Three Cheese Spinach Lasagna

I was trying to be creative last night. I rarely if ever cook dinner and when I do it's two dry pieces of bread with something from the deli on the inside. Something about this just sounded so sweet, and the picture I ripped from Woman's Magazine just looked soo delicious. 

Here is a stock imagine of how it is supposed to look like before being deliciously devoured. Oh man, when I cut into mine and dished it out on the plate it came out just as perfect as this however my photography skills are still juvenile at best. That is a fancy way of saying I forgot to take a picture before eating it. Haha. 

• 15 dry lasagna noodles. 
• 1 pk frozen chopped spinach
• 3 cups all natural fat free ricotta cheese (I used 1 1/2 cups ricotta and 1 1/2 cups cottage cheese)
• 3 egg whites
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 jar of marinara sauce, or your favorite kind of sauce
• 8 oz of mozzarella, grated
• Sea salt and ground pepper to taste.

I put some of this garlic spread in it too for some extra flavor. I didn't measure, I just sprinkled some extra 

on in there. Mimi sends these to her grand kids and everyone else who shows interest in cooking with garlic. She gives some pretty fun presents. Mimi is the best gift giver ever. 

• Garlic
• Parmesan cheese
• Salt
• Spices
• Parsley

It's really redundant right? It put it in and loved it. Add your own extra spice to make it flavorful!

1. Preheat the over to 350F. Brig large pot of salted water to boil. Once water is boiling add some olive oil , then add noodles; cook stirring occasionally. 8-10 minutes. 
2. Meanwhile, drain spinach well by squeezing it in a clean washcloth to get all the excess water out. 
3. In a medium bowl stir in the ricotta, cottage cheese, egg whites, Parmesan, and garlic powder until combined. This is where you would add your delicious spices like parsley, more garlic, other herbs if you feel you need to. I used a generous amount of pepper and salt here as well.
4. Spray the bottom of your pan. I used a cake pan. Use 2 -3 spoonfuls of your sauce to just lightly cover the bottom and lay your first layer of noodles down. Since I used a cake man I managed to get 4 noodles side by side with one going across the bottom.
5. Top with ricotta
6. Top with your delicious sauce of choice. 
7. Sprinkle some mozzarella on
8. Another layer of noodles
9. More ricotta
10. More sauce
11. Sprinkle some mozzarella on
12. Last layer of noodles. 
13. Top with the remainder of the sauce and put some mozzarella on top. 
14. Top with foil and bake for 50 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 10 minutes to give the top that delicious crispness. Cool for 10 minutes.

Next time, I'd like to try this with bacon.

Banana Coconut Walnut bread with Chocolate chips.

I was just browsing Reddit when someone posted a recipe for a delicious bread that I knew I didn't have all the ingredients for. I was sad. BUT!, I had some things that I knew I could work with so I looked up a simple recipe and came up with my own. Here it is. 

Homemade Banana Coconut Walnut bread with Chocolate chips.

By the time I was able to take the picture, it was half gone. All these ingredients I happened to have around the house so I didn't have to run out to the store at all. That is really awesome because toting a 1 year old little man around just to get some bananas would be a wicked pain. What do you do when you want to make banana bread but only have one small banana on hand?

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour. 
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 3 large eggs
• 1 c granulated sugar 
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil 
• 1 banana 
• 3/4 apple sauce
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cups walnuts, chopped
• 1/3 cup shredded coconut
• 1/2 chocolate chips 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 9x5x3" loaf pa with nonstick spray, set aside. 
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. 
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix together the sugar, bananas, applesauce and oil until smooth. At this point the recipe I was looking at called for 1/2 dark brown sugar. I spaced and forgot to put it in. Next time I'm definitely going to try it. It still came out delicious.
4.  Add in the eggs one at a time and mix until combined.  Add flour mixture in and mix on low until combined. Stir in the coconuts, walnuts and chocolate chips. 
5. Pour into pan and bake at 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes before removing from the pan to cool further. 

I only had ONE banana! AAH! The applesauce makes up for the lack of moisture in the bread from the lack of banana tastiness. This bread was fantastic. Next time around I'm definitely adding the brown sugar to see how it goes. 

This was a delicious desert with the dinner my husband made. He made deliciously seasoned chicken chopped up and had a ready made line for burritos. Oh, the rice/bean/cheese mix, oh it was soo good! This perfectly topped that off. I had this baking while he was cooking so I didn't have to get in his way. He had no idea what I was doing. Haha. Good stuff.