Cozying Up With Lasagna: Day 12 of Self Quarantine

First, I am not going crazy.

But I feel super sorry for anyone who is going crazy or being driven absolutely bonkers or frantic over this whole stay home/social distancing mandate because we like normal!!!

NORMAL ROCKS.

Sometimes.

And sometimes normal is watching someone we love struggle, or die, or have a baby, or face divorce or injury, or... okay, you get it. Normal isn't always "normal" because we tend to live in "our" normal. When we're suddenly faced with someone else's normal-- or a new normal-- or have a different normal foisted on us, we rebel.

At least until we get used to it.

Case in point. I figured okay, we're all stuck at home, the weather is not conducive to fun in any way, shape or form, let's paint the dining room.

From the top down.

Mind you when you're quarantined during a pandemic, you cannot SHOP FOR PAINT. Because you can't go into a store because you're (duh, right????) quarantined.

So your son and daughter meet at Lowe's and pick the colors for you.  Creamy yellow and rose or salmon.  Because you're using the same colors you already had.

And then your realize their idea of creamy yellow and yours aren't exactly the same, and so you cut in one wall and do the borders and then you walk away, sure you're going to hate it. But that's the thing about new normal. At first, it's startling. Almost repugnant. (Get that??? S.A.T. word!!!) And it's jarring.... But I've learned to not jump to conclusions, because our eyes, our visuals, our senses are accustomed to one thing and when we mess that up, those senses rebel.

So the dining room in this 165 year-old house is big. Like 24' x 16' big with a staircase down one wall...

Four big windows with lots of little panes....

One glass door.

Two doorways. Wait, three, the front door enters into this room.

And a painted floor, a real nod toward old-time country looks.

Ceiling (lots of cutting in there because they framed the ceiling with 8" borders, so you have to paint the crown molding, and cut in along the edge of the crown molding, then along both edges of the 8" border....)

Walls.

Floor to ceiling bookcases. (I haven't even started them yet, going to finish ceiling and walls first. The bookcases and shelves have another gazillion spots to cut in.... I am not exaggerating nor kidding. Mostly)

Baseboard hot water heat runs.

And then the floor, painted white to complete the vintage look.

But I know myself. And that's why I refused to panic over the pandemic, or the changes, or the sudden disruption not just of my life, but of 90% of the country and maybe the world's lives.

If I give myself time, i adjust. I get used to things. And sometimes I grow to love them. And I absolutely love this new shade of yellow now (it just took a day or two, and I'll show you pics when more is done... it's pretty messy right now!) And the rose-toned trim will be beautiful, I wanted it spring-like all year and that's exactly what it will be, but it also dresses up nice for a real county Christmas look. Perfect!!!

It's downright tough when change is thrust on us, and when it's to this degree that I have to figure out where I can park my car and wait while a friend has a procedure on Friday because you can't walk into our hospitals any more, you can't wait in the waiting room, you can't cross the threshold because there is security at every door...

And you can't even go sit in a coffee shop and work because everything here is on lock-down. I can order a coffee and sit in the car...

And that's what I'll do, except that since I was so sick two weeks ago, coffee tastes terrible. My daughter said it's a Covid 19 symptom, so I looked it up.  She was right.

SIGH.

But I'm also laughing, because honestly, you've got to laugh.... at least a little. Although I miss having coffee. I miss the taste of good coffee, because it doesn't taste like that anymore and doctors don't know if you will recover that taste and/or sense of smell... Which may be why when I'm working with the paint, I don't smell it. Isn't that weird?

But I can smell food, so that's good!

We'll get through this.

We always do. And I will not rip apart any government official because I cannot imagine being in their shoes and having to make decisions that either ruin people's mental and financial health and cause mental breakdowns or send a growing percentage of people to the ICU and only a small percentage of them get wheeled out in a chair.

I'm glad I'm better, no matter what I had. Flu or Covid 19. I survived. I'm here to tell about it.

I'm thrilled that my husband is now looking better, too. It's been 18 days since he came down sick, and for a man who liked to brag about never taking a day off work, 18 days of can't get off the couch illness was a real kick in the head.

BUT WE'RE BETTER!

And there's a world around us that needs us now that we're better, and when they come up with an antibody test we'll take it because if we've already had the virus, then our antibodies will help keep us from having it badly the next time Covid 19 comes to call... Like in October.

I made lasagna today.  My son cooked the ground round with onions while I cut in another wall of paint...

And then we walked two miles in the village...

And then we came home and I made sauce...


Cooke the noodles about 7 minutes, you don't want them mushy. You want them slightly firm. I used 16 lasagna noodles so I'd do 4 layers of 4 noodles.

CHEESE FILLING

 Mix in medium sized bowl:

1 1/2 cup Ricotta cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup (plus or minus) diced mozzarella cheese
1 egg
2 TBSP sugar
1 teaspoon basil

Ground beef layer:

1 lb. ground beef (hey, finding this up here is like finding GOLD!!!!)
1/4 cup chopped sweet onion
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp. granulated garlic

Sauce: You can use jarred sauce but the world has depleted the supply of spaghetti/pasta sauce, so I made a small pot of sauce, so easy. In fact when I realized that there was no prepared sauce on grocery shelves last week, I ordered three 12-packs of tomato paste... because it's easy to make great sauce like my boss at Basel's restaurant used to make. This makes a "smooth" sauce, so if you like a marinara texture, use crushed tomatoes as part of your tomato base.

SAUCE:

4 6 oz. cans tomato paste
2 quarts hot water
1 1/4 cup ketchup (not kidding)
Salt
Pepper
Basil
Granulated garlic
Parsley
2 bay leaves

Blend tomato paste, water and ketchup. Put over medium low heat. Sprinkle top with salt and pepper. Mix in. Then sprinkle basil lightly over top. Mix in. Do the same with garlic... mix in. Then repeat with the parsley. Mix in. Then toss in the bay leaves, heat and simmer for about 30 minutes.

DONE.

No measuring, just eyeballing the "sprinkle top with garlic, etc."

You just lightly cover the top of the sauce with each ingredient... and it works. Every time. :)

Put about 2 cups sauce in bottom of 13" x 9" pan.

4 Lasagna noodles

Half the cheese mixture spread or dotted on the noodles.

4 more noodles

Cooked meat layer

Cover with about 2 cups +/- sauce.

4 more noodles

Top with 2nd half of cheese mix

Top with last four noodles. Cover with sauce, sprinkle liberally with Parmesan cheese, bake in 350 degree oven for about 45-50 minutes.

PERFECTION.

And in this time of trouble, fear, worry, concern, it's nice to have something come out perfect, isn't it?  Because normal will return. It might be different by a lot or a little, but it will come back.

And in the meantime, we take care of one another the best we can.

USA Today Bestselling author Ruth Logan Herne is tucked in a secluded corner of her big old farmhouse and penning great stories while the world pushes the pause button on so many things. She loves to hear from folks and you can email her at loganherne@gmail.com, visit her website at ruthloganherne.com, friend her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter, although she finds a lot of Twitter to be unspeakably rude... and Ruthy doesn't like rudeness. She likes it when people are just plain nice to one another!