Monday, March 23, 2009

Lasagna at Home

For dinner, I had vegetarian lasagna with fire-roasted veggies.

I'm only now starting to get over my childhood-induced fear of frozen foods. I've always been ok with frozen pizza, and I rediscovered frozen fruits and veggies a year or two ago. But meals? Even with the best of intentions, they're never very good. Tonight was no exception.

I happened across Safeway's O organics line in the freezer section of the grocery store, and promptly stocked up on their delicious frozen pizzas. Their lasagna sounded intriguing, and I was completely sick of meat (and calories) after a week of dinners out with the in-laws. I briefly thought of eating whole-wheat couscous and veggies for dinner instead (such is the horror of frozen entrees), but I wanted something a little more substantial and caved.

It wasn't awful, but it had that weird frozen taste all frozen meals seem to have- sort of a dried-out cardboard flavor underpinning everything. The lasagna noodles were not overcooked, and the zucchini chunks were nice. But there were also undercooked (ie, not cooked) chunks of bell pepper that prevented all the flavors from coming together into the cohesive goodness of something I would label "lasagna". The relatively low calorie content, and the skimpy cheese coverage probably contributed to my dislike as well. I've never made real lasagna (my mother used to let me help her make something called "crafty lasagna" that involved pressing cans of refrigerated pre-made dough and sesame seeds on top of lasagna prior to cooking, and which made me think I hated Italian food until I was about fifteen), but I've heard it's not very difficult. Next time, I'll try to make my own.

No comments: