Foodie Friday:: Chard (or Charred?)

It’s beautiful, right?
I had one hell of a day yesterday. 1,000 balls in the air, a lot of creativity, writing for my local paper, trying to juggle my kid, 15 phone calls and a bit of friendship negotiation. I didn’t handle much of it with grace. But I *did* laugh really hard with a friend in the afternoon, saw a magic show and burned the crap out of our dinner.

That’s a gorgeously made white sauce based lasagna up there. I made the Béchamel sauce without much attention and apparently burned the ever loving crap out of it. But, I didn’t notice because a)I was running around trying to be super-mom/wife and b) I can’t smell a damn thing because of my allergies.  So, I merrily followed the path and added in a pound of sausage, a huge bunch of chard, a cup of cheese etc. It wasn’t until the whole thing was layered up that I stuck my finger in the sauce and tasted it. Yeah. . . there’s no way scorched milk tastes good. Ever. Even when you add all that other stuff to it. I almost started bawling. But, instead, I chucked the damn thing in the oven because I’m nothing if not persistent.

Tom came home and immediately asked what was burning. How did I NOT smell the burning?! I told him that we’d likely need to fall back on a back up plan for dinner. He dutifully started trying to scour the pot I’d made the sauce in. It was bad, folks. Really bad.

The lasagna? Beautiful. Awful.

I threw up my hands, left the pan on the stove top, bundled up the family and went to get hot dogs at the local free concert series at the public pier. I needed an attitude adjustment. I needed to find grace in the turnaround. So we went and ate those dogs and danced in the 50 degree wind and sunshine and blew bubbles and played with chalk and laughed with friends.

Here it is, Thursday (yeah, I’m writing this early). The day after the mess in the kitchen. I’m still trying to get the scorched milk off the bottom of my pan, am burping hot dogs still and have a beautiful lasagna to throw away. Ah well. I wonder how many beautifully photographed meals taste like shit?

I need you all to go make this one, WITHOUT burning the sauce and tell me how it tastes. Thanks.

Sausage, Chard, and Lemon Lasagna