a peek inside the fishbowl

Before I get into the nitty gritty of this recipe I have to tell you about what went down at Casa Fishbowl yesterday. The National was coming to my house (remember?) and I had a few things to do around here.  My priority was to clean the kitchen and my mop head tore clean off. I had lemons simmering on the stove (a natural air-freshener) when I discovered I’d accidentally brought a bag of dog poop into the house and it was sitting on our front stairs. (Ew.) Seriously, it became a comedy of errors which grew progressively laughable as the day wore on. My finest moment was loudly begging Sarah to stop playing with the dog and tidy the living room. I may have used the words “I BEG YOU.” Yes. Fine.

As for me, I did what I could with the kitchen floor and the rest of the house, and swept everything from my desk area into a laundry basket and shoved it in the closet… and prayed that no one would find a reason to look in there.

I joked to Sarah: “I hope this story isn’t going to be an investigation of Canadian closets!”
“Or our bedrooms!” she chirped cheerily.

Ha.

Ha.

I tried to ignore the beat up baseboards in the front hall THE BEST I COULD.

*sigh*

Anyway, other than camera-crew related cleaning woes it went fine, more than fine, it was great. They were here for about 3 hours and it was really fun. And that was only part one. Now, on to the recipe du jour!

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I have a thing about lasagna. I love it, but I feel like it’s too much work so I never make it. I’m also very picky about my lasagna. It has to be the right balance of meat and veg and I can never get it quite right. I’m also not a fancy lasagna person. No chicken and mushrooms and reams of white sauce thankyouverymuch.

That’s why I was very happy to find this easy recipe for a lazy (wo)man’s three-cheese faux lasagna. It’s from Karen a.k.a. ScatteredMom. She blogs here and here, and is also a meal planning editor at a website called EverythingMom.

Her recipe has all the great hallmarks of lasagna: the cheese, the sauce, the noodles, without the pressure of making a giant tray of the stuff. And you know what? It’s meatless (yay!), and a bit of spinach gives it an extra boost of flava and improves its healthy quotient.

Karen is busy. And I trust her judgement. And she loves healthy dinners as much as I do. If she says it’s good, it’s going to be good. And she wasn’t wrong about this one.

The recipe is posted here. (Just scroll down to “Friday.” )

I’m not even going to bother posting a photo of my results, because hers is so gorgeous.

I will add this:

• It’s good to have meat-free dinners every once in awhile. Did you know that if everyone had a a meat-free dinner once a week it would help make the world a better place? Read more about this at Meat Free Mondays.
• I used half as much spinach as Karen called for in her recipe. I had a feeling it would be too spinachy for my non-spinach eaters. And here’s a surprise… they ate it. (!) Well, mostly. The older one liked it more than the younger one, but she’s not a tomato-sauce lover, so I had that against me at the outset. But STILL. I do consider this a keeper.
• I recommend boiling a couple of extra noodles in case they, um, stick to the pot or drop on the floor. (Which would NEVER happen around here.)
• I think I overloaded the first few rolls with too much filling. You really only need a heaping tablespoon or so.
• I used Western-brand pressed cottage cheese (it looks like a squished ball of vacuum-wrapped mozzarella) and it worked great.
• Buy real parmesan cheese! If it comes in a plastic container that looks like a giant salt shaker and smells like sneakers, that’s not real parmesan. The real stuff costs $12.00 for a wedge. You owe it to yourself to buy the real thing, even if you have to sacrifice a trip to Starbucks or a pack of smokes in order to afford it.
• Check the sodium level on your store-bought spaghetti sauce and compare different brands. You might be surprised. (I used this PC Blue Menu brand for this recipe.)

Anyway, the lasagna turned out wonderfully; happy tummies all around. We served it with fresh bread and a salad. It’s a keeper. I hope you try this one out!

Awhile back I posted a list of great book ideas for kids of middling age. (I hesitate to say tween, because so many of the books mentioned in the post and in the comments afterwards make wonderful material for family time/out-loud reading.)

We all know that books make the best gifts, but my question for you today is this… when you gift a book, do you write anything inside the book to the gift recipient? This recent post got me thinking about messages in books too. When I shop for secondhand books I love finding an inscription. I wonder about the people involved – who gave it, who got it, why did it end up at the Salvation Army? I think it’s a lovely practice. I should do it more often.

Sometimes when I give a child a book (not my own child) and it’s a “keeper” book (i.e. a pricey gift book that I hope they’ll hold onto) I like to write a little poem in it. And here it is:

Child! Do Not Throw This Book About,
by Hilaire Belloc

Child! do not throw this book about;
Refrain from the unholy pleasure
Of cutting all the pictures out!
Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

Child, have you never heard it said
That you are heir to all the ages?
Why, then, your hands were never made
To tear these beautiful thick pages!

Your little hands were made to take
The better things and leave the worse ones.
They also may be used to shake
The Massive Paws of Elder Persons.

And when your prayers complete the day,
Darling, your little tiny hands
Were also made, I think, to pray
For men that lose their fairylands.

–
It’s a great poem to read out loud. In fact, I think I will print this out as our next Stealth Poetry Project! (Written about here and there.)

p.s. tomorrow is DAY ONE of 25Days. (!)

You all know how much I love the National Arts Centre here in Ottawa. I am an especially big fan of their children’s programming. They do it right.

The NAC, a Fishbowl patron, is hosting this giveaway for four tickets to Nativity. Billed as a family-friendly musical comedy, Nativity is a fun and all-denominational interpretation of the Christmas story, complete with talking animals, rhyming shepherds, angels from above, and lots of singing and dancing. You can learn more about it here. (Info includes a YouTube video. Watch it!)

My kids love this kind of stuff, and yours will too.

This giveaway is for four tickets to the 7:30 p.m performance on December 9 at the NAC. Please make sure you’re able to attend before you enter. FYI, the suggested age for this production is 8+.

A trip to the NAC makes a really nice holiday tradition. We will be attending a performance of Nativity too (although I’m keeping it under wraps for now).*

So who wants tickets? Leave me a comment below if you do. I’ll do a random draw of all qualifying entries at noon EST on December 6, 2010. If you didn’t win tickets, you can always buy some for yourself, or as a gift for another family. (Grandmas, grandpas, I’m lookin’ at you here.)

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