I’ve written previously about stuff I have in my kitchen and what I can’t live without. Despite my well-stocked kitchen, I have few things that aren’t useful. I don’t have a blender or a full sized food processor (both broke and were never replaced), and I manage just fine without them. But now the Kitchen Gods are testing me, because my oven hasn’t worked for over a month.

So, you know, this is getting ridiculous. I’ve been a good little cook. I don’t commit a lot of food crimes, and y’all know that I’ve worked hard to become less judgmental about how other people eat and cook. I can respect The Recipe and still make it my own. I’m a good hostess. I take my guests’ likes and dislikes into consideration. I make sure there’s plenty of food for the vegans, and that no one dies from a nut allergy. What else do they want from me? Maybe the Kitchen Gods are Catholic and want to hear a confession. OK, then. “Bless me, Father Keller, for I have sinned. It’s been a gazillion years since my last confession. I eat canned soup and cookies from the grocery store, and I drink domestic beer.” I’ll be happy to say a dozen “Hail Julia’s” and take a trip to Lourdes as my penance, unless going to Tuscany would be more fitting.

Logan has spent a little time working on it, and he’s sure it’s the sensor for the “bake” option, because the broiler works. What he’s not so sure of is whether he can fix it himself. We might have to call someone in to take care of it. I have no idea when that’s going to happen. Logan has told me that I don’t need the damned oven anyway, because it’s August. But he’s also told me that I’ve spoiled him with my homemade bread. Nothing else is as good as what I make.

To that end, I got creative (Note: shameless pimping of my food blog just ahead.), with mixed results. Making bread on the grill is a big, wonderful adventure. It makes me feel like a pioneer woman, which is pretty cool. I need to be more adventurous in my cooking anyway. If it ever stops raining, and if my discs return to their rightful place in my spine (instead of spending time where they don’t belong, like a bunch of kids hanging out at the 7-11 smoking cigarettes, drinking cheap beer and annoying everyone around them), enabling me to pick up my cast iron dutch oven, I’ll try it again. I’m obsessed with getting it right.

Of course, the grill is generally a great substitute for the oven, but it’s not helping with my brownie craving. I’m about ready to mix up a batch of brownie batter, heat it on the stove just enough to coddle the eggs, and freeze it in tablespoon-sized portions.

I’m good at making do with what I have. I mean, how much does one person need anyway? I believe in counting my blessings and putting things in perspective. I know there are people in this country who don’t even have a stove, so it could be worse. But I’m also a fan of acknowledging my pain, literal or figurative, and bitching about it for a while. Not having an oven is making me very cranky. With fall on its way, my mood is just going to get worse. What’s life without lasagna? (Kate obviously agrees.)

If anyone knows the name of the Saint of Modern Kitchen Appliances, please let me know. I’d like to light a candle and pray to her. I might still have a rosary around here somewhere.

This, my friends, is what food blogging is all about. The ability to look at a dish and admire it for simply being what it is. And what this is is pasta sheets layered in sauce, filling, and mushrooms.

I chose lasagna as my first pasta dish because it was likely the first pasta dish created. At its essence, lasagna is a flat bread. This becomes glaringly apparent if you use home made pasta rather than the store bought, as any noodles not covered in sauce or toppings and is exposed to the over air, will have the texture and characteristics of a cracker. Those store bought pasta strips simply do not attain that level of crunchy goodness.

Let's talk about the noodles first, before talking about the dish itself. According to Alan Davidson in his book Oxford Companion of Food, these noodles have been around since before the New Testament. This makes it one of the oldest processed foods in Europe that are still around today. However, there is some question as whether it was a peasant dish, or a dish of the wealthy. As it does require an oven, my bet is that the houses of the wealthy made the noodles far more often than the poor. But as the noodles did have a shelf life, they may have ended up as a commodity sold at market and thus would not have been unheard of to the lower classes.

There has been a recent controversy that the British, and NOT the Italians came up for the concept recipe of lasanga as evidenced by its inclusion in a cookbook dated 1390, but this has proven demonstrably false, as there is plenty of evidence that those in the Italian regions were well acquainted with the pasta.

Many people will say that the word lasagna derives from the latin word lasanum meaning 'chamber pot', but I'm not convinced that this is the case. I'm far more willing to believe that it actually comes from the Greek word for a flat cake called laganon. The later seems more logical to me, and the former seems more like the twenty-first century definition being foisted upon a Roman-era pronunciation of an object that has little to do with a product made from flour and eggs.

So what would have been in those dishes? Well, not tomatoes, as they didn't arrive until the Europeans decided to head to the New World. But meats and cheeses would have been common, as would have honey, rosewater and nuts. The later would have been a treat quite similar to the baklava as we know it today.

As this dish has been around for a millennium or two, there are hundreds of ways in which it has been prepared. What this means for home cooks is that this dish opens itself to both interpretation as well as innovation. The above picture was made with the following:

• Filling made from 1 cup ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup parmesan, 1/4 cup asagio, and 1/4 cup chopped Italian Parsley.
• Meat sauce made with 1 lb Italian sausage, 28 oz of diced tomatoes, 4 oz tomato, and 1 tsp of fresh oregano
• sliced portabello mushooms
• Chunks of mozzarella cheese

Then it was simply a matter layering in a 9"x 9" glass dish.

Layer one - Noodles, filling, meat sauce.

Layer two - Noodles, mushrooms, meat sauce.

Layer three - Noodles, filling, meat sauce.

Layer four - Noodles, meat sauce, chunks of mozzarella cheese.

I put it in the over at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes. After removing it from the oven, I let it set for seven minutes before cutting into it. The result? Pure lasagna bliss.

But the above isn't the way to make this dish. Explore, try something different, have fun!

This, my friends, is what food blogging is all about. The ability to look at a dish and admire it for simply being what it is. And what this is is pasta sheets layered in sauce, filling, and mushrooms.

I chose lasagna as my first pasta dish because it was likely the first pasta dish created. At its essence, lasagna is a flat bread. This becomes glaringly apparent if you use home made pasta rather than the store bought, as any noodles not covered in sauce or toppings and is exposed to the over air, will have the texture and characteristics of a cracker. Those store bought pasta strips simply do not attain that level of crunchy goodness.

Let's talk about the noodles first, before talking about the dish itself. According to Alan Davidson in his book Oxford Companion of Food, these noodles have been around since before the New Testament. This makes it one of the oldest processed foods in Europe that are still around today. However, there is some question as whether it was a peasant dish, or a dish of the wealthy. As it does require an oven, my bet is that the houses of the wealthy made the noodles far more often than the poor. But as the noodles did have a shelf life, they may have ended up as a commodity sold at market and thus would not have been unheard of to the lower classes.

There has been a recent controversy that the British, and NOT the Italians came up for the concept recipe of lasanga as evidenced by its inclusion in a cookbook dated 1390, but this has proven demonstrably false, as there is plenty of evidence that those in the Italian regions were well acquainted with the pasta.

Many people will say that the word lasagna derives from the latin word lasanum meaning 'chamber pot', but I'm not convinced that this is the case. I'm far more willing to believe that it actually comes from the Greek word for a flat cake called laganon. The later seems more logical to me, and the former seems more like the twenty-first century definition being foisted upon a Roman-era pronunciation of an object that has little to do with a product made from flour and eggs.

So what would have been in those dishes? Well, not tomatoes, as they didn't arrive until the Europeans decided to head to the New World. But meats and cheeses would have been common, as would have honey, rosewater and nuts. The later would have been a treat quite similar to the baklava as we know it today.

As this dish has been around for a millennium or two, there are hundreds of ways in which it has been prepared. What this means for home cooks is that this dish opens itself to both interpretation as well as innovation. The above picture was made with the following:

• Filling made from 1 cup ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup parmesan, 1/4 cup asagio, and 1/4 cup chopped Italian Parsley.
• Meat sauce made with 1 lb Italian sausage, 28 oz of diced tomatoes, 4 oz tomato, and 1 tsp of fresh oregano
• sliced portabello mushooms
• Chunks of mozzarella cheese

Then it was simply a matter layering in a 9"x 9" glass dish.

Layer one - Noodles, filling, meat sauce.

Layer two - Noodles, mushrooms, meat sauce.

Layer three - Noodles, filling, meat sauce.

Layer four - Noodles, meat sauce, chunks of mozzarella cheese.

I put it in the over at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes. After removing it from the oven, I let it set for seven minutes before cutting into it. The result? Pure lasagna bliss.

But the above isn't the way to make this dish. Explore, try something different, have fun!

I recently passed my forty-first year upon this planet, a milestone which only further fits me in the category of middle-age. I long ago have given up on caring about being "cool", dressing fashionably, or having to see movies on opening night. These are all things which I graciously have given up in order to have a more comfortable life.

Other things I have given up without realizing it. There is a quote out there, not mine, that goes "You know you're a grown-up when you can afford to buy hundreds of dollars of candy, and you don't." When did that happen? When did the culinary joys of childhood disappear?

My guess is that it happened once my body said "Y'know, this chocolate covered marshmallow, while mind-blowingly good, is not quite as awesome as the subtle nuttiness of this slice of gouda. At some point my palate developed the ability to discern nuance, and my days of downing a bottle of Faygo and consuming a Nestle's Crunch, and calling that a snack, were over. The thick oozing colored corn syrup found in the wax bottles, once a treat, were and are now an obscenity. The joy of being able to have enough allowance to afford a Hostess Fruit Pie has now turned to a revulsion of this brand. The day when I stopped wanting to have Pixie Stix is the day my childhood ended.

I'm not the only one who realizes this. Joe Posnanski puts it a little more directly in his post Pixifoods:

Pink Snowballs
As a child tastes like: Coconut cream filled pink cakes.
As an adult tastes like: Triple bypass surgery.
Tidbits: I remember working with an older guy in Augusta who loved Pink Snowballs. He would get one out of the vending machine every single day. I was 24 then, and already the concept seemed entirely disgusting. I think that Pink Snowballs were my first pixiefood, the first food that I devoured as a child that I thought, “OK, I’ve outgrown that.”

When his post made it to Metafilter yesterday, it immediately had an impact, with people equal parts lamenting their own lost foods, claiming something on Joe's list shouldn't be there, or saying that every food of childhood remains quite awesome.

I would like to think that I represent the last group. But I know better. As much as I loved them, breakfast cereals are a novelty now, when, thirty years ago, they were a staple. It's been years since I've stopped at a Dairy Queen, once home to all things nirvana. And most disturbingly, I find myself loathing both the chocolate and the company that goes by the name Hershey. This would have been unthinkable in my youth.

However, I now have a favorite wine, can pick out a decent whiskey, know where to find great oysters, can make a decent steak, and have had Italian meals that would make Mario Batali weep like an evangelical being told they were destined to the promised land.

In my mind, that's a fair trade off.

Teff

In Ethiopian, teff means "lost", ostensibly due to its dirt-like appearance; drop it on the ground and you can't find it. It is one of the smallest grains in the world -- 150 teff grains weigh as much as 1 grain of wheat (or, 7 grains will fit on the head of a pin).

Despite its small size, teff is a nutritional powerhouse composed of 11% protein, 80% complex carbohydrate, and 3% fat that delivers high levels of calcium, phosphorous, iron, copper, aluminum, barium, thiamine, and all of the essential amino acids in easily absorbed forms. Whew! Plus, there is no gluten in this grain, so teff flour is great for those with gluten allergies.

As you can see, there are many wonderful reasons to give this interesting and little-known grain a trial run in your kitchen!

History

Teff is thought to originate in Ethiopia between 4000 and 1000 B.C., although some sources dispute that it may have arrived there previously from the Middle East. Its seeds have been found in the Dassur Pyramid of Egypt and are thought to date to 3359 B.C. Even today, this ancient grain accounts for about one-quarter of the grain production in Ethiopia and it is considered a staple food.

In the United States, the introduction of teff rests on the shoulders of one man, Wayne Carlson. During the 1970's, while working in Ethiopia to study tropical diseases, he became interested in teff's nutritional properties. He returned with seeds and in the early 1980s experimented with teff on a farm in western Idaho. Teff grew so well in this area, and there was such a growing domestic demand, that Carlson formed The Teff Company.

Uses & Recipes

Teff is perhaps most famous for its use in making Ethiopian injera flat bread, of which I have absolutely no experience. I searched the internet for the most complete explanation of the process and found this excellent blog entry:

burakaeyae.blogspot.com - Step by Step Injera Instructions

Heather has spent time in Ethiopia and seems to know what she is doing. There are even videos so that dummies like me can understand. Thanks, Heather!

Other ideas for teff can be found on the following pages.

The Teff Company - Recipes (look in the right-side column)

Bob's Red Mill - Teff Flour (scroll down to "Related Recipes")

I don't have a personal photo this week because I was unable to find pure teff grain at a local store. In its place, I found this beautiful photo of a traditional Ethiopian meal. You can see that all of the food is placed on top of the injera flat bread, and pieces of the bread are used to scoop the food -- no utensils needed. Thanks to Flickr user LollyKnit for this one.

See you next week!

. . . . .

Now Playing: Meat Is Murder by The Smiths. It's a coincidence, I promise!

My uncle used to brag, "I've never had a failure with blueberry pie!"

Although he'd never actually attempted one, he basked in this one culinary victory.

While I love blueberries, I'd rather eat them plain than in pie. What other berry can you munch like Skittles but without the guilt? Raspberries don't burst, strawberries are too big, cranberries are too tart and blackberries have too many seeds.

While I won't go so far as to say blueberries are better than chocolate, they are just as versatile. They add a dot of color to pancakes, turn plain cupcakes fancy and can even be used in savory meat sauces. Being loaded with vitamins and antioxidants is a mere bonus.

Like my uncle, I've never had a failure with blueberry pie, but will confess to one spectacular crockpot failure we dubbed Blueberry Goo.

If you can't resist the urge to cook, my blueberry goo fiasco includes a very successful lemon and blueberry muffin recipe. But I think these seasonal beauties are best enjoyed in all their natural glory -- with a dollop of slightly sweetened whipped cream if you must. As long as the berries are fresh and ripe, you can't go wrong.