the great parmesan controversy

Lately there have been a lot of news stories about cellulose in parmesan cheese.  Apparently it's harmless and is included in many other foods...the problem seems to be that companies are claiming their product is 100% parmesan cheese, when actually they contain up to 8% cellulose (which is extracted from plant material...sometimes wood).

After all that hoopla, I thought it might be a good time to make a switch to grating fresh parmesan from an actual wedge of the cheese.

I baked a pan of lasagna so we could try out  the fresh parmesan, and a couple of other cheeses, asiago and myzithra, for a taste test and comparison.

That gave me a chance to use my hand crank cheese grater!   I put it on the table with a chunk of each of the three cheeses so everyone could try them on their lasagna.

They were all good, but since there is already a lot of cheese in lasagna, it's probably not the best way to try them out. 

For now, I think I still like the parmesan in the green shaker cannister better. Maybe because that's what I'm used to.

Along with the lasagna for Sunday dinner, we had toasted garlic bread, fresh buttered broccoli, and creamed corn.

One family member does not like noodles, so that small loaf pan of lasagna is baked with rice instead.

Later, for dessert, we had "Next Best Thing to Robert Redford".

It was lovely and sunny in the afternoon but way too windy to sit outside and enjoy it.