purewellnessamy

Hi!

First of all: Happy Valentine’s Day! <3  I hope you’re spending the evening with your honey, your friends, or doing something special for yourself. Personally, I feel like curling up on the couch with a bowl of banana soft serve and watching Eclipse. However, I think I’m legally bound to lavish affection on my husband tonight.  My work is never done. I keed, I keed, I hope we both can stay up past 9:00 p.m. to watch “Eclipse” together.

Secondly: I hope you had a nice weekend! We took Peter to the movie theater for the first time to see “Gnomeo and Juliet” (not the best animated movie I’ve ever seen, but it was cute).

After the movie, we came home and I made my Comforting Cabbage dish for dinner. It was just as good as I remembered. 

Tonight I’m making Orzo Lentil Pilaf. Apparently, somebody is in need of comfort food! I may need to try a vegan macaroni and cheese recipe this week…(yes, I’m still limiting my cow’s dairy intake!)

Undoubtedly, this week is already better than last week when I remained culinarily (real word?) uninspired. I didn’t cook much at all….well, I did make homemade applesauce, but it was nothing to write home about.  I got a little overzealous in Trader Joe’s two weeks ago and bought 8 pounds of apples. I had four pounds sitting on the counter last week getting all kinds of wrinkly, and the mere thought of chewing all those apples within a day or two made my jaw tired.

I first thought I’d make apple crisp, but realized that most of it would probably go to waste since we’re not big sweet eaters here. My second thought was applesauce since it’s multifunctional. We could eat it plain, put it in oatmeal, over pancakes, freeze some for later, etc.

So, applesauce it was. I followed this recipe, but used brown rice syrup instead of sugar.  I did learn that an immersion blender is a perfectly suitable way to mash the apples once they’re cooked (my potato masher is practically useless.)

Now, here’s what you came for, the Mom’s Club recipe of the week.  Nancy provided two great recipes this week, and here they are:

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For this recipe I usually make a huge batch of homemade sauce on the weekend, and then freeze individual bags of sauce to thaw and use as needed.  This is great for all those lasagna noodles that have been broken and you don’t know what to do with them.
 
Skillet Lasagna
prep : 5 minutes cook: 30 minutes
 
1/2 lb ground beef, pork or turkey (or none at all)
2 tbs of balsamic vinegar (omit if not using meat)
2 tsps of Italian seasonings
4 uncooked lasagna noodles, broken into large pieces
1 (14.5) can diced tomatoes with onions undrained, OR I use same amount of home-made sauce
1 cup of bottled roasted red bell peppers, chopped ( I omit because I put peppers in home-made sauce)
3/4 cup of water
5 tsp pesto
1 cup skim ricotta cheese
1/2 cup mozz and parm shred cheese
 
Cook meat in a large nonstick deep skillet.  Add vinegar (to beef) and Italian seasoning. Dollop ricotta over meat, and add shredded cheese.  Top with broken noodles, making one flat layer (noodles will overlap a little bit).
Pour tomatoes and peppers over noodles, making sure that noodles are completely covered (or pour sauce over).  Repeat 2-3 layers ( top layer should be noodles, just like regular baked lasagna).  Add water.  Dollop pesto by half tsp over top ( if I don’t have any I just omit).  Bring mixture to a boil.  Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until noodles are cooked through.  Uncover and sprinkle shred cheese on top.  Cover let stand 2 minutes or until cheese melts.  Cut into wedges, remove with a slotted spatula.
 
Fennel Salad ( can’t really get the kids to eat this yet, they get a different salad, but us big people like it)
 
2 cups thinly sliced fennel bulbs ( about 4 small bulbs)
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup bottled citrus sections or fresh orange sections
2 tsps olive oil
1/2 tsp kosher salt (I have used sea salt)
1/4 tsp black pepper or to taste
1 tablespoon fennel fronds
Combine first 3 [ingredients] in a large bowl.  Add oil and remaining ingredients toss gently to coat.
 
These recipes have been adapted from CookingLight Superfast suppers.

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(Thanks , Nancy!  I cannot wait to try the fennel salad. I actually just bought some at Trader Joe’s – pwa)

Talk to you soon!

Tagged: apples, fennel, lasagna, Mom's Club Recipes