENTIRE jar of spices was dumped into the ricotta cheese blend.  Janet tried to brush some out, but gave up in the end because, as she says, "Who needs to measure?"  Kieley brought the squash back, tried to cube it by scooping it out with a melon baller, and Caitlin and I ended up burning our fingers cubing and peeling squash.  Janet layered the lasagna and it was on its way to the oven when ALAS, we had no tin foil to put on the top of the pan.  Janet decided to seek assistance from her neighbors, one of whom had been drywalling in their house earlier that day due to an enormous hole put in their wall during a party last weekend (he arrived later to because the gray paint he bought did not actually match their white wall, he had missed a spot in his patchwork, and he'd forgotten his $30 payment).  Janet arrived back at the house just as Caitlin and I were about to report her abducted WITHOUT TINFOIL.  She had got to chatting with a different neighbor and just couldn't ask him for tinfoil after telling him she just wanted to say hello.  We ended up putting a cookie sheet on top of the lasagna which turned out absolutely delicious.  There's nothing better than cooking adventures with your closest friends.

In other news, I made my mother's award-winning sausage bean soup this week (no joke, she has an engraved silver ladle), along with some southern-style macaroni and cheese.  Sometimes, you just need comfort food and comfort people.