Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Leftover Lasagna

Lately, I've been lacking inspiration when it comes to cooking dinner. While Patrick was on a business trip last week I mostly ate bread and cheese which is fine by me but not exactly full of nutrients. I decided I wanted to get back into cooking healthy dinners, the kind that involve veggies and are warm since it's cold outside. However, I was pretty uninspired on my last trip to the grocery store. I bought broccoli, zucchini, chedder cheese wheels (these are a treat and only avaliable for a limited time), tziki, yogurt, ground turkey, a gurken and bread. All had potential but did not combine so well. I had some apples at home which were the product of an unmade apple pie project from the weekend before and some super delicious squash soup that I burned my mouth on and proceeded to ignore until it went bad and I had to throw it out. As you can see I was not doing well with food planning on my own.
On Sunday, I went into the office for a bit. While there, I decided I would make a nice cohesive dinner with a pasta foundation. The problem was nothing in my fridge screamed cohesive. Broccoli and zucchini? eh, tziki and zucchini sound nice but slightly boring without other vegetables and gurken is only good with salad or sandwiches. I also had a red pepper at the end of it's life, some turkey deli meat, 4 slices of salami, half a package of shreaded mozzarella and lots of cream cheese in my fridge. So, I decided to make a lasagna with whatever ingredients I could find. Luckily, I had to travel through the train station as that is the only place open on Sunday and I needed more shereaded cheese.
I should begin by mentioning Patrick is particular about Lasagna and its ingredients. He believes vegetables are not part of lasagna and ground beef is necessary. So, when I excitedly declared I would make lasagna his first comment was, "we don't have any ground beef." I decided we better call this something else, leftover lasagna. Long story short, it got Patrick's approval with a stamp of awesome and he even came back for seconds. So, now that I rambled on about the ingredients of my fridge, here's how I made the lasagna and what I eventually used. Feel free to improvise, anything works as long as you remember a lasagna can never have too much sauce or cheese. Ingredients: Pesto Lasagna noodles Tomato sauce Cream cheese Salami Zucchini (or other vegetables, muxhrooms, eggplant, peppers, etc.) Shreaded cheese (I used gouda and mozarella) Fresh basil leaves Black olives Pre-heat the oven to a temperature you like (I used 180 C). Take out your lasagna pan and pour a think layer of tomato sauce on the bottom. Add some spices if you are using the plain variety then cover with a layer of noodles. Put a layer of vegetables over the noodles, add shreaded cheese and another thin layer of sauce. Layer on another round of noodles and coat them in pesto. Add cream cheese in clumps, fresh basil leaves and salami. Cover with noodles, cover with a generous amount of sauce, layer on vegetables, black olives, and shreaded cheese. Cover with noodles, coat noodles in pesto sauce, add the rest of your vegetables, basil and cream cheese. Add final layer of noodles, rest of the sauce and rest of the cheese. Cover with foil and bake in the over for 45mins. to an hour, removing the foil for the last 15 minutes if you like your cheese to brown off a bit. Eat. That's my first attempt at a recipie, let me know if you try it out! P.S. Something is wrong with the spell check function on Blogger right now, sorry for the errors.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Followed by My Epic FAIL

...at returning to this blog that is. I promise, I really am coming back now that the wedding is over. Maybe I'll bring some photos, maybe I'll find something else to write about but first I need to finish a few PowerPoint slides.
My onion infested husband is taunting me at the moment but I will be back soon for real.
I'm currently trying to think of a new sub-heading as I've just begun year four. Suggestions?