lasagna

Today I made a new meal for tea. I am trying to widen my repertoire.

It is a risky business as I am never sure of the reception such ventures will get.

By scouring the internet I had managed to find a recipe for cheese free lasagna. I had managed to source gluten free pasta sheets. I could assemble the meal and leave it on automatic to reheat. Essential whilst I dealt with the ferrying that a usual Thursday evening entails.

It is true that some of the constituent parts may have fallen foul of someone’s dislike radar. Mushrooms…youngest, spinach….everyone under 12, crème fraiche…husband. I decided to risk it.

Youngest loves lasagna as long is it is ‘not too cheesy’. We have banned her from ordering it in untried restaurants. I am sick of having to swap my delicious meal for a child’s sized portion of oven baked pasta which has failed the ‘fromage’ test. This lasagna had no cheese. Due to husband. But that also played to Youngest’s foible. And so I decided she had to suck up the mushrooms.

As everyone knows spinach tastes of nothing when incorporated with other ingredients and is just there to provide colour interest and make mothers feel better. And so again I thought I could get away with it.

I just closed my ears to the crème fraiche.

Everything else should have passed muster. Sausagemeat, pasta, passata, mild chilli, garlic, a few herbs, some seasoning.

When I was assembling it at 8.30 this morning it smelt fantastic.

Cunningly I had made the off spring wait until after Youngest had returned from football training to eat. By which point it was a full two hours later than we usually dine.

Eldest would probably have eaten anything, literally anything, I put in front of him. Brillo pad en croute… Middlest had spent the 40 minutes it took the dish to bake standing in front of the oven door peering in. I had to physically restrain him from opening up that door to ‘check it was cooking’ on several occasions. Youngest had spent 90 minutes running around a sports hall.

And to top it all apparently it is one of Mary Berry’s grandchildren’s favourites.

And so I had high hopes.

Eldest shovelled his portion down. Middlest declared it was delicious. I was immediately suspicious. This usually means he doesn’t like something. True enough despite being apparently ‘starving’ in the immediate period before serving he was ‘stuffed’ after barely half a plateful…

Youngest peered suspiciously at the ‘bits of sausage’ declaring that they looked a lot like slices of mushroom. They were but I got away with it. I banned her from out sorting all that green, healthy stuff and she managed to eat her plateful. Albeit with little enthusiasm.

Husband didn’t enjoy it at all. To be fair it probably wasn’t so good after a second reheating. And I should never close my ears to crème fraiche.

So I am not sure if it will make another appearance.

Probably not.

And this is why we eat the same meals over and over again.