Janet’s Lasagna

Noodles. Filling. Cheese. Repeat.

I imagine when you cook the same meal over and over again, it becomes a kind of spiritual exercise for you. Repetition and experience leads to the wisdom of cooking with your gut and with your heart. You just know when things are ready or how they should taste.

This is how my mom prepared her spinach lasagna — with the muscle memory that only comes from doing something over and over again, as natural to her as taking a shower in the morning or brushing her teeth before bed.

She would just know when it was time to turn the heat off, take the lasagna out of the oven, and let it settle, the cheeses bubbling and sputtering on the surface, liquid oozing around the edges.

Most people follow recipes when they cook, or some semblance of a recipe. My mom does not. She was [and still is, although the novelty of cooking has worn off after so many years of doing it] a wizard in the kitchen — like pulling a rabbit out of a magician’s hat, she would seemingly pull a meal out of thin air.

She was and is the queen of Using Up Ingredients. Where I might see nothing to work with in the fridge, she would see nothing but potential.

Pulling items out of the pantry and the fridge or freezer, a meal could be concocted on the spot. Half open cans of cream of mushroom soup, a random packet of ramen noodle seasoning, the ends of celery stalks, the little bits of leftover chicken from a previous meal and a carton of sour cream all transformed into something worth grabbing seconds for.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I truly started to develop an appreciation for cooking, and began to adopt the things my mom had imparted upon me.

Recently, as I observed her preparing her lasagna, always requested and never tired of by the members of my family, I scribbled down her method and tips in a notebook.

I don’t have children of my own to share this with yet, so here it is in it’s glorious, unpretentious form:

After heating the frozen block of spinach — breaking it apart with a spoon along the way — along with a can or two of cream of mushroom soup, she would then incorporate diced up onion, almost an entire container of cottage cheese, a pinch of Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, a squirt of vinegar for flavor, and any other vegetables she deemed needing Using Up; then would begin the process of Compiling the Lasagna.

Noodles. Filling. Cheese. Repeat. Noodles. Filling. Cheese. Repeat.

While her lasagna can never be translated into a recipe in the traditional sense, never communicated in a numbered list of instructions, there is a feeling behind it that I sensed as I stood beside her and watched the rhythm of her hands working.

As I’ve gotten older, I look for meaning in different places. I look to cooking and the kitchen to recreate a connection to my childhood and how I felt eating my mom’s food and watching her cook, to try and understand her better.

Now, when I open up my own squeaky kitchen cupboards, I search for potential to bring us back to the beginning, patiently waiting for that feeling of knowing when everything is just right.