• 1 box lasagna noodles
• 1 dozen spinach leaves
• 1 can pink salmon
• 1 can whole tomatoes
• brown sugar
• 1/2 pound shredded cheese
• 1/8th of a read onion, sliced thin
• 3 cloves garlic
• oregano
• sea salt
• black pepper
• crushed red pepper
• lemon juice

Pre-cook your lasagna noodles just under al dente. Rinse them off with cold water and butter the bottom of a baking pan. Arrange one layer of noodles, I used three for each layer, on the bottom of the pan and top with the spinach. I drizzled a teeny bit of olive oil and then generously sprinkled black pepper on this layer. Add another layer of noodles and fill this layer with your salmon. I could have added capers here if I would have thought about it, but instead I just splashed some lemon juice and sea salt with a pinch of garlic powder onto the salmon layer.

The next layer will be another row of noodles and then your can of tomatoes along with the thinly sliced onions and garlic. Sprinkle some brown sugar across this layer. You can break up the tomatoes with your fingers, no need to slice them. Spread some oregano and crushed red pepper on this layer before topping with one last row of noodles.

The top layer is just the shredded cheese with some more oregano and bake it in the oven at about 375 for approximately thirty-five minutes or so. You know it’s done when the cheese starts to brown slightly. Use the next to bottom rack if you can.

For a side, I made some green onion soup in a beef broth. Both of my dinner guests loved this concoction and ate three servings.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound pork ribs, mine didn’t have bones for some reason
• paprika
• salt
• black pepper
• crushed red pepper
• maple syrup
• basil
• onion powder
• 4 oz can of diced chiles

I always salt and pepper my meat for anywhere from five minutes to half-an-hour. It’s a good habit to get into. Tell you why later. After generously covering my ribs with salt and pepper, I dashed in some onion powder and then generously covered each piece with paprika. Covering the meat so that you can’t see the meat anymore, only in spots. Dash a bit of basil and then spread crushed red pepper all over.

After about fifteen minutes, long enough for the oven to pre-heat to 325, I lay the meat in a single layer in my skillet. I don’t have a pan for the oven and I probably won’t buy one for a while. My pots and pans do a fine enough job of it. Before I built a cute little tent out of tinfoil, I soaked each piece in maple syrup. Taking care not to disturb the dry rub, I placed the syrup on each piece carefully. The syrup should be thick enough to not wash off your rub.

Before placing in the oven for an hour, I made sure that I had maybe an 1/8th of an inch to a 1/4 of an inch of water in my pan before closing the aluminum foil tent just barely enough so that steam could escape.

An hour later I tossed in a can of diced chiles, turned the heat up to 375 and then browned the meat for another 12 minutes. This stuff ended up tasting pretty good. I wasn’t disappointed.

I still had some brown rice from the food co-op and it made for a nice filler tossed with a couple drops of liquid smoke and a hint of mustard.

Minimal effort, happy tummy.

My sis and my coz can both attest to my last foray into indulgence. She also pointed out to me that some of her favorite dishes that I have prepared came from a drunken stupor. Like the time I made scones and I didn’t have the right ingredients but somehow, magically, we still ended up with scones.

I’d like to start measuring the correlation of my drunkenness to my ability to whip something up. I will liken it to the ‘uncanny valley‘ factor. The more drunk I get, the better the food is. Until I hit the valley. Then anything produced after that point will be met with revulsion. Am I making any sense here?

We took a squarish four cheese Costco frozen pizza out of the fridge and started pre-heating the oven. This is where some of my philosophy for food comes in. I am sure there were plenty of ingredients we could have put on this pizza to make it more nutritious and more appetizing, but I always go with the ingredients that look like they need to be used. Items that are almost gone and will get thrown out if not used with other things.

I saw a quarter of a red onion and a quarter of a roma tomato in the fridge. Perfect. These things naturally taste good on pizzas. Especially with each other. I also cannot resist placing fresh garlic on frozen pizzas. If you ever have a frozen pizza and fresh garlic in the house, it is a must. Being drunk, I was feeling adventurous. Hell, I’ve had pizzas with tomatoes and onions on them before, but have I ever had a pizza with pimentos on it?

Tonight was the night to find out. After the pimentos made it to the pizza I started feeling a little more adventurous and thought that some more green would help the pizza taste and look yummy. Tarragon. I haven’t used tarragon very much in the past so I used that as an excuse to use some now. After this I realized I wanted some spice in my pizza. Tapatio. Tapatio is one of the best hot sauces out there, it has no vinegar.

We were just about done but then I realized that no pizza can be harmed with some oregano. So in went the oregano and out came the pizza eight minutes later because after all the chopping and dicing, the pizza was almost done.

I can’t describe how amazed I was with myself. At first I just attributed this feeling to narcissism combined with alcohol. After the first three pieces I had to have seconds but my little sister had already beat me to the second serving. This is when I realized that maybe it wasn’t all in my head. My final confirmation was when I woke up and was craving the last six pieces but they had already been consumed by my cousin. My mouth is watering right now just thinking about it. I can’t wait to make this for somebody so that I can try it again.

p. s. If you can tell me why I called it pizza plus and list the source, I will truly respect your trivia prowess.

• One half a box or bag of spaghetti noodles
• One can of roasted diced tomatoes
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 pearl onion (I ran out of regular onions)
• Thyme
• Butter
• Packet of Crushed Red Pepper left over from Pizza Night
• Packet of Parmesan Cheese left over from Pizza Night

You can probably guess what happened next. The key difference may have been that I started the garlic and the thyme and onion in the butter before dumping in a can of roasted diced tomatoes. Thank goodness I had some leftover ingredients from when my friends bought pizza. Cheap. It’s all about the recycling yo.

keld's lentil soup

Christmas eve I had some friends over and took this opportunity to make some lentil soup that I had heard about from The Amatuer Gourmet. This recipe was perfect because I had exactly two cups of lentils left that I probably wasn’t going to get around to cooking later.

I also had some steaks that I pulled out of the freezer two days prior to this so I figured I may as well dice that up and throw it into the soup as well.

I will have to warn you. I do not measure ingredients and I will not be able to provide exact measurements. These recipes that I share are just suggestions.

First thing I did was start boiling some lentils. I’m one of those people who doesn’t use a timer. I probably should. Hell, I could even look at the clock once in a while. However, I prefer to cook until it’s done. I don’t know how to explain this concept but maybe I will talk about it more in the future.

While the lentils were boiling, I diced up five slices of bread. These I tossed in just enough olive oil to cover them slightly. Before tossing them in the oil, I whipped up the oil with some crushed garlic I had. Croutons would be perfect on top of the soup. Baked them at 350 until they were done.

Before the lentils were finished, I took about three tablespoons of butter and started sauteeing half of a large white onion. This was a very large onion. I sliced it into bite size pieces about 1/4 of an inch by 1/2 of an inch. Once the onions started cooking I placed two steaks, 6oz each, into the same pan. The plan here is just to brown them enough on each side so that we can dice it into smaller pieces while leaving the onions on the heat to become tranceluscent.

Unfortunately, the steak I had available was low quality. Even if it is not low quality steak, I highly recommend that you heavily salt and pepper the steak about one hour before use. I did not have time for this so I just fried in butter. After slicing the steak into cubes, I threw the chunks into the butter and onions.

I have dried herbs so I used them at this point. If they were fresh, I would add them at the end of cooking. Here, to the onions and steak I added some cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper, generous helping of curry (which I added more later during the soup cooking part) and a bunch of cumin seeds.

The lentils were done cooking at this point so I drained them and set them aside. After a few more minutes I dumped a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes into a pot along with the onions, spices and steak. This is when I added two capfuls of vermouth into the soup. Yum.

After a couple more minutes I used the empty can to pour the same amount of water into the mixture. Next, I poured in the lentils. We are almost done. While this was coming to a simmer, I rinsed and destemmed some fresh chard. After slicing this into long strips, I placed the chard on top of the soup and salted it a bit.

Just a few more minutes of simmering and I pulled the soup off the heat. Top with croutons and if you have a dollop of sour cream or yogurt available, that would make this dish divine.

Total preparation time was only about thirty minutes. This was a quick meal and my guests were impressed with how quickly the meal was prepared. I must warn you that this made a lot of food. We could have served about 8-10 people.

For dessert we had dark chocolate from IKEA with dried cranberries.