Today, I spent a great majority of the day tending to different components of the lasagna bolognese we had for dinner. Including prep and simmering time, the bolognese sauce itself took over five hours, and that doesn’t even include the time spent on grating fresh parmesan (Chris does a good job of this), parboiling fresh lasagna noodles, constantly stirring whole milk bechamel, lasagna assembly, and finally the baking for about 40 minutes. This 9-inch-by-13-inch lasagna is supposed to yield 12 servings, yet Chris suggested that in some families, this may likely only yield about half given the massive portion sizes people eat these days. If I labored over something for 8-9 hours, I really hope it would last more than one or two meals. I don’t run a Blue Apron type of show here where even just 30 minutes of my time will only yield two servings. The more time I am spending on something, the bigger the yield should be to make that time worth it.

Then I thought about potential dinner parties that would be thrown. You can’t really control the portion sizes that people have; if your guests want more food, you can’t deny them of it. That would be a very mean host thing to do. Then it makes me think that I probably shouldn’t make something as time consuming as lasagna for a dinner party. That sounds selfish, but I love these leftovers. And if I had nothing left at the end of a dinner, I’d be so, so sad.