An aneurism in the making.

After thirteen years of being married and cooking on my own, I'd like to think that I am finally a decent cook.  But I certainly didn't start out as such. In the beginning of our marriage me and Isaak lived on a steady diet of beans and rice, shells and cheese macaroni, and boiled chicken. When I exhausted my three go-to recipes for the week we filled the remaining days meals with Digornio pizzas and cereal.

Ahhh, those were the days. I coulda ate that way forever.

Even though I was perfectly content with this food arrangement, being the die hard Digornio, cereal, and shells and cheese lover that I am....Isaak was needing a bit more variety after three years.

Sadly, I just couldn't make him see the benefits of eating cereal for dinner so often. Even after many exhausted arguments of trying to make him see that you can have variety with cereal! You can have corn, rice, oats, whole wheat, cinnamon, marshmallow, and chocolate. Endless variety I say! But, for all my efforts, the man actually holds the belief that his life doesn't revolve around cereal.

I can't fathom where such a notion comes from.

So, being the good wife that I am, I started branching out and trying new recipes. And after a while I started to get more competent in the cooking and baking department-or, at least I could follow a decent recipe, and was able to offer up something more interesting than boxed macaroni or cereal.

However, despite all my years of progress in the kitchen there has been one thing that I simply cannot master cooking.....

.....the lasagna noodle.

I've never, not. once, in my adult life been successful at cooking them.

It's sad really. To be beaten by a noodle.

I should have just sworn off lasagna making years ago after so many failed attempts, and let the lasagna noodle win. But I am stubborn, and I have these moments where I go temporarily insane at least twice a year and for some reason lasagna sounds really good and I think to myself, "hey, I'll attempt to make lasagna again," perhaps subconsciously thinking that my success as a chef and a homemaker is somehow dependent on my ability to make it....kinda like meatloaf (which I can proudly say I have conquered).

Except every time I attempt to make lasagna, I think the end result will be different. But of course it never is. I don't know if that's insanity, but it definitely be stupidity, that's for sure!

And what is the end result? THIS! This, is what always happens to me when I attempt to cook lasagna! The noodles get stuck together, and then I have to rip them apart and I end up with strips and bits of noodles! (and this is a picture of the good pieces! I've got a whole pot to the left that I couldn't even salvage)

I just don't get it. What the heck is up with these noodles? It all seems easy enough. I mean, I can cook spaghetti noodles with some amount of competency. You boil the water. Put in the noodles. Drain them. Continue with the recipe. That's how noodles work. Every noodle on the planet except for these blasted mutant ones that I'm pretty sure were invented by Satan himself ( after all, he is the master deceiver, and what is more deceiving than these seemingly innocent noodles!) I really don't see another explanation for them. They are evil.

I don't understand what I keep doing wrong! I've tried everything!

Or, maybe it's not me. Maybe it's them. Maybe the noodles are conspiring against me. They want me to fail. Maybe, the lasagna noodle is friends with my cereal and they have determined to teach me a lesson by being impossible to make so that the only option left to me at the end of the night is to eat cereal for supper! This is why I shoulda stuck my ground all those years ago and brainwashed Isaak until he loved cereal as much as me.

Or maybe it is me. Seen as how everyone else can seem to make these aneurisms in the making just fine. All I know is that I got so stinkin' mad at those blasted noodles the other night I was thiiis close to chuckin' them across the room. But I knew that would be wrong, so I mustered up maybe the greatest effort of self restraint known to man and I simply envisioned myself throwing the noodles against the wall.

So this time, I am sticking my ground, and I have sworn off making lasagna ever again. It's just not worth the impending aneurism that is sure to explode if I attempt such a ludicrous and raging inducing meal again. And, I don't want to scare the children when I am forced to throw the pot of noodles through the window.

Therefore from this day forward....lasagna noodles are dead to me.