Does this mean that I'm an international chef?

This past Saturday night my friend Aaron and I cooked dinner for the girls at his place. He handled salad and apps while I prepared the main course. Apparently I had shot my mouth off about cooking lasagna one time too many and Jess called it in, so I was tasked with baking a meat lasagna, with garlic bread, of course.

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so there will be no "Culinary Adventures" photo album associated with the meal.

I woke up on Saturday morning after a fun and drink filled Friday and spent most of the mid-afternoon purchasing ingredients. It's a fairly minor task in the states because finding ingredients to do your own cook is normal. In London, it's a pain in the ass. I quickly realized why British food gets the rap that it does - they don't even have the proper ingredients to cook something that doesn't suck. Everything is pre-made or in a jar. Like "Burger Sauce". I have no idea what that is, but it's some generic crap in a squeeze tube that you're supposed to want to put on a well cooked piece of meat. No thanks. There is no spice (i.e. flavor) aisle in the supermarket and the theme of the day is always "grab and go" for meals. It's sad really. I know American's are over eaters but part of that is because our food tastes good.

So back to the story. I left for Aaron's missing only a few ingredients: an egg (which I didn't want to try to take on the train), sliced mozzarella (I like the way it cooks more than the shredded variety) and garlic powder (again no spice aisle). I finally gave in an picked up a package of shredded mozzarella on the way. After meeting me at the train station Aaron and I picked up some eggs and by the greatest of fortunes, the small corner store we went to had a bag of garlic powder. So, no armed with all the ingredients we headed for the kitchen.

It was fun putting together the lasagna and the minor difficulties we ran into - ran out of noodles for the top layer so I got creative with the structure, not understanding British oven settings and setting the oven to broil for the first 15 minutes (which resulted in some very nicely melted cheese on top). But we overcame that, set the oven correctly and I whipped up a batch of garlic bread.

We all sat around the table and had a nice meal. It felt good to cook again. Especially when everyone went to for seconds.