Oh, lasagna, I love you so.

I made quite possibly my favourite dish in the world tonight. If not THE favourite, it definitely ranks up there in the top five. It's an incredibly comforting meal, it's cheesy, it's versatile, it's filling and it's flavourful. Yup, I'm talking about lasagna. Deliciously satisfying lasagna. It's also Mr Tomato Lover, Avery's favourite. When he came in the door from school today he walked into the kitchen drooling and saying, "lasagnnnnaaa??? Ohhhhh yesssss."

I don't know that there's really a "recipe" when it comes to making lasagna. Every time I make it, I do something different. I'll add different veggies to the sauce or use different cheeses. I like to vary it. This is what I did tonight...

Vegetable Lasagna

16 whole wheat lasagna noodles

1 batch of tomato based pasta sauce (but feel free to add more veggies!)

3 cups mozzarella cheese, grated

2 cups ricotta cheese

2 cups baby spinach

Make the pasta sauce, and let it simmer for an hour.

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook the lasagna noodles as per directions on the box.

Once the noodles are cooked and drained, layer the bottom of a 9x13 pan (mine is actually bigger than that) with a small bit of sauce. Layer 5 noodles on top of that, making sure to cover the entire surface. Add some more sauce (to cover) and 1 cup of shredded mozzarella. Layer 5 more noodles over top of the cheese. Mix the 2 cups of ricotta in with about half of your sauce. Spread evenly over the noodles. Add the 2 cups of baby spinach. Layer another layer of lasagna noodles and the remaining sauce. Top with the leftover cheese.

Cover with foil and cook for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and cook another 15 minutes. If the top isn't browning, I often set it to broil for a few minutes.

Remove from oven and let it stand 10 minutes before serving.

Drive by post!

In honour of our 20C weather today, I made a very sweet soup. Definitely not what you expect when you take your first bite, but good all the same. With it I made the yummiest grilled aged white cheddar and apple sandwiches. No recipe for that one, but definitely something that goes well together. Apple + cheddar = match made in heaven.

Now onto the recipe! I have a boy to get to Tap dance. :)

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Maple Apple Sweet Potato Cream Soup

(Rachael Ray)

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 cup whipping cream

1 cinnamon stick

2 large sweet potatoes, cut into large chunks

2 carrots, peeled and cut into big chunks

1 onion, halved

4 celery stalks, halved

1 bay leaf

1 tsp salt

4 cups vegetable stock

1 cup apple cider

1/4 of a nutmeg, grated

1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped

a few pinches cayenne pepper

freshly ground black pepper

Place the vegetable and bay leaf into a soup pot and cover with cold water. Add the salt. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 15-18 minutes until the potatoes and carrots are tender.

Meanwhile put the maple syrup and cream in a small pot with the cinnamon stick. Heat it until it starts to bubble, and then simmer for about 15 minutes until it's thickened. Remove the cinnamon stick.

Drain the vegetables and get rid of the onion, celery and bay leaf. Put the sweet potatoes and carrots back into the soup pot. Add the stock, apple cider and spices, and puree with an immersion blender until smooth. Cook for 5 minutes until heated through. Add the syrupy cream and stir to combine.

Night night, sleep tight.

Wow, am I ever exhausted. Weekends can be so tiring sometimes, and this is one of those times. I'm thinking a book, my bed and ... sometime super soon (alliteration.. squeal!) would be perfect. Hopefully my weakness/lightheadedness/headache/tummy ache is only from being spent rather than anything else. Crossing my fingers.

My friend Tanya took the boys for a playdate today so they wouldn't have to tag along to Campbellford with us for the Family Two Step tournament that Rhianna and my Mum were in. It was nice not to have to worry about them while we cheered the bowlers on, and I know the boys loved every minute of it. Thanks again, Tanya! Mum and Rhianna had a really fun time, and bowled really well, but didn't leave with a medal this time. They had some pretty serious competition out there since all these kids were bowling with parents/grandparents/uncles/aunts etc, and in some cases these people were good. I would not want to face off against them, that's for sure! These two really held their own, though, and I'm proud of them. What a great memory for Rhianna to have. :)

For dinner tonight I made a rice dish that I used to make all the time a few years back. It's great because you can just stick it in the slow cooker, so there wasn't much preparing for me to do after we got home. I was going to make lentil burgers with it, but changed my mind last minute since we got home later than I expected and I didn't have time to soak the lentils for 2 hours. So, I went with another burger recipe I had on my menu for another day - Jamaican veggie burgers. This was my first time making them, and for me they were very ehhhh. Edible. Decent. But not my favourite. Kyle and the kids raved about them, though. Maybe I felt there was too much rice at dinner? I'm not sure. I just wasn't as much a fan as everyone else. These burgers were also pretty crumbly which drives me bananas. I did enjoy the bite the jalapeno gave, though. I also served the same salad as yesterday with the same leftover honey ginger dressing. Dessert was leftover apple crisp, also from yesterday.

Jamaican Veggie Burgers

2 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 jalapeno, chopped

1 1/2 tbsp grated ginger root

1 tsp salt

3/4 tsp nutmeg

3/4 tsp allspice

2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups cooked long grain brown rice

2 1/2 cups bread crumbs

Heat oil in skillet. Cook onion and garlic for a few minutes. Add the jalapeno, and cook until tender. Add to a large bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients, and stir to combine.

Wet hands and form into patties.

Cook on a large indoor grill until browned (the original recipe called for frying in oil... maybe that would have turned out better).

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Wild Rice Casserole

2 onions, chopped

3 stalks celery, thinly sliced

2-6oz packages of dry instant long grain and wild rice mix

2 1/2 cups water

1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1/2 cup butter

1 cup cheddar cheese, grated

1/2 lb sliced mushrooms

Add everything to a slowcooker. Cover and cook on low for 6-7 hours, or high for 2-4 hours.

From spicy to sweet.

What a day, but I am happy to report, I made it through. Our busy Saturdays will soon be over.. what are we going to do with ourselves then? Oh, that's right! Relax, work on the house, work on the yard and go exploring. Oh yes, indeed!

Highlights from today:

-It was absolutely glorious weather. The sun was so bright and warm and everyone was smiling from ear to ear. Gorgeous!

-Rhianna got bowler of the year for the Peewees at our bowling alley.

-We had time for bike rides and playing in the yard.

-Some of my plants are sprouting and all my bushes and trees have buds. I even have one tiny little pink flower open.

-Avery played an INCREDIBLE game of soccer with the rest of his team (Go, Red!) and made it to the final match! That's from being in fifth place out of six. Yahoooo!

-A delicious slow cooker dinner of Jamaican Red Bean Stew (Kyle's favourite) ready for us to eat after our long day.

-A trip to Zwicks Park to play and walk down by the water in the last light of the day. It was breathtaking out there, and we discovered the perfect place to have a picnic. And loons! There were loons!

-DATE NIGHT IN! We're going to eat some Apple Ginger Crisp and finally watch 'Black Swan'. Saturdays evenings are the best.

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And now for the scrumptious recipes of the day. I originally got the Jamaican Red Bean Stew from Savvy and changed it to our liking. I served it with a big chunk of organic sourdough bread (store bought) and a spinach/carrot/sugar snap peas/broccoli sprout salad with a Honey Ginger dressing that I got from the Rebar cookbook. This was our first time trying this dressing and it was so good. Very fresh and light. It complimented the sweet and spicy stew perfectly. Yummy. And for our Date Night snack - Ginger Apple Crisp from Moosewood's Book of Desserts. I changed the recipe up a bit, so I'll put my version on here. Kyle got my apple peeler/corer/slicer up and running for the first time and let me tell you - it is pure awesomeness! Love it.

Jamaican Red Bean Stew

1 tbsp olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups baby carrots, sliced

3 green onions, sliced

1 sweet potato, diced into small cubes

15oz can diced tomatoes, drained

3 tsp curry powder

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1/4 tsp ground allspice

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 tsp salt

1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 can unsweetened coconut milk, well mixed (shake it!)

2 cups vegetable broth

Pour the oil into the slow cooker and set it on high. Add the garlic and put the lid on to cook.

Add the carrots, scallions, sweet potato and tomatoes. Stir in the curry powder, thyme, red pepper flakes, allspice, salt and pepper. Add the beans, coconut milk and broth. Mix well.

Cook on LOW for 6-8 hours. (Don't forget to change it to low after having it on high with the garlic.)

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Honey Ginger Dressing

45g ginger root, minced

2 tbsp fresh ginger juice (I used a juicer, but if you don't have one, use a garlic press)

2 tbsp honey

5 tbsp rice vinegar

1/8 tsp ground white pepper

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup vegetable oil

Add all of the ingredients except for the oil to a food processor and process until smooth. Add the oil and slowly mix.

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Ginger Apple Crisp

Fruit Layer:

6 cups apples, peeled, cored and sliced thin

cane sugar (a few tbsps)

juice from one lemon

Topping:

1/2 cup butter, melted

1/3 cup honey

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 ground ginger

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup ginger snap cookie crumbs (take the cookies, put them in a ziplock and crush them with a rolling pin until they become crumbs)

Preheat oven to 350.

Layer the apples in a non-oiled 9x13 pan. Mix with the lemon juice and sprinkle with cane sugar.

Melt the butter and place it in a large bowl. Add the honey, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Stir well to combine.

Add the rolled oats and ginger snap cookie crumbs to the large bowl. Stir well.

Add the crumb/oat mixture to the top of the apples. Tap it down. Cook for 35-45 minutes until golden brown.

Serve warm with some vanilla ice cream.

Taco Overdose?

Last night at Kung Fu all of our kids got a new belt. Well, technically, only Tiernan got his yellow belt since Sensei didn't yet have the yellow tipped belts that Rhianna and Avery were supposed to get. They should be in next week, and then I'll make sure to take a picture of the other two proudly showing off their yellow tips. No more Kung Fu until September, so the kids will have to practice a lot over the Spring/Summer to keep up with what they've learned so far. Tiernan is super pumped to have his full on yellow belt now... as you can see in this picture... :)

Friday has been really good to me this week. We had a very easy dinner for Fun Food Friday - tacos in a bag! We recently discovered this treasure, and it quickly became an absolute favourite in our house. There really isn't a recipe per se, but I'll write out the steps I use for mine.



First I whip up a quick batch of veggie taco filling. I heat a tbsp of olive oil in a wok/skillet and add one onion (chopped) and whatever bell pepper I have in the house (today I had a yellow bell pepper, chopped). I cook it until it's soft and then add a can of lentils (drained and rinsed), a can of kidney beans (drained and rinsed), and a can of black beans (drained and rinsed). I stir it up until the legumes are heated through and then I add two packages of Old El Paso Taco seasoning and a splash of water (enough to make a bit of a sauce). Heat until thickened and warmed through and then it's ready!



Take a small bag of tortilla chips (Kyle and Avery use plain, but Tiernan, Rhianna and I like some flavouring to ours), cut the top of the bag off and crunch the chips up in the bottom of the bag. Add a few scoops of the taco filling, some lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, salsa (or Thousand Island!) and it's ready to be eaten.

Oh, yes... the perfect bite!

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Tiernan headed over to a friend's house after school today so he wasn't around for tacos in a bag.. he gets it for lunch tomorrow! Instead, he ate four helpings of their spaghetti dinner. Maybe I should have warned them that he's going through a growth spurt?? Eeep. While he was at his friend's place Avery suggested we play a game of Catan (Kyle won) while we waited for TBone. I hadn't played that game in soooooo long and I missed it so much (even if I sucked today). I feel whole again. ;)

Tonight was also Rhianna's Date Night with Kyle and I. We try to take some time with each of our kids on their own doing whatever they ask to do. Rhianna's choice was to watch Ramona and Beezus and eat her favourite snack - taco dip! The movie was really cute and it made me want to reread the books. Luckily, Rhianna has them so I just might do that! Maybe she and I can read them together. Yes, I think we will. The taco dip was delicious as usual. It's such an easy thing to make, too. Unfortunately, it's hard to stop eating it once you've made it, so I try not to make it more than once or twice a year. So yummy. Too yummy.

Taco Dip

1 brick light cream cheese, softened to room temperature

1 cup light sour cream

1 package Old El Paso Taco seasoning

lettuce, shredded

tomatoes, diced (I didn't use any tonight because Rhianna doesn't like tomatoes on their own)

cheddar cheese, shredded

Mix together the cream cheese, sour cream and taco seasoning with an electric mixer until smooth and no lumps of cream cheese are left. Chill for several hours. Top with lettuce, tomatoes and cheddar cheese. Serve with tortilla chips.

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Cheers to this wonderful weekend, friends! Enjoy. :)

Dinner and a confession.

Hi. My name is Shannon and I have an addiction... to cookbooks. Yes, cookbooks. I don't really want help for this addiction. I enjoy it thoroughly, and thus far it hasn't interfered (in a bad way) with my life. Anyone who really knows me knows how much I love variety, and how much I hate being around/eating/doing the same thing repeatedly. The cookbooks really help that! Over the years I've picked them up at varying book stores and some non-book stores, received them for birthday and Christmas gifts and thrifted them. I don't have any cookbooks that I don't love. Inside each and every one of them are treasures. Recipes that are tried and true, recipes that have yet to be discovered and recipes that were a really good starting point for inspiration. I was talking with my friend Christina about these recipe books of mine and told her I'd take a picture and blog about it. Today I decided to take a picture... but there was no way to fit them all in one shot. Instead, I got a whole entry full of cookbook pictures. ;) Just think about how many MORE pictures there would be if I still had all my meat-centric cookbooks. Luckily, I sold them all in a garage sale.

So, if you're looking for some new veggie-minded cookbooks, here are some ideas!

These are my vegan cookbooks:

Vegan a Go-Go
Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar
Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World
The Mediterrranean Vegan Kitchen
Appetite for Reduction
La Dolce Vegan!
The Garden of Vegan
How It All Vegan!
Vegan With A Vengeance
Vegan Planet
Veganomicon

My Moosewood collection!

Cooks For A Crowd

New Recipes

Simple Suppers

Cooks At Home

Low-Fat Favourites

Cooking For Health

Celebrates

Sundays At Moosewood

Book Of Desserts

Daily Specials

Other Random Veggie Cookbooks:

Vegetarian 3 in 1

Company's Coming Meatless Cooking

Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes

The Vegetarian Family Cookbook

The Essential Vegetarian

The Great Vegetarian Collection

My well used Slow Cooker collection:

The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker

125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes

Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker

Other Random Vegetarian Cookbooks:

Vegetarian Main Dishes From Around The World

Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook

Light Vegetarian Cooking

330 Vegetarian Recipes For Health

Specific Ethnic Foods:

Asian Flavours

Step by Step Indian (couldn't find a link for this one on Chapters)

Complete Book Of Sushi

Grilling: (I miss grilling outdoors.. no BBQ for us yet!)

Complete Book of Vegetarian Grilling

Grill It Vegetarian

Other books:

Pinawa Auxillary Cookbook (no link)

More Health Smart Cooking (Kyle's book from before we got together) (no link)

Canada's Best Bread Machine Cookbook (oh, how we miss our bread machine)

The Healing Herbs Cookbook

The Food Substitutions Bible

Complete Book of Home Preserving

Desserts!:

Hello, Cupcake!

125 Best Chocolate Recipes

These are the kids' cookbooks:

Silly Snacks (no link)

Kids' Healthy Cooking

Wookie Cookies Cookbook

The Darth Malt Cookbook

And you can't forget the drinks! Adult drinks included. :) :

The Top 100 Juices (this is also Tiernan's book since the juicer is his!)

Martini: The Collection

Cocktail Genius

Phew! That was exhausting. Haha! I also realize I don't have pictures of three more cookbooks, but I will link them anyway.

Rebar

Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day

100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes

So there you have it. That is my entire cookbook (addiction) collection.

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Today is our very last Hella Busy Thursday for a very long time. I can't promise that this will be the last time ever, because... that's not very likely at all. From now until September, there will be no swimming (on Thrusdays) or Kung Fu and that makes this day soooo much easier. Dinner at home? Yes, please!

I made some Mediterranean pitas for dinner on the go tonight. It's a pretty easy recipe, and pretty yummy, too.

Mediterranean Pitas

1 cup carrots (I bought them already in matchsticks!)

1 cup cucumbers, sliced into matchsticks

1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsp olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Add all the ingredients to a small bowl, stir to combine and add to some mini pitas.

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Let the madness begin....

One of those days.

Today was one of those days. You know the kind. The kind where you wake up after a long, long night of not sleeping because of cats smothering you and daughters lying beside you grinding their teeth and psoriatic arthritis flaring up in your knees and elbows (don't I feel like an old lady!). The kind where your day starts off normal, quiet and then becomes busy as can be. The kind where you'd really like to climb under the covers to try to catch up on sleep, but there's no time to do so. The kind where you get none of the things done from the always long to-do list. The kind where you go into the kitchen to make your dinner and you realize you don't have a key ingredient. The kind where you email your husband saying 'I QUIT!'.

Yes, today was just like that. So when I realized I'd forgotten to buy that key ingredient at the store this morning, I threw my hands in the air. Then, I emailed my husband again saying I was not going to cook dinner. Today, we ordered pizza and it was perfect. I was able to de-stress, eat, and take the kids to the dance studio (where my day flipped right around with many laughs - shocker!).

My friend, Natasha, asked me about easy/little prep meals. I definitely have many of those, and today's meal was *supposed* to be one of them (pad thai). Being a vegetarian means that I'm often finding myself doing a lot of chopping. I try to do that chopping earlier in the day (or the night before), so that when it comes time to actually cook the meal, it's ready to assemble. I went through my entries and tagged all the simple ones with 'quick and easy', and I'll continue to add to that as I update here. In the meantime, these are my meals that take little time to prepare. There is some chopping, but aside from that, it's pretty minimal.

She also challenged me to find quick desserts, so I'm really going to have to think about that one. My desserts tend to be a bit time consuming and we don't have them terribly often. Thanks for the ideas, Nat! :)