Lasagna

I recently found this delicious lasagna recipe in an SF church cook book from 7+ years ago. It's a little time consuming, but very tasty. Plus I didn't have to cook for 5 days after making it last week ("Well we still have lasagna in the fridge, so...").

1 lb. ground turkey (or ground beef)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T. sugar
1.5 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. salt
16 oz. can crushed tomatoes
10 3/4 oz. can condensed tomato soup
6 oz. can tomato paste
2.5 cups water
12 uncooked lasagna noodles
12 oz. container cottage cheese (no fat tastes fine to me)
2 cups mozzarella, shredded
1/4 cup parmesan, shredded

*Brown turkey and onion in a large pot, then drain. Stir in sugar, basil, salt, tomatoes, soup, paster and water. Heat to a boil, stirring occasionally. Then reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes.

Spread 2 cups of the sauce mixture in an ungreased 9x13 pan. Top with 4 noodles, spread with 1/2 of the cottage cheese, then 2 more cups sauce and 1 cup mozzarella. Repeat with 4 noodles, rest of cottage cheese, 2 cups sauce and remaining mozzarella. Top with 4 noodles, remaining sauce, and parmesan on top. Cover with tin foil (it can be refrigerated for up to 12 hours at this point).

Bake covered at 350 for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake 30-40 minutes more. Let it stand for 15 minutes before cutting.

P.S. I just realized I ate a bowl of leftover sauce for lunch. I thought I was thawing out chili! So weird, but it was delicious.

At Last!

I just saw this easyfeet product in the Bed, Bath & Beyond ad. "No More Bending To Clean Your Feet!" you say? Awesome! Because I totally hate bending to clean my feet! (being sarcastic, of course. Are we all turning into Wall-E people?)

Birthday 2011

This year I wanted a little family trip for my birthday, so last weekend found us heading up to Sacramento--hooray!. I love it there, and it has many kid attractions we hadn't experienced yet. First up, the mini amusement park Funderland:

We graced the Discovery Museum Science and Space Center with our presence on Saturday:

then made a quick trip to the Sacramento temple in the rain:

Sunday was my actual birthday. Thanks to Vacation Rules, I was able to ignore Fast Sunday and pig out at The Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Speaking of being a pig, did you know California has a new law that requires restaurants with 20+ locations to list calorie information on their menus? It was helpful but depressing. 1950 calories for my favorite Stuffed Chicken Tortillas entree!?! It can't help that I followed that up with the Outrageous Chocolate Cake at 1510!

It was the little things that made this a great trip: a change of scenery, eating at family-friendly chain and fast-food restaurants (including my first stand-alone Chick-Fil-A), watching good cable, going in the hot tub. The Brothers loved playing on the hotel room beds, and 1st Brother asked if he could sleep in the suitcase:

My husband did his hacker magic and put my SIM card into his old iPhone (resurrected from water damage after sitting around for a few months), so now I'm an iPhone person! I was kind of proud of my outdated flip phone, but texting without a keyboard was the worst, so now I'm much happier.

Among other great gifts, I also got the complete Pee-Wee's Playhouse series on DVD. Yes! Now I feel I have all the tools I need to raise my children right.

As a grand finale to all the celebrations, I got to spend Wednesday evening with friends and the "ladies" of AsiaSF. It was a good time with some intriguing performances; wow!

Karen Hair Salon

If you ask my husband for a recommendation on where to get a haircut in San Francisco, he'll tell you Karen Hair Salon in Chinatown. Why? It costs $5 (and then he gives a 100% tip to make it $10), and he doesn't have to make small talk because the stylist speaks very little English (his favorite part).

I took the pictures below when he went last week. During that visit, instead of the usual Chinese radio station, he reported the stylist turned on some sort of "So You'd Like to Become a U.S. Citizen"-type CD. It would say things in English like, "What is the Constitution?" (a bunch of stuff in Chinese); "Who is the President of the United States?" (Chinese again). Hee hee!