No Noodle Lasagna
I had a great weekend this weekend. My aunt came in from Florida, so I went to Dallas to see my family. I had so much fun spending the days shopping with my mom and her sister. My mom and aunt are so cute when they are together. They are three years apart and they share the same birthday. I loved all the reminiscing that I got to do and hear this weekend. On top of all the fun, this was a great shopping weekend. I think we hit every Marshalls and TJ Maxx in the city of Dallas. I got lots of cute clothes to wear to work. I even got a cute pair of earrings. I may have to blog about them later.
When I got home, I needed to cook my meal for the week. That worked out so well last week. I am only trying to maintain my weight, but I ended up losing a couple of pounds, too! (I usually like to plan everything by ear, but I guess planning ahead works out sometimes.) I decided to go for a no noodle lasagna. This is the hardest recipe that I’ve attempted and it really wasn’t so bad. I found the recipe off the Dashing Dish website when looking at Pinterest.
Ingredients:
For Noodles:
5-6 Zucchini
Salt
Pepper
For Meat Mixture:
1.5 lb. Ground Turkey
1 Large Diced Onion
2 Cups Chopped Broccoli
2 Cups Chopped Cauliflower
2 Cups Chopped Spinach
1Cup Chopped Mushrooms
1 Jar of Spaghetti Sauce
1 Clove of Garlic (Minced)
1 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Pepper
For Cheese Mixture:
16 oz. Cottage Cheese
1/2 Cup Parmesan Cheese (Grated)
3/4 Cup Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Slice up the zucchini into strips. Spray cookie sheet with cooking oil. Put zucchini on sheet, add salt and pepper. Bake in oven at 425 for 5 – 10 minutes on each side.
Chop all of the vegetables and mix them together.
Brown the ground turkey
Put all of the vegetable ingredients, meat, and the spaghetti sauce together in a really large skillet and cook until the vegetables begin to get soft.
Put a layer of meat sauce on bottom, put a layer of zucchini in a casserole dish.
Add a layer of cheese mixture on top of the zucchini.
Add another layer of zucchini, then another layer of meat.
Top with parmesan cheese, cover with foil, and put in the oven at 450 for an hour.
Take off the foil and put back in the oven to brown the cheese for about 2 – 5 minutes.
I think I let it brown too long, but it still tastes really great!!
Italian Lemon Chicken
I love an easy recipe! I think this could be the easiest one I’ve made yet. I put the Italian Lemon Chicken in the crockpot and when I got home, the house smelled SOOOOO good!!! Once I ate it, I found out that it tasted just as good as it smelled!!!
Ingredients:
1 cube of butter
3 lemons (juiced)
2 packages of Italian Dressing Mix
Chicken
I threw all the ingredients in the crockpot. The chicken was even frozen.
Crockpot was on high. I was surprised that there was a lot of juice in the crockpot after cooking it a few hours. Chicken is done when it hits 170 degrees. It took about 3 – 4 hours.
YUM! Seems like I should have thought to make a vegetable or something to eat with my chicken…but I guess I will have to learn how to do that another day!
Is There Ever TOO Much Chocolate?
I finished making my strawberries and I had WAY too much chocolate left over. I started grabbing anything I could think of to coat with white chocolate. I even added some sprinkles on the Lay’s Potato Chips. The pretzels were good too. I could have added sprinkles on them, but I was really ready to be done with this whole project. I still want to try chocolate covered bacon, but that will have to hold for another day!
Practicing for the Fourth
Thanks to Pinterest, I’ve started contributing to random parties that I’ve been invited to. Before that, I just graced everyone with my presence. Maybe that is why I’m not invited to a lot of parties…hmmmm…. Well, now that I’m becoming domestic, I’ve been trying to remedy that. Fourth of July is coming up, so I get to test my party etiquette. I looked everywhere for a pretty red, white and blue layered alcoholic punch to bring, but I could only find non-alcoholic ones. So, I decided to make these pretty strawberries instead. They turned out ok, but I think I can do better on the actual day of the party.
Ingredients:
DRY Strawberries
White Chocolate
Blue sprinkles
Vegetable Oil
Put white chocolate and a tiny bit of vegetable oil in a bowl. (I used too much vegetable oil, so I suggest using it sparingly.)
Microwave the chocolate for about a minute. Once it’s hot, stir it up until it’s smooth.
Get a bowl of blue sprinkles. This bowl was too small. I ended up getting a bigger one and filling it up. You’ll use more sprinkles than you would think you’d need.
Dip the strawberry in the white chocolate, then dip it in the blue sprinkles, then wait until the chocolate hardens to eat. YUM! I’m pretty sure these will be a hit at the party!!
Braised Hoisin Beer Short Ribs
Now that I have my crockpot, I had to cook something in it. My first meal had to be short ribs. I think the crockpot was probably invented just to cook short ribs. I found this recipe on Food.com. It was probably the easiest short rib recipe that I found. I prefer the recipes that involve me throwing things in a pot and leaving it. I’ll make one of those next time. I’m going to buy a crockpot cookbook on my iPad, but I’m not really sure which one is the best. If anyone has one that they like, feel free to let me know!
Ingredients:
3 lbs short ribs
salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
10 – 12 garlic gloves, smashed
1 inch piece gingerroot, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
12 ounces good ale
3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1/2 – 1 cup hoisin sauce
Season the ribs with salt and pepper. Brown the short ribs. Remove the ribs and pour off all but a couple tablespoons of the fat.
Sauté the ginger and garlic, once it’s sautéed pour the beer over it to deglaze and then turn the flame off.
Put the browned short ribs in the crockpot
Put the sautéed garlic and ginger on the ribs
Pour beer and vinegar on the ribs until it’s covered.
Cook in the crockpot for about 2 1/2 hours.
Add Hoisin Sauce and put in the pre heated oven (300 degrees) for 30 minutes.
Put on a plate and serve with your favorite vegetables. YUM!!!
Brie Bites
As usual, I was looking on Pinterest at all the delicious looking food and found a recipe for Brie Bites. I love brie, so this seemed like a match made in heaven for me. When I looked at the recipe up close, I felt like they looked kind of bland, so I made some adjustments. I’d say that this is the first recipe that is mostly mine. I figured everyone loves bacon, so I added that and apple to the recipe and got rid of the pecans. I was going to make these for one of the parties yesterday, but I think it’s better that I had the opportunity to try them out first. I’ll be bringing these to future party events because they are GOOD! Mike said he would add something spicy to the mix, maybe cayenne pepper or jalapeño peppers, but I don’t really like spicy.
Ingredients:
Phyllo tarts
bacon
brown sugar
apple
brie
Make some bacon bits
While bacon is cooking, put the phyllo tarts on a cookie sheet
Add brie to the phyllo cup
Top the brie with about 1/2 tsp of brown sugar
Top that with apple
Top that with bacon, put in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes or until the brie is melted.
Let cool and eat!
Southwestern Chicken Cornbread Salad
This weekend I signed up to climb to the top of the Frost Building to raise money for the American Lung Association. You would think that knowing I’d be climbing about 33 flights of stairs that I would train a little bit for it. Nope. Not me. I have let it go until the last minute and now I am going to just have to do it. I’m really nervous, but I’m going to make it no matter what!! I’m not sure why I thought I would be better off making something to eat rather than training this week, but I found this and it seemed easy enough.
I got this recipe off Pinterest. I copied it exactly from the recipe on Martha Stewart’s website. The only major prep to this was making the cornbread, grilling the chicken and dicing some of the vegetables. Other than that, it was an easy recipe to make!!
- 6 cornbread muffins, very dry, coarsely crumbled, divided… I used a box of jiffy cornbread muffins and just made it in a small dish
- 1 (2.25 ounce) can sliced ripe olives drained
- 1 (16 ounce) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
- 1 (11 ounce) can whole kernel sweet corn, drained
- 1 cup Hidden Valley® Spicy Ranch Dressing, divided
- 1 cup bell pepper, diced, assorted colors
- 2 chicken breasts, grilled*
- 1/2 cup red onion, diced
- 1 cup tomatoes, seeded and diced
- 1/2 cup Cheddar cheese, shredded
- In large clear salad bowl or trifle dish, layer half of the cornbread followed by olives, pinto beans and corn. Top with 1/2 cup of the dressing. Layer with bell pepper, chicken, onion, tomatoes, remaining cornbread and remaining dressing. Sprinkle with cheese.
- Cover and refrigerate several hours or overnight.
Taco Salad
A bunch of the teachers at my school decided to participate in the National Screen Free Week this year along with about 120 of the students. We wrote down some of the things that we wanted to do instead of playing on computers/games and watching TV. Several of us wrote that we would cook more. I got the bright idea that maybe we should have a potluck with some of the new recipes that we were going to try. The first person that responded said she was going to make enchiladas, so I had to find something that would somewhat go with that. It also happened to be May 4th, so the potluck kind of turned in to a Cinco de Mayo theme. I’ve always liked taco salad, so that is what I decided to make. I found this recipe on Pinterest. It was pretty good, but I think it would have been easier if I just would have used a packet of taco seasoning. If you don’t like to use pre-made mixes though, this is a great recipe to try! I got this recipe from Taste of Home website.
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1/2 cup ketchup
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 medium head iceberg lettuce, torn
- 2 medium tomatoes, diced
- 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Mexican cheese blend
- 1 can (2-1/4 ounces) sliced ripe olives, drained
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup taco sauce
- 1 package (10-1/2 ounces) corn chips
Nutritional Facts1 serving (1 cup) equals 245 calories, 17 g fat (4 g saturated fat), 22 mg cholesterol, 398 mg sodium, 14 g carbohydrate, 2 g fiber, 8 g protein.
Cook the meat over medium heat until it is no longer pink, then drain.
Stir in the ketchup, oregano, chili powder, salt and pepper. After it boils, reduce the heat and let it simmer with a lid on it for 10 minutes.
To make the dressing, Mix the taco sauce and the mayonnaise. I had to use my hand blender to get the lumps out.
Since it was for a potluck, I served everything separate and let people add all the ingredients the way they wanted for their plate. It can be pre-made for a family if you wanted, but you would need to serve it immediately.
Carmelitas
Last week was National Screen Free Week. I’ve never participated before, but this year I decided to give it a try. I didn’t get on the internet other than for work or to research something and I didn’t watch any TV. I thought I would be miserable, but the week actually was quite nice. I haven’t even reactivated my facebook account yet. I’m pretty sure I will do that this evening though. One of the things I said I would do with my free time was to cook something new. I decided I would make carmelitas and bring them to the office for everyone to try! I really liked them, but they are REALLY sweet! I got the recipe from Lulu the Baker Her picture of the carmelita is so much better than the one I took.
32 caramel squares, unwrapped…I used a bag of caramel morsels
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
Mix the caramels and cream in a saucepan over a low heat.
You will know the caramel is ready once you see it get really creamy. Once it’s done, put it to the side until the cookie part is ready. 
Mix the rest of the ingredients (minus the chocolate morsels) in a bowl and then put half of the mixture in the bottom of the 8×8 pan. Put it in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes.
Top the mixture with the semi sweet chocolate morsels.
Cover the chocolate with the caramel.
Put a layer of the left over cookie recipe over the caramel and put it in the oven and bake on 350 for 15 to 20 minutes or until the edges are brown.
Let it sit out until it cools. You can refrigerate it if you want it faster, but they should be stored at room temperature. 
My husband said he wishes he had some ice cream to top it. I think it would be too sweet.
Kahlua Cake/Trifle
Fabulous after FIFTY 