Get your grub on...

Today I took a personal day off of work. I needed to start using up all that zucchini I have. I decided to make 2 pans of Zucchini & Basil Lasagna and Zucchini-Lemon Muffins. Tomorrow after work I am making Zucchini Bacon Quiche and Zucchini Chocolate Bread. And for the grand finale a Zucchini Moroccan-Spice Bread. Which will be interesting because i haven't made a yeast based bread in 10 years!! Yikes! However, I have always had extremely good luck with yeast and having it rise. (Rach, remember "pulling bread" when we had bad yeast!, good times!) I have to mention the 1 ingrediant I can not live without. Penzey's Very Hot Red Pepper Flakes, I put them on everything! And i mean everything! http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/p-penzeyscrushedredpepper.html



Zucchini and Basil Lasagna

Ingredients
2 cups fat-free cottage cheese
1 cup chopped fresh basil
1 large egg
Cooking spray
4 cups chopped zucchini
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cups bottled spicy tomato pasta sauce
9 oven-ready lasagna noodles (such as Barilla)
1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°.
Combine first 3 ingredients in a food processor; process until smooth.
Heat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add zucchini and onion; sauté 5 minutes or until tender. Stir in sauce; remove from heat.
Spread 1/4 cup zucchini mixture in bottom of a 13 x 9-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Arrange 3 noodles over zucchini mixture; top with one-third cottage cheese mixture, one-third zucchini mixture, and one-third mozzarella. Repeat procedure with the remaining noodles, cottage cheese mixture, zucchini mixture, and mozzarella.
Cover and bake at 350° for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 15 minutes or until lasagna is thoroughly heated.
Yield 8 servings
Nutritional Information
CALORIES 227(24% from fat); FAT 6g (sat 3.1g,mono 0.8g,poly 0.6g); PROTEIN 17.8g; CHOLESTEROL 40mg; CALCIUM 251mg; SODIUM 537mg; FIBER 2.9g; IRON 1.4mg; CARBOHYDRATE 26.4g

Cooking Light, APRIL 2003

Zucchini-Lemon Muffins
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup coarsely shredded zucchini
3/4 cup skim milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large egg
Cooking spray
Preparation
Combine the first 6 ingredients in a bowl, and make a well in center of mixture. Combine zucchini, milk, oil, and egg; stir well. Add to flour mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened.
Divide batter evenly among 12 muffin cups coated with cooking spray. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes or until golden. Remove from pans immediately, and let cool on a wire rack.
Yield: 1 dozen (serving size: 1 muffin)
Nutritional Information
CALORIES 147(26% from fat); FAT 4.3g (sat 0.8g,mono 1.2g,poly 1.9g); PROTEIN 3.1g; CHOLESTEROL 18mg; CALCIUM 69mg; SODIUM 62mg; FIBER 0.6g; IRON 1.1mg; CARBOHYDRATE 24.3g
Cooking Light, JUNE 1995

Kitchen Krazy!

Yesterday afternoon, Tabitha, Bonnie, Paula and I went to volunteer at a Family Center. I had found a place in Maplewood through Catholic Charities that serves as temporary housing for about 50 families. We went to help in the kitchen serving the dinner meal. Well we all arrived on time at 4:30 and went to the kitchen to wait for the regular volunteer cooks to show. Dinner was supposed to be served at 5:30 so we had an hour to get ready. So we sat and waited, and yet no cooks. At 5:00 I thought I had better go check at the front desk to see what was up. The lady at the front desk thought that we were the cooks for the night, and told me to just put together a meal! Wow! We immediately went to work figuring out what we were going to make. We decided on Spaghetti with meat, salad, watermelon, corn, dinner rolls and cookies. The four of us really pulled it off! Everything was ready to be served at 6:00pm. The families began to come in and we enjoyed meeting them and at the same time they were very helpful to us, especially if we forgot to put something out. Afterwards we cleaned up and were on our way. It was really a fun adventure for us all, and we agreed that we would definitely go back again! I especially loved it because it was very reminiscent of working in the kitchen in New Hampshire at His Mansion. I love the fast pace of thinking on your toes and having the challenge of making sure a large number of people get fed. I think this just really solidifies the fact that i love cooking for people and I really want to get back to working in a kitchen. In the Christian world, there is always talk of feeding people's souls, and I would agree, but at the same time, I believe wholeheartedly in feeding people's bodies.

Like our hair nets?!

Er dir oys es harts

I am on the hunt! I just ran out of my favorite garbage bags! I don't know if they make them anymore! Oh the horror! or as I like to say, Oh the Hora! (Even though it has nothing to do with a traditional Jewish wedding dance) Anyway, I had these garbage bags since around 2000. They come 100 to a bag and they are perfect for bathroom waste baskets. They are Ruffies Color Scents 8 gallon med. garbage bags. I had the Tranquil Vanilla scent, even though I thought they smelled like a Dreamsicle... very pleasant. So why am I writing about garbage bags? Who knows, it's a Saturday morning and I am lamenting over the fact that I can't find these bags anywhere!

I could go on and on, but if anyone finds a bag of Ruffies, I will be your new best friend!

Yesterday, I worked a half day and brought home my 4 beautifully bodacious zucchini's... I'm so excited to start cooking\baking with them! Yesterday I also got together with someone I hadn't seen in almost 5 months. It was great to get her caught up to speed with what has been happening in my life... and it was freeing to say, 5 months ago I was someone else, and now, I'm not who I was.

There is healing and growth with time... God is good.

So world, Er dir oys es harts! (Eat your heart out).

After that I made my way over to the east side of St. Paul to hang with my favorite home slices, Kyle & Kelly. Kelly out did herself once again with a fabulous dinner of Jalapeno Cheddar Brats, Stuffed Piquillo Peppers, and Fresh Corn Salad. See her blog about the details: http://vlachmytastebudsoff.blogspot.com/ It was all soooo good! For dessert Kyle got me my all time favorite cookie from Turtle Bread Bakery; a Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk cookie! Yum Yum Yum! Very thoughtful of Kyle, I must say! After dinner we watched Harold & Kumar go to White Castle. Oh so very funny! As if that movie wasn't exciting enough, we decided to go out on the town... First we went to Candyland to get some sweets... and then we decided to go see the 35w bridge. WE ended up walking around the Stone Arch Bridge, and laughing and annoying Kyle with our MN history ignorance.

I couldn't see much of the bridge, so it was hard to say what I was feeling, although I just kept thinking about how often I used to use that bridge and now this. My heart still goes out to all those families dealing with their losses... Peace & Blessings.

Zowie Zucchini!!!

One of the nice ladies in the office gave some of her HUMONGOUS Zucchini!! I plan on making a whole plethora of Zucchini based foods! MEOWCCHINI!
(fyi, the cucumber in the pic is full size!)

ABBA is Amazing!

Hey George, you're cute!

Sarah and I went out for Calzones last night... John's Pizza has the best! So we split a delicious artichoke heart & portabella mushroom calzone. I love going to John's with Sarah... We have great conversation and the scenery isn't bad either, i.e., the group of police officers that are always there! Meow! Afterwards we took a nice walk around Lake Como.. now since I live near Lake Como, I knew that there were bad storms that ripped through the area, I mean duh! a huge tree fell on my building! But I didn't know how badly the storm damage was until I walked around the lake. It looked like a war zone! Massive trees, ripped up from the roots, branches lying everywhere, trees lopped in half, (Hey Tommy, can you get me my Loppahs so I can cut the Popplah), hey a shout out to my favorite home show, This Old House!
Anyway, it was a real disaster area at the lake, but as Kelly's says, "It's mother nature's way of pruning." A similar storm came through the area a few years back. I had the sheer pleasure of driving through it! It was amazing and scary all at once... and i loved every minute of it!

PUKE=MEOW!

Bad things=Puke
Good things=Meow

But when your friends start using "PUKE" in their lexicon that is a big phat MEOW!