Hi Blog,
I cannot believe it is the final week of this blog series!!! It’s actually kind of sad… I really enjoyed posting my inquiry process on food. I have grown to love cooking even more throughout this inquiry process, and I find each stage of cooking to be quite therapeutic. From going to the grocery store on a weekday evening, to prepping, and cooking the dish, it’s become a real passion of mine. I have to attribute that to my family, my Grandma in particular. She definitely made me have a palette for various delicious foods, and this is my little slice of delving into that world. As a teacher, I would encourage my students to work on their literacy and typing skills by curating a “blog” post and either use a site either like WordPress or just to post it on a secure forum to prompt student creativity. Some sort of passion project such as this free inquiry, for students to discover something new about themselves and something they enjoy and document it alongside implementing Educational Technology and other subjects in the classroom.
Back to the food…
For my final week, I chose to tackle an entire lasagna dish. There is a story to go along with this one too! I was in the dairy aisle, and I asked this random lady what kind of cheese I should use, ricotta or cottage cheese. I had Googled many recipes up to that point, and some used ricotta and others used cottage cheese. The lady ended up being the biggest wealth of knowledge! She said every time she makes lasagna for her family, she uses cottage cheese, because it gives lasagna that creaminess without the semi-grainy texture that ricotta cheese is known to have. She loads her lasagna with spinach, carrots, celery, bell peppers, beef, and a blended cheese mix. Her base layers consisted of spinach and cottage cheese, then veggies, then meat and cheese for the final 2-layers. I knew I had my recipe right there! I quickly wrote down her cooking process and headed off to pick up the remaining ingredients.
I basically took those recommendations and layered the lasagna in the following order.
In the glass dish before any noodles get placed: tomato sauce
Layer 1 (in this order): tomato sauce, cottage cheese, and spinach
Layer 2 (in this order): tomato sauce, carrots, celery, bell peppers, seasoning (salt, pepper, seasoning salt, garlic powder, paprika), cottage cheese and tomato sauce
Layer 3 (in this order): tomato sauce, Yves Veggie Ground Rounds (can use any meat or protein substitute here), mixed cheese blend (anything from the grocery store works), tomato sauce, seasoning (salt, pepper, seasoning salt, garlic powder, paprika). Any remaining chopped veggies can be added here.
Layer 4 (in this order): tomato sauce, mixed cheese blend (anything from the grocery store works), tomato sauce, seasoning (salt, pepper, seasoning salt, garlic powder, paprika), and any remaining meat/meat substitute can be added here.
I covered the dish with Aluminium Foil and baked in the oven at 375° F for 1hr and 30minutes.
Side note: I used ready-made oven noodles because student life does not give me enough time to take hours making one recipe hahaha.
Here the pictures of my lasagna below! The review can be found below the pictures.
Final Drum Roll… IT WAS DELICIOUS! The final score is 8/10 because of some hiccups hahaha!
Although the pasta looks great, and for the most part tasted great, the top layer had some problems. Besides the cheese getting stuck to the foil, the top layer didn’t cook all the way, and I’m assuming it was because there wasn’t enough sauce in the top layer, I had mostly put the soy-based meat and cheese on the top layer. Second, when I was cutting into the lasagna the layers had kind of split open, and when picking up the squares, the pieces started falling a part. I have some ideas on what the reason for that could be, but nothing seems to make sense besides the way I had layered the lasagna sheets in the glass dish. I did like the addition of the cottage cheese though! I think that is definitely the move in the future, and I thank the lady for her awesome advice and recipe.
As for my title “Real G’s Move in Silence like Lasagna”, it’s a Lil Wayne lyric and it’s actually a bit of a running joke online. BUT, I’ve included it in my blog post because, to me, it relates to how growth in any area of life is silent, and the real progress happens when no one is watching. It’s about the lifestyle, time, and effort someone puts in to improving themselves.
Thanks for following me on my inquiry journey! Til next time… Shefali… out 🙂