Say "Cheese, Cheese, Cheese, Cheese, and Artichokes"

Recently I melted a few different cheeses in the microwave and then layered them in a small loaf pan. It made for a marvelous amuse bouche when chilled, sliced, and served up on a bit of bruschetta, or combined with some sliced meat in a tortilla wrap. Evolution being what it is I have moved forward and found different combinations of cheeses to use and then got the brilliant interesting idea to blend them with artichoke hearts. Normally I prefer frozen artichokes, but my snarky ethnic interesting neighborhood Giant doesn't carry them. I went with canned (not marinated).

Included: horseradish pepper jack, brie, gouda, Velveeta, one can artichoke hearts finely chopped.

Having recently published my eminently readable interesting "Velveeta Monologues," I had to throw some of the official cheese of the 1950's into the mix.

Soon to be published: "Noah's Nine Hundred and Fifty Years of Married Life (or how his sons Spam, Shemp and Curly Japheth kept him from offing himself)", the sequel to "Noah, I said make an arc, not an ark, you putz."

There's no "V" in lasagna (oh, yeah?)

Maybe two weeks ago I warned the blogosphere (that includes you) of Jenn's impending use of the "V" word at her place, jennsfoodjourney. If you click on that link right now you may still catch her recipe, chicken queso pasta. Her casual, unremarkable, confident inclusion of not only Velveeta, but Ro-tel, should be a model of the "just lay it out there" school of recipe sharing. No headlines, no hype for the Official Cheese of the 50's, just matter-of-fact presentation. That's what I meant to do here, except now I'm blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Okay, what I've done is to make a big tray of lasagna with a hefty layer of Velveeta in a middle layer and served it to my spouse, and a lady of a certain age who just got back from the hospital following a minor heart attack and an angioplasty. Our fourth was her son who had bused his way down from Pittsburgh to DC to be with her for a few days. Bottom line: everyone had seconds. No one asked any embarrassing questions about ingredients. I will go to my grave with it as my secret since I know none of you are blabbermouths.

If you are wondering when I am going to get around to the recipe, well, I'm not really going to. You all have your lasagna designs, handed down from grandma to ma to y'all. In short, I used a pound of ground turkey, a 28 oz can of whole romas, a 14 oz can of tomato sauce, garlic, salt and pepper, and four cheeses: ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan, and the hero of the day, Velveeta. Oh, and I used real, grownup noodles, not those wimpy no-boil things. (Go ahead, make my day, tell me I'm an idiot.)