A quick update about my Lasagna fiasco – I finished off the rest of it for lunch today.

It was delicious.

So good, I forgot to take a photo of it.

Sorry.

A number of months ago, a friend of mine pointed pointed me in the direction of A Year of Slow Cooking, which details the efforts of cooking with a crock pot for an entire year.

The blog covers a wide range of meals. So far, my favorite is this simple Slow cooked Shredded Chicken recipe. There’s almost no work to it, and the results are very tasty. And useful. I had chicken for a week+ after I finished.

The second recipe I tried for a small dinner party Friday evening, was Super Easy CrockPot Lasagna.

The instructions are simple, the ingredients delicious. I prepped everything the night before – I found some great Central Market pasta sauce, I snuck in some broccoli and carrots. Mmm. It was going to be good. In the morning I added the requisite water, set the cooker on ‘low’ and went to work.

My mouth was watering in anticipation as I drove home. Oh, it was going to be delicious. As I entered the house, however, there was a subtle undertone of… something suspicious.

Yep. It burned. Badly. As failures go, this one was spectacular. I don’t have any photos (the camera refused to work while pointed at the mess), but you can ask the dinner guests… they can all attest to how bad it was. My suspicion is that the noodles I used required more water than her recipe, and that I somewhat under-estimated how long a work day is, and therefor cooked things longer than I intended.

Time for plan B: I grabbed keys, shoes and ran out the door for the grocery store. 20 minutes later, and I’m improvising cooking instructions, boiling water for the noodles and prepping another batch of lasagna. It’s all about the dinner, right?

It was chaos. It was a rush. But in the end, I had the lasagna in the oven with just enough time to spare for cleaning up the kitchen and picking up the dining and living rooms.

The dinner was great – there was both red and white wines, Kelly brought Dulce de Leche for dessert, also made in a slow cooker. It was a regular crock pot party. (Just, with my lasagna made in the oven – you know, the failure and all…)

I’ll probably try the recipe again, just do it while I’m actually at home and can keep an eye on things.

I’m sitting in a giant aluminum tube, chasing through the sky at 600 miles an hour, and it feels right.

It’s peaceful, around me people are sleeping, a few seat-back screens are showing a random selection of movies, and it is as if this, right here, right now, is what it’s all about.

Being surrounded by orthodox Jews, although a first in experience, seems as natural as if they’d been there every day of my life. This is but one of many things I was about to experience on this trip over the next 13 days.

It all started the night before – I was returning a dog I’d been sitting, when I was overcome with despair. I don’t know what was the cause, but all I wanted to do at the time, was to NOT GO.

You read me right: I wanted to stay home. Ignoring the cost, and not to mention the trip of a lifetime. It was all disposable at that exact moment.

Surely that’s crazy talk, right? Well, such is the power of spiritual warfare at it’s best. After texting for prayers, and spending some quality time praying, I dropped off Mr. Darcy and went home to finish packing.

I don’t remember much of the 3am wake-up, getting to the airport, or the flight to Newark. Except the Crazyness of the Sassone’s side-trip to Houston to renew Heather’s passport. You see, your passport has to be valid at least 6 months after the return from visiting Israel or you can’t go, and Heather’s passport expired in March. I’m inclined to allow them to tell the story of that adventure… but they did get to Tel Aviv.

On the topic of passports, though – the Sassone’s weren’t the only ones with passport trouble. Amanda also managed to lose hers on the flight to Newark, which causes trouble continuing international travel as you can imagine. I think I spy a passport-telling story in the future after all….

… so there I am, 36000 feet up in the air, and feeling very much at peace. As I’d be told several days later, I am going “home” after all. And as you’ll see, it wasn’t until a while later that I realized this.

(More photos can be seen here)

I realise it has been entirely too long since I’ve written anything of interest on this blog… For a while, I was posting every 4 weeks or so, but it has been in excess of 2 months since my last post….

This is because I’m the king of starting blog entries on thoughts, and not finishing them. I kid you not, I have at least 10 blog entries in various stages of completion – all but the “finished” stage.

This is not a new years resolution, but more a challenge to myself to be a more active writer. It is an outlet for thoughts that I enjoy, but not one that I use enough.

Feel free to start hassling me if I go too long without writing….