Lasagna and more surgery

First the bad news: I need surgery to repair a meniscus tear on my left knee. Bear in mind my torn tendon is on my right foot, so basically it's going to be a little rough there for a while with both legs being gimpy.

Second: the good news. I made lasagna for dinner and lasagna, as Garfield has often noted, makes anything better.

I got a call from my doctor, himself, personally, which is never a good sign. He said there are all kinds of things going on with my knee and he's going to have to refer me to the orthopedic surgeon. My age works against me because as you get older the miniscus doesn't like to heal as well and my prognosis depends on exactly where in the minisicus the tear is. The miniscus is basically your knee cartilage that extends in a C shape around your knee.

On the plus side, I've heard great things from people who've had orthoscopic surgery on their knees. Most of them say that after years of pain, it's such a relief to have the knee working properly.

I'm sure there will come a day, a day I hope isn't too far off, when all of this is behind me and I'm back on my bike and taking my walks without the pain. But right now in the middle of it when my foot is still healing and every excursion on crutches brings excruciating pain in my bad knee, when I'm so limited in my activities that my doctor's visit, followed by some Jack in the Box by the beach is the high point of my week, I'm feeling very, very sorry for myself.

As I told Courtney, who is having her own not horrible, but not good string of luck, the wheel of kharma needs to turn a bit right now because it's stuck in a bad position.

So what do I do to nudge it along a bit? I make lasagna, that's what. My lasagna is my favorite dish. I've been making it forever and I'm always tweaking it to the next level. This time Rob found huge fresh mozzarella balls, whole milk ricotta and a big old package of provelone when he was shopping for the ingredients at Sam's Club. I've never made it with the fresh mozzarella, but that combined with the really good Chilean wine I put in the sauce, made this lasagna sublime.

My neat innovation is to not pre-boil my lasagna noodles. What I do now is make more sauce and cook it longer and the noodles stay nice and al dente (which means to the tooth, not bite-sized as Rachael Ray likes to say). I was able to put it together using the office chair that has been pressed into service as a wheelchair for around the house.