Munchie Monday: Lasagna for Two

Dear One hates leftovers.  For some crazy reason. I LOVE them...no need to cook again for a few days (or clean up the kitchen), but that is not his view.  So I decided to make Lasagna for Two.

6 lasagna noodles, cooked in boiling water

1 cup cottage cheese

1 egg, beaten

1 Tablespoon dried parsley

1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese

1 1/2 cups Paul Newman's Sockarooni Spaghetti sauce

1 cup mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a 9 by 5 glass bread tin.  

In a bowl mix the cottage cheese, parsley, and egg well.

Place two noodles in the bottom the dish.  You will need to cut them to fit.  Save the cuttings.  Put 1/4 of the pasta sauce, the cheese mixture, and the mozzarella over the top, spread evenly as you can.  Put two more noodles down and repeat.  Repeat one more time.  The top with the last bit of noodle cuttings and other ingredients.

Cook in the oven until piping hot, at least 30 minutes.  Ours could have cooked a little longer.

May I say, I do not know WHO the TWO were who were going to eat all of this.  We have each had two huge servings and there is another very large serving left.  It tasted pretty good, though!

Food Friday: What a Feeling!

After the last few days of apartment clean up, Transfers last night, and busy day to come, walking into the kitchen this morning was a real shot in the arm.  Clean! Well, sort of.  Empty counters!  No ants. Shiny sink!  So nice.

Most of you have this feeling every day and will probably say, "What's the big deal, you dodo?!"   Well,  it is a new experience for me, for the most part.  The only glitch is that now I don't want to cook anything. Or mess it up in any way.  Cheerios for breakfast, that is for sure!  We have a few leftovers in the refrigerator for the next few meals, but by the weekend Dear One is going to be champing at the bit to have "fresh food".  Rats.

Have a great day!

PS There was no attaboy from the inspectors. I wonder if they are going to fake us out by coming today...!

Vegetation Near Us

Today I went for a walk...actually on a hunt for the baby ducklings that Sister J told me about.  Did not find them but still had a nice walk. I love the trees around here.

This one has the best trunk shape!

Here is another one.  I just cannot get enough of the colorful flowers on trees.

Both of these are within sight of our office building.  Nice.

Inspectors. Yikes!

On Saturday we came home from visiting with the young missionaries.  There was an envelope taped to our front door.  (Well, only door actually since we don't have a back door...unless you count the sliding door to the "porch".  That is not a door we can exit the apartment from, though.  Unless we have no thought for life or limb....)

In this envelope was a notice that bank inspectors  and the apartment complex staff were going to come inspect our apartment today.  Yikes!  So on Saturday we did a bunch of extra picking up/cleaning up, but there are "pockets" of cleaning still needing to be done.

This is just one of them:

After

Before

Now to get to the kitchen!  And the dining room!  And the knitting chair!  And the......you get the picture.  And only one hour to get it done, so I will stop writing.

Do you think I can "do it"?  And better yet, do it, and keep it done?!  That is what I would like to do,  change the inner vessel so this never comes up again.

No, you are right:  not likely, but hope does spring eternal...!

Here is the kitchen/dining room as we left it:

Not great, but oh so much better than it was yesterday....

Wedding Gift Wrapping, Finally!

Knitting is such a satisfying hobby.  Paper-crafting is a close second. I already showed the coasters I made for the wedding of friends.  Finally I finished the packaging.  Now I just need to get a good mailing address and ship the package off.

The box is the same hinged box I have made before, but I used a 12 by 12 piece of double-sided card stock.  The belly band is some embossed card stock.  It really is way prettier than it looks in the picture.

Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Cornbread/Muffins

This week is Transfer Week.  This means Departing Dinner.  Sister J and I will be helping President and Sister B prepare the dinner. President B will put many racks of ribs in his new Traeger grill which we will warm up. We will bake potatoes, make coleslaw, prepare an ice cream "bar" with bananas, strawberries, nuts, and hot fudge sauce.  We will also make cornbread and cornbread muffins.  Sister J made some muffins with her recipe to take to Church for a Linger Longer.  She shared some with us, along with some fabulous honey butter. Yummy!  Really yummy.

My plan was to make one of the cornbread recipes that has creamed corn in it.  On the strength of that plan, without looking up recipes, I purchased three inexpensive cans of creamed corn.  I was speaking with Daughter M shortly thereafter.  She told me she had the BEST RECIPE EVER for cornbread!  Nice thought.  I am not much of a cornbread fan.  Usually it is dry, crumbly, and flavorless, so I was not holding out much hope. 

That being said, I was wrong!  Completely.  These were so good that I ate two of them immediately.  Rats!  This is the recipe she gave me.  Just look at the ingredients and you will grasp how tasty they are.

Quick and Easy Cornbread/ Cornmeal Muffins

1 cup cornmeal
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup melted butter
2 Tablespoons honey
4 eggs, beaten
2 1/2 cups whole milk.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a 9 by 13 pan.  In a large bowl mix the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Pour in the vegetable oil, melted butter, honey, beaten eggs, and milk and stir gently just until all the flour/cornmeal has been dampened.  Pour the batter into the greased pan and bake for 45 minutes.  M says you want to see some cracks and light browning.  Remove from oven and let cool.

What I did:  I cut the recipe exactly in half and use my silicon muffin cups--well not exactly muffin cups but little round cake cups.  (The difference is that the cups I have had straight side, not sloping sided like muffin tins have.) This half-batch made twelve fat cakes.

This is the muffins that are bottom-side up, just as I removed them from the the silicon pans.  I set the timer for 15 minutes to let the muffins cool before trying to remove them from the pans.  I have not had good luck in the past when I failed to let the food cool for 15 minutes before trying to extract them.

You can see that the sides are straight and the bottoms are nicely browned.  The tops were not as brown but still okay.  Will you believe me when I say there are no remaining muffins in our house less than 24 hours later?!  In our defense,  I did pass along nearly half of them to our other senior missionaries.  It makes me happy to think they will enjoy them.

Food Friday: Quick and Easy Best Hot Oatmeal Ever

Sometimes when you are researching something you need to know, other things catch your eye that you should really stop everything and review.  This is such a case.

This really is Quick and Easy!  And so good for you.  And it even tastes good.  This morning I was looking at ways to improve health through food.  Diet-food-health-they should go together, right?  So that is what I was researching.  Yet again trying to make changes for the better. I saw many testimonials by medical scientists indicating that if we just added oatmeal to our diets every day so many health improvements would take place.  Okay. I believe it.  And there, just below all those other presentations was an advertisement for the best oatmeal ever.  Maybe yes, maybe no, but it was worth trying.

This is the trick that makes this so good:  find a 2-cup storage container that has a lid. Add all the ingredients to it.  Put on the cover and shake then set aside until you want to use it...at home, in the office, on the job, in an airplane--any place you can get boiling water.


The mixture:

1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
a handful of dried fruit like raisins, cranberries, whatever you like
1 Tablespoon ground flax meal or chia seeds
1 Tablespoon or less  brown sugar
1-2 Tablespoons chopped nuts or seeds (more if you are not using the flax or chia)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Put on the cover and shake well.

Boil water.  Fifteen to twenty minutes before you want to eat the oatmeal pour the hot water over it.  I put about 1 cup onto the oatmeal, covered tightly, then, holding the cover on with both hands, gave it a shake or two then set on the table with a spoon so we could eat it when we were ready.

This was our first bowl.  It was good.  We did not pour on any milk and it was still lovely.

Works like a charm!  So good.  And if a bowl of oatmeal can repair a fatty liver, diabetes, bad sleep, what have you, then it is an easy pill to swallow.