Lasgana Supper

We're having some friends over tomorrow and I plan to serve a couple kinds of lasagna, my famous Caesar Salad and a ricotta cheese dessert. Biscotti, too, if I get around to making them.

As usual, my recipe source is Everday Food. It's a little warm today to have the oven on but the forecast is for a cooler day tomorrow. I'll bake the biscotti and toast the croutons this evening or early tomorrow.

In conjunction with making this fabulous meal, I am conducting a taste test of four different types of canned tomatoes: Hunts, Flavorite (the store brand), Red Gold and Hunts Organic. The last is crushed, the others are whole, as per the recipe. But I don't know why you wouldn't use crushed, since you need to break them up anyway.

Here's all the stuff I will do ahead:
Caesar Salad

• toast croutons
• wash and tear romaine
• squeeze lemon

Lasagna

• shred gobs of mozzarella
• removing casings from and brown the sausage (I'm using Jennie-O Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage)
• chop one onion
  
• make the red sauce
• defrost and squeeze the spinach
• clean and slice the carrots
• make the white sauce

Biscotti

• chop the walnuts

Sweet Ricotta dessert

• drain the ricotta
• chop the chocolate
• rinse the berries
  

Abe prepared the sun tea (now brewing). We'll serve that to drink plus water and milk. A little wine would go fine with this meal but the folks we've invited are Baptists and don't imbibe.

Both recipes call for NOT boiling the lasagna ahead, a very desirable thing. I'm trying Barilla noodles this time - they're advertised as being the more traditional lasagna shape - short with no crinkling at the edges.

That's the game plan. But right now, I'm going to take a nap.