Chicken Alfredo Lasagna

Every once in a while you make a meal that is good.  I mean so good that you think maybe you should start a food blog so that you could blog it.  You know, post pictures and post the recipe?  And then you realize that Hey!  You already have a food blog to do all that on but the last month was too crazy and you didn't get a chance to photograph or post any of the great meals you made...

Last nights dinner was enough to make anyone start a food blog.  I had been texting a friend (Love you!) on Sunday to try and give her some dinner inspiration when I found some myself.  Took til Tuesday night to follow through but it was worth the wait.

I was inspired by a pinterest post for Chicken Alfredo Roll-ups but seeing as it was a busy weeknight I knew this was gong to be too much time invested for me so I had to change it around and this is how it went...

Chicken Alfredo Lasagna

Ingredients:

• 6 no boil lasagna noodles 
• 2 1/2 Cups alfredo sauce (you can make your own but I was tight for time so used some Bertoli garlic alfredo sauce)
• 2 Cups cooked chicken, cut or shredded into bite sized pieces (I had roasted a chicken the night before but rotisserie chicken would work well for this)
• 1 Cup thawed frozen spinach, drained and squeezed dry
• salt 
• pepper
• 3 Cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• parsley for sprinkling on top to make it look pretty

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350º
• Grease a 8X8 casserole dish and spread a small amount of alfredo sauce on the bottom of the dish
• Place 3 lasagna noodles on the bottom (you'll have to break them to fit) and spread alfredo sauce on the noodles.
• Evenly spread the chicken and spinach, salt and pepper to taste and sprinkle with about half of the mozzarella cheese
• Cover with the remaining 3 lasagna noodles, top with the remaining sauce and cheese.  Sprinkle with some parsley to make it look pretty
• Cover and bake for about 45 minutes, uncover and bake for about 15 more.
• Allow to rest for about 15 minutes and serve with a salad for a delicious week night meal.

I used the baking time to help out with homework and finish the laundry so it was time well spent!

Here it is...Lasagna!

This is a really simple lasagna recipe to make. I always use the no bake noodles. I know that there are several different schools of thought on this. Yes, I do like the texture of the boiled noodles better but really the noodle is just a vehicle for the sauce and that all gets soaked up into both of them! This recipe will make enough for about 6 people. We increased our from Friday night for enough to fill a 20 X 13 aluminum pan. My sauce is incredible and so easy to make. Do yourself a favor and start making your own sauces. I make one almost the same as this one for our pizza's. I just use chunked tomatoes instead of pureed ones. (What is with my font here???!!! LOL) Homemade Lasagna Ingredients: 1 box no bake Lasagna 1 (15 ounce) container Ricotta cheese 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese salt and pepper pinch of nutmeg 2 eggs 4 cups (1 pound) shredded Mozzarella cheese 5 cups homemade pasta sauce,(see below), or 2 jars Hunt's Spaghetti Sauce, sausage flavor 1 pound bulk Italian sausage, cooked, drained, crumbled
Directions: Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine Ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, eggs, salt, pepper, nutmeg & 1 cup Mozzarella cheese in a medium bowl; mix well. Spread 1 cup pasta sauce in a 13x9-inch baking dish. Layer with half each of the lasagna, Ricotta cheese mixture, sausage, remaining pasta sauce & Mozzarella cheese. Repeat layering. Bake uncovered 40 minutes or until hot & bubbly. Let stand 15 minutes before serving. Pasta Sauce Ingredients: 1 onion, diced 5 cloves of garlic, minced About 5 cups pureed tomatoes (I use ones that I froze last winter) oregano garlic powder salt and pepper to taste Direction: In a small amount of oil cook onions and garlic until the onions are translucent. Add the tomatoes. Bring to a boil. Turn the heat to simmer and add the rest of the ingredients. Simmer uncovered for about 1 hour or until the sauce has reached the consistency of a jarred sauce. The freshness of the sauce still comes through and everyone will wonder what your secret is. They did mine and that is one of the reasons I am posting this now! As Always... Happy Entertaining!!! Judy www.nofearentertaining.com

First Monthly Potluck Dinner...huge success!

What a great night it was. Being surrounded by a large group of your friends, sharing food, wine, conversation and lots of fun. The children swam or played most of the night so it was really just us adults all gathered around a large table "breaking bread"!

We decided to give this a try. We have a huge circle of friends and feel very fortunate for this but it has seemed that in the last year or so that we are all losing touch with each other. None of us really wanted to invest all of the money, time and energy into a huge party that was sponsored by just one of us so this was a natural progression for us. We started the planning of this a month and a bit out but there was really nothing to it short of finding out who was available and what they would bring. All I had to do as hostess was have a couple of bottles of wine on hand, buy the paper products and clear a space for the food! It was so cool to be surrounded by all of these people for such a fun night...thanks to all of you for coming!!!

For this month's Potluck I choose and Italian theme for the ease of it.

The food was great we supplied the lasagna (recipe later this week!) and everyone else brought the rest.

We had a great Caesar Salad (no pictures)

Antipasti platter (yumm...no pictures)

Cannellini Bean salad with Tuna (this was delicious and will make it this week):


Bruschetta (gotta have bread)

Gazpacho (incredible!)

Ice Cream Dessert (where to start??? This was amazing! I am working on getting the recipe as they had a triathlon this weekend and were out of town!)

Smucker's Uncrustables. A necessity at any party where you have more than 2 children...This is the one thing they are guaranteed to eat. They are against everything I believe in food wise but are a great treat!!!

I think I have some takers for hosting this event next month. It really was so easy. Clean up was a breeze as everyone brought there own stuff and took it home. Please consider trying this if you have a group of friends that are as busy as we all are!!!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Blogging friends or simply friends...

Jenn and Roberto at the Sanibel Lighthouse!

What a wonderful thing it is when the lines becomes blurred and the people that you have called your "blogging friends" turn into your real and just normal everyday friends. People you talk to everyday and end up sharing parts of your life with without ever meeting them. Does that make them any less of a friend because the distance is too far to just drive over and see them?

I guess I have proved that this weekend and I still hold onto my belief that food bloggers are some of the best people anywhere.

We were lucky enough to have Jenn (The Leftover Queen), hubby Roberto and cute puppy Pepino to stay with us for the weekend. You would think I have a ton of pictures of all of the food we made and the eating we did but sadly, no! I think we were so busy talking and just hanging out that we forgot to take pictures.

Dinner Friday night was delicious. I had marinated some Pork in Peter's Souvlaki marinade, Jenn and I made a Greek salad, bread (Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes bread), tzatziki, roasted potatoes and Jenn made some Baba Ganouche while I went and picked up the girls!

We ended up sitting up late just talking...

Saturday night we did an impromptu invite of some of my closest friends. Funny thing is they had a friend visiting them. Turned into a really fun night featuring a 25 pound pan of sausage lasagna that T. made and some good cheap wine!!! Thanks for coming Karen it was great meeting you!!!

Jenn and I were able to at least focus and start and complete our DB Challenge for the month. Look at me...almost 20 days early too!

Sunday we went to the beach and had a wonderful time just strolling and checking out several area beaches. We have some real pretty ones here!

Really I have some food posts coming up. I "splatchcocked" a chicken so stay tuned!!!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Sausage Gravy and Biscuits

We are still in Pennsylvania visiting T's family until tomorrow. As we were sitting around the huge pan of lasagna last night our conversation once again turned to food. We started throwing out ideas for breakfast and someone mentioned sausage gravy and biscuits. My FIL's eyes went real big! This would be a huge hit in the morning. Funny thing is this is such a simple meal to make. Who knows why we don't have this more often!

Simple Biscuits (no idea where I got this from. I have been using it forever!)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 1 cup milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually stir in milk until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.
3. Turn out onto a floured surface, and knead 15 to 20 times. Pat or roll dough out to 1 inch thick. Cut biscuits with a large cutter or juice glass dipped in flour. Repeat until all dough is used. Brush off the excess flour, and place biscuits onto an ungreased baking sheet.
4. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges begin to brown.

Now onto the sausage gravy. This is T’s deal. For some reason he has always been the cooker of the gravy!

Sausage Gravy (T’s recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1-1.5# loose breakfast sausage
• Flour
• Milk
• salt & pepper to taste
• Fresh Sage

Directions:

1. Fry sausage on medium high until cooked through. Add flour (estimate same amount of flour to grease produced by sausage) reduce heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes.
2. Start adding milk a cup at a time stirring until thickened then add another cup of milk until after 10 minutes of cooking gravy is not getting thicker.
3. Season with salt, pepper and fresh sage.

Serve the sausage gravy over the fresh baked biscuits and enjoy. This is one of our favorite breakfast and is always requested by guests!

As Always…

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Apples in Puff Pastry

This was a nice size to 1/4 and serve a piece for each of us!

No I didn't make my own puff pastry. Did that once and didn't really turn out so good for me. This time I was in a hurry anyway and just wanted to use up some aging apples that I had been looking at for a while. I had one leftover sheet of puff pastry in the freezer so I thawed that out and took my apples and just plopped them in and pulled up all the edges almost like an apple galette but with puff pastry. I used an egg wash on the pastry and placed it in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes. Checking often to see about the coloring of it. It should b a nice golden brown.

For the apples all I did was chop up a couple of apples and to taste I added cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, some sugar and a touch of water. These apples were a little dried out so I added an over ripe pear to the mix as well. I let this cook until the apples were soft. I let this cool over night but I think room temp would be okay.

This was a super easy dessert and the whole family thought I put a lot of work into it. The presentation is wonderful!

Tonight we are trying something new here. I am hosting our first monthly Dinner with Our Friends. We always used to have parties regularly but believe me when you have a huge group of friends this can get very costly. My friend Jenn and I were talking and she was telling me about some of their friends that host a Community Dinner every Tuesday night. They pick a theme for the night and then just give their friends an open invitation. I loved this idea but there is nooooo way in this world that I could ever do a weekly thing so I decided on the first Friday of every month. I said that I would host the first few and that anyone who wanted could take it over after this. We also decided on one list of friends (about 40 people with about 1/3 of that children) that are invited every month. Whoever is hosting can add to that list but not remove. Everyone is pretty excited about this and so are we. I only had to make lasagna and tidy up my house!!! Love this and can't wait to see everyone!!! I'll fill you in more on Monday after our first one but this is a low impact way to keep up with everyone throughout our very busy lives!!!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com