Lasagna of Champions!

We made Lasagna Rio Grande (Page 180) and what can I say. It was some of the best lasagna I've ever tasted! We did wuss out on the pesto and bought a jar of basil pesto to use (I really don't like cilantro so that was out). We also used a mixture of chard, kale and spinach for the greens, just to be innovative! The lasagna was fantastic! Lasagna is always a bit labour intensive and this was no different. The recipe refers to three "sub-recipes" in excellent rebar fashion. Also, as usual, the quantities were way off. We ended up with two lasagnas! But I can't stress enough how tasty it was. We will definitely use this recipe for lasagna again, although we might cut down on the amount of filling we make (or else we need to buy a bigger lasagna pan!!

I'd give it four bars for taste and three for effort

Poppyseed Papparadelle - an easy, tasty dinner (p 165)

I had a day off and thought I would extend our Rebar cooking streak by making a Rebar supper. This pasta was easy and tasty. Nic picked up the ingredients after work and we were eating by 7:00.

We used whole wheat rigatoni instead of Papparadelle and substituted white wine for red, but otherwise followed the recipe. I think it's always nice to find a new pasta sauce that isn't based on tomatoes or cream. The main ingredient was mushrooms but I thought that the sauce, which was made of wine, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar had a very nice flavour that wasn't overwhelmingly mushroomy- a great meal and one that's possible to make on a week day.

Smoky Green Split Pea Soup... without the smoke (P 119).

We hadn't seen Marc and Jacquie since before Christmas and decided to have them over for dinner on Sunday. Matt and Sarah joined us as well. We decided this was a good chance to try another soup. We had our eye on the green split pea soup last week and decided that this was a good chance to try it. The soup was pretty easy to make but it does require that the split peas be soaked overnight and a fairly long cooking time to get the peas soft enough. Therefore you do need to play ahead to make this soup and allow enough time to get it finished.



I was excited to use the vegetable stock I'd made the week before and it provided a nice tasty broth. Nic looked for liquid smoke at the store formally known as Dan-D-Mart and had no luck, so we left it out... there's something about "liquid smoke" that doesn't seem like it would be that healthy, so we didn't really mind. We also only had dried sage as all the sage that grows in our garden is dead at the moment. Finally, after last week's spicy soup fiasco I decided to forgo the chipotle altogether, although I did put in a few dashes of red chile flakes.

This is one of those classic Rebar recipes that refers you to another page for one of the ingredients. Luckily this time it was only Roasted Garlic (p 158). We roasted about one and a half bulbs (since that's what we had left) and added it to the soup when it was done.

The soup got great reviews from all of the dinner guests although I thought we could have cooked it a bit longer to get the peas a bit softer. It tasted great and was a much bigger success than last week's soup. I might put in a bit less garlic if I made it again, but that's just personal preference.

The recipe said it served 8-10. We served it as a main course for six, with salad and bread with dessert and had two jars of leftovers... perfect.