lasagna (with cottage cheese instead of ricotta).
Barf! Blech!
Cheese wise, and lasagna wise, there's not a huge difference. The cheeses are similar. The biggest difference is probably curd size and iirc, the oven makes that less noticeable. I only use ricotta, but I've had the cottage cheese sort, and provided the sauce is okay, it's fine, provided you mix in garlic, parsley, and eggs, like you would with the ricotta.
I've never even heard of Buca di Beppo. It sounds made up.
Me, neither, and it does. We have so many good, Italian restaurants in the area (because we have a large Italian-American population) that I've never been to too many chain Italian restaurants. I have tried the Macaroni Grill, twice. It's not bad. I've never seen an Olive Garden. I've seen plenty of ads; I just can't recall driving by one, anywhere.
We had Peter Piper Pizza, which is similar to CEC. I can see how it would be the 9th circle of hell, but kids really do adore it.
I've got a recipe for tiramisu that, if I do say so myself, isn't half-bad. Uses pound cake instead of ladyfingers, but it's still tasty, if expensive to make (mascarpone cheese costs a fortune!).
Was there cute waitstaff at Buca Di Beppo, Perkins? I mostly remember frowning. It didn't seem like we were expected to have fun.
Are you saying that stuff happens in HP6? So it's not like Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground then?
only use ricotta, but I've had the cottage cheese sort, and provided the sauce is okay, it's fine, provided you mix in garlic, parsley, and eggs, like you would with the ricotta.
Ah. I see. The cottage cheese lasagne I had didn't have none o' that fancy foreign stuff in it.
Eggs? In lasagna? Why?
I've been eating both straight ricotta cheese and straight cottage cheese recently, and they're pretty similar. Different, but not strikingly different.
But I make lasagna without boiling the noodles, so make of that what you will.
I have no problem with Olive Garden in itself. I also like more authentic Italian food, but I just go elsewhere for that. At one point, just out of college, I had a boyfriend who made lasagna using his Italian grandmother's recipe. Oh, so good. He's a chef in an Italian restaurant somewhere in NM or AZ now.
Last weekend a friend took me to a Chinese restaurant in her neighborhood. The menu has things like "salad with cold jellyfish" and sea cucumbers on it. I wasn't feeling quite that adventurous, but I may try the former next time I go. Said friend is a regular. When we ordered sweet and sour shrimp the waitress said that wasn't very good, and she'd brought out a prawn dish instead that was amazing.
