Help me ship a lasagna to Afghanistan

In My Humble Opinion
41

All you all or nothing people. Sheesh…

Pressure canning isn’t that hard - you just have to know what you’re doing. My family has been canning meats and veggies all my life, and none of our family is dead yet.

If Mama Lucretia isn’t familiar with canning, go find a local church or hippie establishment and find someone willing to take a hand and help out. For a soldier overseas, I bet lots of people will be willing to share their expertise.

Now. Pasta doesn’t can well. Sorry, but it’s true. Meat DOES can, but you have to be really careful because of botulism. That’s where you want your expert. Your lasagne sauce will can excellently, no problems at all.

So, what you’ve got comes down to this.

Step 1) Can your lasagne sauce, leave it out for a week or so, and see how it tastes after canning. Sometimes spices or consistency need to be adjusted to compensate for the heating/canning process. These can usually be fixed pretty easily by a simple taste/texture test.

ETA - TO be SUPER CLEAR about this - NO MEAT in the sauce! This is JUST the veggie and spices portion. All meat stuff has to go in the meat sauce for an experienced person to can. Makes things much safer.

Step 2) Find someone willing to can your preferred lasagne meat. If you’re a home pressure canner, then go for it - otherwise, I do strongly suggest finding an experienced meat canner.

Step 1&2 continued) Figure out whether the cans/jars can survive the pressure differential in flight. If not, figure out how to get your care package into a pressure-controlled environment (either some sort of packaging, or some sort of bribery)

Step 3) Experiment with various brands of lasagne noodles. There are several styles that do not require pre-cooking. Figure out which one matches closely with your traditional lasagne.

Step 4) Go find the canned/jarred cheese aisle at an upscale or trendy food market. Find various cheeses and play with them as lasagne cheeses. This part is likely to be a sticking point, so be prepared to be creative - try mixtures of several different kinds.

Step 4 continued) see above process for surviving the flight over.

Step 5) Assemble necessary cooking utensils and dishes (oh aluminum pans, how I love thee) and if you’re feeling really nurturing or you know they don’t have access to ovens, the instructions and necessary items to build a solar oven. (again, aluminum pans, how I love thee).

Step 1-5 continued) Test the prep on yourself first to make sure that you send accurate instructions and notes about the process. Also this way if you get food poisoning, you’re fairly close to a doctor. :smiley:

The reason for keeping everything separate is that even if any one part doesn’t make it through the process, the rest is still useful and homelike for the boy to use.

Once you’ve got the ingredients and prep to your satisfaction, move on to the last and best part!

Step 6) Mail, and wait for your legend to begin circulating.

Step 7) Be prepared for requests from the troops for other ‘impossible’ food types to prepare and ship over.

42

While the other half are saying it’s a dumb idea, so all the more reason to try.

43

Sometimes being a dick for no reason isn’t pretty, either.

44

I’m just saying serving in Afghanistan is dangerous enough, without sending him a botulism bomb.

45

Right, I must have misread the title of the thread, here all along it said “Help me poison my son in Afghanistan”. Presumably she’s interested in safe ways to ship the lasagna, which you’re clearly not interested in providing or suggesting, beyond that you think it’s a dumb idea. We get it. Thanks for the input.

46

I think Lasciel’s post is as close as you’re going to get here. Send him something that he can assemble there. It won’t be exactly the same, but it will have the Mom’s Cooking taste and will be full of From Mom love.

But please take all mentioned precautions, since this really is an easy way to kill someone.

47

I detect sarcasm.

48

It doesn’t have to be nearly that expensive. I bought this one for $80 and am actually using it right now to can some vegetable stock. My wife and I have successfully canned some of her father’s tomato sauce, and it came out great. I think you could can some meat sauce and send that. If you can’t ship pork, then pick another meat for the sausage. Around here I can get completely acceptable hot or sweet Italian turkey sausage. Ship the canned meat sauce with no-boil noodles, instructions, maybe a disposable (or not) baking pan. The only thing left is the cheese, which can perhaps be sourced locally (I have no idea what things are available on base). Perhaps there is a commercially available shelf stable ricotta, or whatever you use.

Some assembly required, but with all the parts pre-made it, doesn’t seem much more difficult than putting a frozen lasagna in the oven.

49

Okay, did some research and found commerical canned ground beef. Don’t know if these guys are the best in thier field or the worst, just the first I found. But its a start and they do explain some things. They also sell canned butter and canned cheese (tastes like a mild cheddar apparently)

http://www.internet-grocer.net/realmeat.htm

You might also be able to find irradiated beef to send (you’d have to send a hand meat grinder too). Or even perhaps irradiated ground beef. In either case you really need to make sure the irradiated meat packaging is well protected from puncture or having holes rubbed into it from all the vibrations in shipping. It needs to stay sealed to stay good.

An alternate meat could be salami or pepperoni.

Back to the cheese. I suspect you could send unrefrigerated parmesian cheese and it would keep.

Apparently is quite easy and quick to make your own mozzerala cheese. You might be able to make it out of canned milk or irradiated milk which would ship well too.

50

Okay, this lady has a recipe for made from scratch mozerela cheese. And she claims she’s made it from powered milk, which you could certainly ship.

http://www.ldspreppers.com/showthread.php/9035-Homemade-Mozzarella-Cheese-made-out-of-powdered-milk

51

Many, many thanks. This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping someone could come up with. And the idea of providing materials/instructions for a solar oven is excellent. And billfish78, you as well. I’m pretty sure I can make this happen, now.

52

Here’s a crazy idea, there has got to be a passable Italian restaurant in the capital. Call the embassy and ask where they eat. Arrange to have it delivered from there, to him, where ever he is, in country. Might not be cheaper, but it might be easier. Of course, it’s not his Mama’s cooking then, I realize. Just a suggestion.

53

It isn’t exactly real lasagna, but what about some sort of yummy homemade cheese cracker thing, maybe with some sort of tomato compote in a jar (not sure what - I’m thinking like the tubes of tomato paste, only with seasoning and flavors) and a note saying something like “wanted to send you some lasagna, couldn’t figure out a way to do the real thing, so enjoy these munchies and think of the day when you’re home and I can fix you a panful of the good stuff. Love, Mom”.

54

As a military member myself, I think the cans would be the best option. If customs finds it you pretty much just sent it to them and not your son.

55

I’ve done home canning–and I need to reiterate that anything with meat or vegetables in it must be canned with a pressure canner–and my suggestion is to cook up a batch of lasagna SOUP. Tinker with it, play with it, keep adding stuff to it, and once you find a batch that tastes pretty much like the mommy-food you want to send, THEN haul out the pressure canner and jars. Use the time for the longest-processing ingredient, usually meat.

Inform Son to bring the contents of the jar to a full rolling boil for ten minutes or so before eating.

Another avenue would be to check one of the freeze dried foods companies, like Mountain Home, to see if they have a lasagna.

It’s the THOUGHT that counts, right?
~VOW

56

The fact is, after all these adjustments that account for food safety, what he receives will be hardly better than a can of Beefaroni. As a side note, I’ve never known a soldier who didn’t freaking LOVE Beefaroni.

Drop ship him a case of beefaroni and save yourself a bunch of trouble.