Double Dinner Friday!

...Last Friday!

Double Dinner Friday is a not-dorm-house-sanctioned "cult" activity that some people in my dorm house do every month except November. We all gather in the basement [which is pretty nice and has carpet and stuff, so it's not like hazing and it isn't really cultish or freaky; I suppose if our basement was like the cliche movie basement, Double Dinner Friday would be quite quirky]. On the first Friday at 9pm of each month [except November!], we gather, share [usually unhealthy] food, dance, chat, and have fun.

Double Dinner Friday occurred last Friday, but I didn't have time to write about it. I decided to live in this same dorm house [but I got a double instead of a quad!] solely because there is a lot of food here, the environment is nice [yes, our own bathrooms!], and DOUBLE DINNER FRIDAY EXISTS! Now, last time I went, there was microwaved mac and cheese-flavoured sauce, a lot of chips, candy, soda, etc. This time, there was actually a nice cheese bowl and a vegetable bowl! Whoo!

Also, the smoked cheese kettlecorn doesn't taste like smoked cheese. For anyone who intends to try out Indiana Popcorn Smoked Cheese Kettlecorn, it doesn't taste that great... It tastes like popcorn with sour cream. So, if you like sour cream, I suppose it'd be amazing.

The cocoa flavour one tasted good, except it was literally drenched in sugar, so it's terribly bad for my body and makes my adipose tissue grow.

Lasagne.

UPDATE: Here is another picture. It is still rather mixed up and the layers are a bit hard to see. There were three layers...

I am exhausted from packing and studying chem and blah. I don't even know how I had the brain capacity to drag myself into the kitchen this morning and make lasagne.

Vegetable lasagne with cucumber, carrot, onion [lots!], and red bell pepper. We unfortunately didn't have any spinach...

I added some couscous for texture variation, and breadcrumbs on top, even though they turned out too soggy because I put way too much sauce on top, instead of just leaving it cheesy...

We didn't have shredded cheese... so I used the handy pre-sliced cheese! There were swiss, cheddar and monterey jack slices.

Apparently the lasagne sheets could make two pans of lasagne... which was a lot more than I had expected. All I wanted to do was use up the box of sheets since no one else knows or wants to cook lasagne in this house, so I had to get it done before I go to college. Actually, I've been wanting to make lasagne for ages but I never remembered. Or felt like it.

MORE CHEESE! This was before I started dumping bread crumbs on top. In retrospect, the lasagne lacked enough cheese. Next time, I will literally smother the top with cheese, so that it looks more like a cuboidal cheese wheel than a lasagne.

Lasagne after baking, before the lasagne noodles had a chance to soak in all the sauce.

Same pan of lasagne; I never got around to taking a picture of the other pan... I got busy with studying... so tomorrow I'll upload some more pictures.

Beautiful.

Also, I learned that DRY PLAIN LASAGNE NOODLES DO COOK IN THE OVEN. Honestly, precooking them is definitely unnecessary [Good thing I didn't precook them.] A simple 40 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees F solves everything. Especially if you feel like leaving the lasagne in the oven for another 10 minutes.

After taking the lasagne out, it is definitely necessary to wait for approximately 20 minutes for the lasagne noodles to sponge up the watery sauce that was emitted by the tomato sauce and vegetables. I didn't wait... and ended up with lasagne soup for the first serving. Above and below are the images of the non-soaked-lasagne noodles. I never got around to taking a picture of the lasagne after "actually" done, though. Tomorrow... I shall post them. However, later on I was looking at the lasagne and the sauce/cheese/noodle ratio wasn't defined clearly :( However... this isn't terrible since this is the second time I've made lasagne in my life. I should definitely make it more often.

Cheese Puffs!!!! [aka, Pufferfish]

They are not crackers. They are not Goldfish crackers. They are... PUFFERFISH CRACKERS! Literally, in the sense that they're poofy, cheesy [tastes like Goldfish, sorta], and honestly soo delicious!!! I have never baked anything so easy! You basically pulverise everything and mash it up and make globs of it and bake it. :D
So... I initially wanted to recreate the ubiquitous Goldfish cracker, which I adore with an emotional passion [track. track. track.]. I found this recipe, and decided to follow it, with some tweaking. Of course, anything I tweak ends up very different from the original, so instead of having crunchy crackers... I got gooey oozy cheesy ones. To make these you need:
1. pepper.
2. 20 turns of sea salt from the sea salt grinder.
3. 2 cups of flour.
4. 3 cups of cheddar cheese. I used the one from Costco. You know, big bag of shredded orange stuff.
5. 5 tsp butter [we ran out].
6. 1 tbsp oil.
7. water.
8. Whatever herbs you want. I added oregano.

Method:
1. Pulse everything dry + butter in the food processor. I don't have a food processor...so I pulsed everything in the blender.
2. Add oil.
3. Add water, 1 tbsp at a time, until you can make a dough that comes together and is even. You do not want a batter.
4. Stick it in the fridge in a container for as long as you want. For me, that was 40 hours.
5. Scoop balls of it out and flatten. You actually don't have to flatten them if you wanna make 3D pastry-type cheese balls. I initially used a bottle cap to make the circle, but it was wayyyy too tedious.
6. Bake at 350F for 13 minutes. If you want crunchy ones, bake for 14 minutes. If you like preheating your oven [which I don't], you can bake for 10 minutes.
7. Pick them up and eat them. You don't need to grease your pan, by the way.
They were delicious. My grandpa liked them... and he doesn't even like cheese! I made... 35 + 35 + 11 + 14 + 5 = around 100. Wow. Hmm I could start my own bakery.
Oh did I say? It smelled. Out of this world... and into the sea :P