Italian Lasagna and an FCC Update

We will get to the Italian Lasagna but first, I missed the mark on Monday. I was so focused on getting my Valentine's Day meal resolved that I missed the announcement of a potential FCC Chairman. Right after I posted Monday's blog, I saw that Julius Genachowski was being considered for the post. It seems a likely choice given his long time relationship with President Obama. They went to Harvard together and he was an early supporter of Obama's bid for the presidency. Let's hope that the nominee is getting the post on merit rather than for having raised $500,000 for the campaign. To date most are impressed with the choice and rather like the knowledge he brings to the table mixed with his business acumen. Mr. Genachowski worked for a previous chair of the FCC, Reed Hundt, in the entertainment industry with Barry Diller and as President Obama's chairman of the technology, media and telecommunications policy working group. Let's not hold the Hollywood connection against him.

To be clear, Genachowski has not been nominated yet. However, he is being leaked as the choice. He is also on board with the Net Neutrality position of most carriers like Broadvox and is expected to be more of a moderate with regard to issues of competitiveness and M&A activity.

Enough about him, I promised the Italian Lasagna recipe for today. I have been making this recipe for nearly twenty years. I have made it with quite a few different tweaks here and there. This is my favorite version with no secrets left out. I will add that I often substitute dried herbs for the meat sauce but find I really prefer the fresh flat leaf parsley for the ricotta mixture. In early versions, I used canned olives but have since moved to purchasing them from local olive bars. You can find Kalamata olives in many grocery stores and Middle Eastern markets. Finally, I prefer the sweet Italian sausage in this dish. Either that or the regular will work since I do add a little bit of fennel. Normally I double the recipe and freeze half of it. I don't like using one half of an onion and green bell pepper when I can use the whole thing.

Enjoy!