Birthday dinner again

We had P.'s second birthday dinner tonight. She had really wanted lasagna for dinner but the ingredients for lasagna are not great for some of our older children. So last night we had tacos which ate much more accommodating to dietary needs and tonight we had lasagna. Y., who truly despises cheese with every ounce of her being used some of the non-cheese filling to create an amazing egg sandwich. The cheese lovers, however, we're thrilled and excited, one of them proclaiming, "We haven't had lasagna in years!" 

And I realized that was actually true. A long while back, a friend had a connection with a local food prep service. You know, the kind that gives you pre-chopped ingredients and a recipe for you to do the cooking. Anyway, this friend would pick up unused ingredients from that week and distribute them among several friends. It was a great thing and often involved a significant amount of food even after having been divided three or four ways. The time we ended up with several gallons of chopped kale was challenging, but another time we ended up with three large boxes of cooked and frozen lasagna noodles. 

That thirty pounds of lasagna noodles lasted for quite a while. Years, in fact. I think we even moved the last little bit of them. Lasagna was so easy. You take the frozen sheet of lasagna and layer it just like cooked noodles, bake, and you're done. It spoiled me. It was also very easy to make lasagna in my roasting pan because two sheets fit perfectly in one layer. I got spoiled.

Eventually the magical frozen lasagna sheets were used up, and not wanting to fuss with cooking lasagna noodles, I just never made lasagna, much to my family's disappointment. But it's hard to say no to a birthday dinner request which is why I decided to try the "pan ready" noodles even though I wasn't entirely convinced they were going to work. 

I'm happy to report they did work, a but relieved, frankly, because I wasn't sure what we would eat if the noodles were still crunchy. Thinking about my frozen lasagna noodles made me do a search to see if I could get more. 

The answer is yes, I could order a ten pound box of frozen lasagna noodles. Am I going to? No, I am not. In fact no one should buy them, convenience just isn't worth paying ~$10 per pound of pasta. I was a bit shocked at the price. This is another reason why I was happy the noodles we tried tonight were successful. 

So it looks as though lasagna may occasionally appear on the menu again. Everyone is happy. Well, everyone except Y., that is, who even though she knew there was cheese in it was really rather shocked at the amount of cheese.