Lasagna supper: reflections

Here's how it really went:

• the friends we originally invited weren't able to make it, so we left a message at our pastor's (also our neighbor) house inviting him. Didn't hear from them, so I was all anxious about it, until I talked to Sylvia, his wife after church, and they said they'd love to come. Had plenty of food, so also invited a relative newcomer to our church to come too. Her husband was working a 24 hour shift at the hospital and she was happy for some adult company and we were happy to have her and her two charming young children.
• I bought a bottle of very good wine to go with the meal - Root:1 Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile. Oh it was so nice and smooth. I used my usually sophisticated wine shopping method: look for the right color, look for a good price, look for a good rating and buy the one with the nicest label.
  
• Saturday night I did some prep work but left most of it for early Sunday morning. Worked steady for over 3 hours. I find that I am very very slow but part of the enjoyment is taking my time and pottering about.

Here are the recipes I used as a base:
Pistachio Raisin Biscotti
used walnuts instead and some oat flour; didn't rise at all; had to bake much longer than the recipe called for; yummy
Freeze-Ahead Lasagna Primavera
wasn't a huge hit, but may be worth trying again; use zuchinni or summer squash or asparagus in place of the carrots and only 1/2 the spinach; the sauce took a loooooong time to thicken
Tomato-Sausage Lasagna second time for this recipe; you'd think you'd miss the ricotta, but you don't; used 20 oz of the sausage instead of 1 lb and didn't soak the noodles since they were of the no-boil type. The Hunt's organic crushed tomatoes won the taste test hands down. Wonderful flavor and color and RTU without any mashing.
Sweet Ricotta With Chocolate There was no need to drain the ricotta, and, in fact, it might have been better if it were a little more liquid. The cheese to chocolate ratio was off - needed more chocolate. Next time, I'd used 1/2 the cheese but the same amout of chocolate and would serve it already dished into little dishes. The blackberries and raspberries I served alongside were more popular than the ricotta dish but not everybody is used to the idea of cheese for dessert.
I ran out of parm cheese and didn't want to make the Caesar salad without it so I just threw together a romaine salad with some stuff I had on hand: vine on tomatoes, feta cheese, cuke, kalamata olives and the redirected croutons. Quite tasty.

I'd give the meal two thumbs up but the best part was spending time with my dear family and our lovely guests. We had a very nice time together.