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| Chris and Luca cooking |
We'll start with the feast, because few things in life rival a really good meal. Our Italian roommate, Luca, has been telling us about this lasagna recipe from his hometown of Genoa. We finally pulled together to have another Byron Family Dinner featuring Luca's Pesto Potato Lasagne. I've never had a lasagna like this before and it's refreshing to think there are ingredients aside from tomatoes, beef and veggies that can be thrown into a baking dish with some big noodles. After getting all our ingredients from Woolies, Luca prepared the pesto, Chris set to work making the bechamel sauce, and I prepped the potatoes and green beans - the staple ingredients in this lasagna. Once the noodles are ready, we layer them in the bottom of the pan, then spoon pesto sauce over the noodles. Follow that with some light spoonfuls of bechamel sauce, then slices of potato and green beans. Then start layer two with another coat of lasagna noodles. After 5-7 layers we bake it for 1/2 hour. The result is heaven. Creamy, soft and herb-infused, it's extremely filling but you can't stop eating it. We're looking forward to collecting more recipes from friends while we're here and starting our global recipe box!
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| Pesto Potato Lasagna from Genoa, Italy |
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| before |
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| Color in progress |
And now, the surfboard. A few weeks ago I scored a short 6'0 surfboard from my buddies at the local surf shop. It's plain white, and those of you that know me well could probably guess that this won't last long. Well, the fun has started and my board is on it's way to being wildly colorful and girly. We started by sanding the whole board down with a fine grit paper. We fixed up all the dings with resin. Then we taped off the fins, we'll be leaving those clear. Then we sprayed all the logos white so they don't show through the paint. Now, the fun part. Spray paint!!! I taped off the area where the stripes will go, saving those for the last step. We spray each coat of paint, one color at a time, lightly and all day. It takes an hour between coats and about 5 coats to get a good strong color. We can only spray one side of the board at a time, because we're trying to keep the stringer shining through, so we keep it taped off. I'm predicting we'll be done by the end of the week. The whole board will get a few coats of a gloss sealer once it's all painted to keep it safe and pretty. I will post more photos once it's done. Hopefully I'm not too afraid to take it in the water after this! I still have a few weeks/months of learning on this board before I can be good at riding a wave with it, it's a lot shorter than my mini mal. Can't wait to get back in the water and practice!
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| The final design |
We'll start with the feast, because few things in life rival a really good meal. Our Italian roommate, Luca, has been telling us about this lasagna recipe from his hometown of Genoa. We finally pulled together to have another Byron Family Dinner featuring Luca's Pesto Potato Lasagne. I've never had a lasagna like this before and it's refreshing to think there are ingredients aside from tomatoes, beef and veggies that can be thrown into a baking dish with some big noodles. After getting all our ingredients from Woolies, Luca prepared the pesto, Chris set to work making the bechamel sauce, and I prepped the potatoes and green beans - the staple ingredients in this lasagna. Once the noodles are ready, we layer them in the bottom of the pan, then spoon pesto sauce over the noodles. Follow that with some light spoonfuls of bechamel sauce, then slices of potato and green beans. Then start layer two with another coat of lasagna noodles. After 5-7 layers we bake it for 1/2 hour. The result is heaven. Creamy, soft and herb-infused, it's extremely filling but you can't stop eating it. We're looking forward to collecting more recipes from friends while we're here and starting our global recipe box!
