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Janna’s Extra-Easy Delightfully-Delicious Lasagne

[NOTE: To make this lasagne recipe Vegan or Strictly Vegetarian, simply replace the ground beef with portabella mushrooms and sliced colossal (really big!) black olives. Then make certain the noodles are egg-free (DeBoles is a good brand). Next, replace the all the cheeses with an Extra-Firm Tofu that has been thoroughly drained and then crushed with a fork. It’s truly terrific, I promise! Enjoy! — Janna]

Believe it or not, lasagne is quite a popular dish in Iowa, and the mark of being an expert cook in the Midwest is just how good your lasagne tastes. I make a mean lasagne. When I moved to New York, home of Little Italy and other great taste treats, I thought my lasagne recipe would be challenged.

Competition?
Well, let me say that after ten years of tasting the lasagne competition, my lasagne recipe is still the tops! It tastes great. It’s NOT less filling. My lasagne is extra-easy to make and super-delicious to eat!

Taste for Yourself
I share my famous recipe with you now so you can taste for yourself. This is yet another Go Inside exclusive! What’s great about this lasagne recipe is that you don’t have to cook the lasagne noodles first.

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When It Rains, New Yorkers Melt

As a child of the Midwest, I’m used to heavy rain and snow. In Iowa, where I was born and raised, eight foot tall snow drifts were not uncommon and every man, woman and child was expected to help shovel that heavy snow from the driveways and sidewalks of our neighborhoods.

Mother Nature
School was never called off because of heavy rain. Falling snow only called off school or work in the most extreme cases — perhaps only once every two years for the first 24 years I lived in Iowa. The weather builds character and facing Mother Nature head-on is a Midwestern rite of passage that everyone must face.

To give in to the cold, wind or fog is to admit defeat at the hands of the elements. If Midwesterners were paused by the weather, no fields would be tilled, no crops would be harvested. The food the nation eats would not be harvested and processed. Schools and stores would close in Iowa only when the snow got so deep that the snow plows couldn’t keep the roads clear. The farmers, on the other hand, never had the luxury of closing due to the fickle weather.

Washington, D.C.
Now let’s talk about Easterners and their relationship with the weather. It was a big surprise when my husband and I moved to Washington, D.C. and discovered that just the threat of rain would close the schools because no one in D.C. knew how to drive in inclement weather! They don’t know enough to slow down, drive slowly, be cautious. D.C.-ers confess to this and don’t find this behavior shameful or strange at all! D.C.-ers drive at all times as if it’s sunny and 60 degrees even when ice sheets pave the road.

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Buy The Slice

I grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa where most everyone can read and speak English. Little did I know that moving to New York City would not only be a culture shock to my system, but it was a language shock as well.

Written Word
A little background — I was born Deaf and I communicate in Sign Language. If I need to communicate with a Hearing person who does not use Sign, I prefer to use a pad and pencil to write my words. The written word levels the playing field of communication between Deaf and Hearing because each side must make an equal effort to get their point across.

Columbia
When my husband and I first moved to New York, we were in graduate student housing at Columbia University. We lived a block away from the cathedral of St. John the Divine and right across the street from Tom’s Restaurant (made famous in a Suzanne Vega song of the same name and made even more famous as the coffee shop on NBC’s Seinfeld comedy series).

College Pizza
There’s a place just down the street from Tom’s called College Pizza. Their food is excellent and many Columbia students eat pizza there daily. On one of our first nights in New York, I went into College Pizza alone and I had my pad and pencil in hand to place my order. I wrote down on my pad: “Two pieces of pizza, please” and the guy behind the counter nodded.

I waited and waited. Everyone ahead of me got their pieces of pizza. New people came in and got their pieces of pizza. I waited some more.

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