Once upon a time, I so badly burned a batch of brownies-from-a-box-mix that my brothers, thinking themselves to be too funny, played Frisbee with them in the backyard. I don't exactly remember if the single brick of brownie broke when it hit the ground, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it didn't. I really burned those things.

My cooking is somewhat better now.

So much so that I was willing to tackle pastichio (a Greek lasagna and one of my mom's specialties) for a special dinner with Aaron. I got the recipe, asked for details on how exactly one "scalds" milk (I would have thought that was a bad thing) and set about cooking Friday evening.

Then the power went out. We killed time for an hour or so, but the power didn't return, so we tried to make the best of things. Aaron lit the gas burners for me with a candle-starter and held a flashlight while I made the cream sauce and layered the meat, cream sauce and pasta in a baking pan. We gave up on eating Friday night, largely because Aaron suspected the gas oven's temperature controls were electric.

Thankfully, the power came back on about 6:30 a.m. Saturday ,and I popped the pastichio in the oven while we watched Pirates of the Carri bean (pause to pay homage to Johnny Depp, if you need to.)

Anyway, the results were OK. Some found the cream sauce to be a little bland; I thought maybe I should have let it thickened more. From the single beam of the flashlight, it looked plenty thick to me after stirring it for two minutes, but the recipe called for 10 minutes. Maybe the recipe was right.

(Sigh.) I do make an excellent macaroni and cheese. Not bland, and plenty thick.