Epicurious: 3 levels of lasagna

They all look great to me.

Expert: I'm making lasagna from scratch

Step 1: Grow tomatoes

Step 2: Grow wheat.

Step 3: Butcher a cow

Step 4: Fly to Nepal and climb Himalayas for pink sea salt

In the decades of yore when the internet was young and AOL was a thing the NYT ran a forum for its crossword where constructors and solvers intermingled.

But it was still dominated by old fuddy duddies well set in their fuddly duddly ways. For example they still had a rule about not discussing the current day puzzle least someone on the board hadn't finished it yet. They were stuck on absolutely not having the answers until the next day.

An attitude held over from print

Ew, that makes me so mad just recalling it.

Because it denies the excellence of instant communication, the raison d'être of the internet. The conceit of the inflexible oldsters was, well maybe someone is checking out the discussion board while downloading the puzzle. As if the responsibility of controlling not dropping into the chat while online falls on everyone but the person doing it. Grrrr. 

So all the discussion was technically retarded. 

By exactly one day.

Until the main proponents died. Then we changed it.

One night the discussion was about Martha Stewart. I said something like raise her own chickens, get the eggs, pluck the chickens, butcher the chickens, salt the chickens to make them kosher, and so on and the other people apparently harbored a certain resentment toward her 'do everything from scratch' attitude, they piled on with the most ridiculous aspects of production, collect her own sand to blow her own jars, make her own paper for labels, kill horses, make glue, catch squid and squeeze out the ink to write labels. Mine her own iron ore, build a foundry and make her own iron, cast her own pans, fry the chicken.  The more detailed and outrageous then the funnier they were. 

They did a lot of this sort of exaggeration or brainstorming. They enjoyed letting their minds run wild. They're a smartly creative bunch and quite funny besides. 

The theme of one puzzle was about digestion. I asked them, "They have chew and masticate and swallow and digest, stomach, and upper and lower intestine but then they stop short. Why not complete the process?" 

The idea was interesting to them. The euphemisms the group came up with for poop that would be acceptable for NYT crossword were hilarious, like "evacuate the scene." Phrases with the words: execration, stool, BM, spoor, deuce, number two, discharge, soiling, relieving, and so on.