I have been incredibly busy and will have a post soon with the newest book details. So much fun because it includes some of the favorite recipes from this blog.
Meanwhile, I promised you a lasagna shortcut. How this came about: I had in my freezer mozzarella and sauce leftover from the Christmas Eve lasagna and frozen Spinach Ravioli. Continue reading
The newest book is ready to go to the publisher – just finalizing the cover and figuring out how best to format the recipes.
A sneak peek of Chapter One can be found here.
Meanwhile, in my kitchen, I’ll be making Frozen Spinach Ravioli Lasagna tonight. Part of my Frozen Shortcuts. Everything doesn’t have to be gourmet, but it does have to by yummy. I’ll post photos and recipe tomorrow.
In other news, in the odd kismet that happens sometimes with JeffreyW and myself – I’ve been making Smash Burgers all week for lunch. Maybe I’ll do a tutorial this week on how best to achieve that crispy thin burger.
Until then…
Getting my parents Christmas gifts is impossible. They really don’t want more stuff and if I give them cash, they give it back. ❤
This year, since I was traveling home last week, I decided the best thing I could do was cook for them. So that’s what I did. I made twelve meals for two.
This included:
Spinach Tomato Soup (recipe here)
Spinach Lasagna (recipe here)
Chicken Tortilla Soup (recipe here)
Shredded Chicken – I shredded two pounds of chicken that I cooked with garlic, sage, rosemary and basil in the Multi-Pot/Instant Pot. They can then use it for chicken salad or BBQ chicken.
Chicken Noodle Soup
Modern in the sense that I used sodium citrate dissolved in milk to aid in the making of the cheese sauce. (I did it in a little water so I could see it dissolve.) Much like the modern mac and cheese recipe I used a while back I used it to melt mozzarella and parmesan in the sauce. It was similar to a bechamel and it worked very well.
Not much to look at, the first portion dug out of the pan while it was still warm. The taste was great, though. I worried that the lack of flour might affect the “set” of the lasagna. It might have, but it’s difficult to tell. A reheated portion the next day was OK.
Two people can’t eat all of that so I froze individual portions for later.
There is no getting around the fact that leftover lasagna is better than when it is warm from the oven on the day it is made.
I like these hotel pans for lasagna. This one takes two pasta planks side by side and is deep enough to stack pretty high.
I refrigerated this one overnight and so managed to get it out intact onto the board. It made for easy slicing with my trusty bread knife. I have ricotta in this one, with added parmesan, an egg, garlic and onion powder, basil and oregano. I had planned for three layers of pasta but it looked like another layer would work although my ricotta mixture was dwindling. The top layers are skimpy on the cheese but I did top it with plenty of mozzarella.
A bigger lasagna, anyway. The last one was so good I made another one, but more.
We brought in some more tomatoes and promptly turned them into stewed tomatoes with lots of peppers and onions.
We canned most of it but saved out enough to make our favorite sauce.
The tomatoes and peppers with chicken broth and a pound each of Italian sausage and hamburger. The usual herbs and spices went in: granulated onion and garlic, bay leaves, thyme, oregano, basil, black pepper and salt.
Which we had with rice because its’s good that way. The recipe was modified from a stuffed pepper soup recipe and the rice was a part of that. It’s great on pasta.
So we used the rest of that batch to make another lasagna, We used ricotta in this one and that turned it into maybe the best lasagna I’ve ever made. This one cooked at 350 for an hour, the mozz on the top browned up nicely.
We said goodbye to a humongous corkscrew willow. We planted it soon after we moved in, maybe 25+ years ago. It grew fast and started to lose big branches, we worried they would take out infrastructure.
Honey bees were attracted to the sap oozing from the fresh cuts. We are leaving the big ol’ stump right where it is for now.
Random sammich – we kept a tomato or three out of the pot just for one of these. That’s a lucky double yolk on that egg!
What's 4 Dinner Solutions 