About a week ago we held a baby shower for my sister-in-law Carrie.  I'm so excited for this baby to arrive, to meet the first baby born into our immediate family other than my own.  I am looking forward to seeing my brother become a dad, watching his own child climb on him like a jungle gym just like every other child does who is near him.  So, while we sit, waiting for the little baby bird to arrive, we decided to get together and visit and give tiny gifts and, well, mostly eat.


We were joined by many of the ladies in our families and it was so fun to get together.  It's not that often that we all see each other, the last time so many of us were together was four years ago at Ryan and Carrie's wedding.  We were all so busy eating and visiting and catching up and watching the kids running around (eight kids total!), that we pretty much forgot to take any pictures.  But my mom was smart enough to think to capture one of the little momma:


Just so you don't think that Carrie was there all by herself, here's proof that a few others made it all the way out to my house:

Aunt Mary, Lynn's daughter Julia (aka "My Julia" to Sophie), me and Sophie


Aunt Diane, my cousin Mary, Carrie's sister Wendy, Grandma Mitchell


My cousin Lynn, Aunt Susan, Aunt Mary, my cousin John's wife Loma, my cousin Pam

Not pictured: Carrie's mom Ginger, all the guys (who with the exception of Marty went out for lunch then promptly fell asleep in the family room watching football upon their return), Marty and all the kids

We had loads of food:
First course: Prosciutto wrapped cantaloupe, Caprese
Second course: Aunt Diane's tasty salad, Squash-rosemary lasagna, Lasagna
Dessert: Strawberry sips, Tiramisu

Now there's nothing to do but sit around and wait for the baby to arrive.  I'll be so glad to have another baby around to fill the house with fun, and hopefully the kind of fun that makes my children look like well-behaved angels.

*****
Since it's been ages since I've posted any recipes, mostly because it's been ages since I've done much cooking, I'm going to post them here.  If for no other reason, so that I can find them again when I'm searching through my messy stacks of printed recipes.

Roasted Butternut Squash, Rosemary, and Garlic Lasagna
Because I cannot follow any recipe exactly (either for dietary reasons or because I feel that I can take shortcuts or maybe even improvements), I made big changes to this one.  The original recipe looked really tasty - my changes took the basic idea of the recipe and pretty much turned it into something else.

Lasagna
I started with this basic recipe and went from there.  I omitted the Parmesan by accident, and I used the Barilla lasagna noodles that don't have to be boiled in advance to save a step.  Also, I ended up baking it for almost an hour and a half.  I think it took so long because I was staring at it and there were so many hungry people around.  Also that I had made all of the filling layers a day ahead and they were cold, so I think that added the extra time.

For the sauce layer, I used this recipe that came highly recommended by Kathy.  The only change there was that I pureed the vegetables before cooking so that I didn't have to try to blend hot sauce.  Also, I made a double batch thinking that I'd need more.  What I ended up needing was an industrial sized pot and the biggest tupperware bowl I own to contain all this sauce.  It is delicious and would be great on anything.

Deciding that we should have a meat layer, I made some Bolognese sauce and started with this recipe.  Again, deciding that we'd need more, I made a triple batch and used one pound each of ground veal, pork, and beef for the meat.  I substituted soy-based products for the milk and butter that this recipe calls for so that I could serve the extras to my own family.  The only problem with this theory was that Marty kept coming back to the "extras" and pouring it over bread like biscuits and gravy, and we really didn't end up with much that was left over.

I made the ricotta because there is nothing quite as heavenly as fresh ricotta, and it's fun to make because it feels like a science experiment.  Once the ricotta was cool, I added chopped fresh parsley from my garden to the mixture.

Tiramisu
Because I'm not a baker, I intended on following this recipe exactly as written.  Unfortunately, when I went to get the sweet marsala out of the cabinet I realized that what I thought was marsala was actually tawny port.  Not knowing enough about either to know if this would be an acceptable substitute, I decided that it would be fine and dumped it in anyway.  It was fine, but the flavor was a bit off.

Strawberry Sips
I started with a recipe out of the Ruttger's cookbook, and made a bunch of changes to fit our crowd.  The result was tasty and light, served in little cordial glasses.