Zucchini Lasagna

Hey everyone!!! I know it's been a good week since my last post. Things have gotten rather crazy here. My Neon that I bought brand new in 2004 has been having some issues. It's in the shop. Frank did a bunch of work on it, and took it to the shop for all the work he couldn't do.  Turns out there's something going on, on the other side of the engine plate. Frank tried explaining it, but I just nodded like I got it.
Then this week Bella thought she could pick a Fight with one of the Sibes and win...long story short, she's on antibiotics, eye drops, and pain meds. Thankfully she didn't need stitches, and she has already decided to make up with Sam.

So, let's get into this recipe. I absolutely hate clicking on a link for a recipe and then having to read a bunch of stuff I don't really care about, I just want to get the recipe!!
This is another family favorite, and last week my niece requested it specifically, and I obliged.

Ingredients:
1 lb of ground pork
1/4 onion chopped
3 garlic cloves minced
1 jar low carb marinara sauce
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 egg
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
2 cups zucchini diced
1 tbsp Italian seasoning

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350
Brown ground pork with chopped onion and garlic. Drain well.
Add pork mixture back into the pan and dump in marinara sauce. Simmer covered for 10 min. Sauce will thicken.
In a small bowl, mix ricotta, egg, and parmesan.
Grease a 9×13  casserole dish.
In a small pan, melt some butter and salute the zucchini for 3-5 minutes, and remove it while still crisp. Put it in a papertowl lined collender and let moisture drain.
Cover bottom of casserole dish with 1/2 of the sauce, then layer the zucchini, followed by spooning the ricotta mix in dollop on top of the zucchini. Use the back of a spoon to spread out. Next layer 1/2 of the mozzarella cheese, then add the rest of the sauce, and then end with the mozzarella cheese. Sprinkle the Italian seasoning on top.
Bake covered for 25 minutes, and then remove foil and bake another 15 minutes.

I tend to top it with extra cheese..you can never have too much cheese in my opinion.

crazy

I missed posting yesterday!!! I've been trying to post daily if I can. However yesterday, every time I started to bake the cookies that I wanted to post, it turned into Mishka, what's in your mouth, give me that, what are you doing, and then the why is it so quiet game. I swear I don't remember having a puppy being this insane!!! Frank tells me it's because Sam and Jasper had each other for entertainment, where she has everyone and everything.

Here in a few moments, I'm going to start working on those cookies seeing as she is taking her nap. The dough does require some chilling time, but that's nothing that I can't handle.

Until later, have a fantastic day!!!!

Monday blues

Good Morning! I'm sitting here with my coffee and waiting for the weather to come back on. From the looks of those skies outside, we're about to get some rain. It's Monday, and that means there is lots and lots to do today. I'm hoping to steal some time to get upstairs into my sewing room. I hope to be able to get at least 2 of the smaller quilts sitting on my sewing table bound.

Since we get up so early through the week, Mishka, Jasper, and Bella are all having their morning naps. Sam is outside, which is one of the reasons I watch the weather so closely when it looks like that. He likes it outside this time of the year, however, he gets ear infections easily so I can't let him stay out in the rain. That crazy dog will actually lay there in the rain and not ask to come in.

Depending on how today goes, I have another recipe that should hopefully use up the last of the pumpkin I have sitting in the fridge. I'm going to triple the recipe though so that I can send the extra cookies to work with Frank so that they aren't here in the house tempting us too awfully bad.  I'll be sharing the recipe with you all if they turn out to be tasty.

Also, when I share recipes and patterns and such, I would love it if you all shared these posts with your friends. I'd love to see this blog grab a little more traction so that I can get a feel for what everyone likes and doesn't like. I really enjoy writing this blog, but I want to make sure my audience enjoys what I write as well. It's always hard to tell based on the number of views that I get. (and the fact that I have no actual followers listed) I'm not complaining at all, because I know it is hit or miss when it comes to this sort of thing with the number of people that write blogs. I'm not trying to get famous or anything like that either. I just enjoy what I do, and hope you all enjoy it as well...that's all.

Chicken Cordon Bleau Casserole

This has become a Sunday favorite at my in-laws house for the weekly family gathering. A lot of it has to do with the fact that it's low carb, and diabetic friendly. (We have 3 Type 1 diabetics in the family)

Ing:
6 cups of shredded chicken (about 2 pounds)
6 oz ham cut into bite sized pieces
4 oz butter softened or melted
6 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp white wine
1-2 oz lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
5 oz Swiss cheese

Inst:
Preheat oven to 350. Put chicken in bottom of pan and layer ham on top.

In a blender or a large bowl, combine the butter, cream cheese, white wine, mustard, lemon juice, and salt. Blend until a thick sauce forms. Spread over the chicken and ham in the baking dish.

Lay the slices of cheese on top of the sauce. Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Broil for 2 min to make cheese bubbly.

Finishing up

I have an entire stack of quilts in various stages in my sewing room that need to be finished. The saddest stack, that has been sitting there the longest is the stack that just needs binding. I love the quilting process, every thing about it, but the binding. So I went upstairs this morning since the hubby is off today and could hang out with the dogs. I decided it's time to finish up that stack and get some quilts finished. I made and sewed binding on the biggest in the stack.

This quilt was a mystery quilt that I participated in at the Sew and Vac here in town. I can't remember exactly when we did this one, but I do know I want to make it again in different colors. To be honest, this one is just a bit..much...I don't know exactly what I was thinking when I selected these fabrics other than I wanted to get them used up, and that they sort of went together.

I will be using this on my bed this winter, because there is nothing better or warmer than a quilt in the winter.

Iced Pumpkin Spice Sugar cookies

That's right, Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies, with icing. I know I know, it's not fall yet. We still have a few weeks to go. However, somebody has to get the recipes tested, tasted, and posted so that you all have access to the wonderful tastes and smells of fall, and I'm more than willing to put myself out there for you, the readers, the bakers, and the lovers of everything fall and pumpkin spice!!!

These cookies were actually really easy. I will admit, I have a whole lot of canned pumpkin left because this only uses a half a cup, so I need to either find another recipe or make more of these delicious delights. I'm going to look around and see what I want to do.

Ing
1/2 cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup of vegetable oil
1/2 cup pure pumpkin
1 cup of granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
4 cups of all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Icing
2 cups powdered sugar
heavy cream
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Instructions
Heat oven to 350, and then line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, baking mats or spray with cooking spray

In a mixing bowl, add the softened butter, oil, pumpkin, sugar, vanilla, and eggs. Use a handheld blender and mix until softened.

Next add the flour, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Blend together on low speed, just until combined.

Roll 2 tablespoons of dough into a ball, and place 12 balls onto a cookie sheet. Then dip the bottom of a glass cup into granulated sugar and press down on each ball to flatten.

Bake for 8 to 9 minutes and allow to cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes, and then move to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

To make the icing combine the powdered sugar and pumpkin pie spice together in a big glass bowl. With a fork, to mix, slowly pour the cream in and mix thoroughly until the icing reaches the consistency you want.

Spread icing onto the cookies, and allow to sit. The icing will harden.

This recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies.
Also, make sure to use pure pumpkin and not pumpkin pie filling. 

Growing Garlic in pots

Yup, I'm at it again, growing stuff in my kitchen. I had seen a thing on Pinterest where this lady was growing garlic in her kitchen window. Now if I would have been smart, I would have planted them so that I wouldn't have 5 ready at once, but nobody said I was smart.

I wasn't entirely sure where to buy garlic this time of the year, as it's not really planting season, so to YouTube I went. Come to find out as long as I only wanted garlic flavour and nothing fancy I could just buy some from the produce isle...so that's what I did. Now I bought organic because the non organic supposedly has a chemical sprayed on it to keep it from sprouting. In all honesty there isn't a price difference so it didn't really bother me.

I had some garden soil left over from when I did some container gardening over the summer, and found some pots on clearance for twenty cents each.  So I bought 5 of them, came home and set to work.

I cracked apart my garlic head and pulled 5 of the bigger cloves off. I wasn't entirely sure if it made much of a difference. I stuck them in with the skin still on, pointy end up. Then I have them a good watering, and set them on the porch and ignored them. Two weeks later, I had nothing and figured it didn't work. Then it stormed and the pots turned into soup, because there were no drain holes. I poured the water out and walked away. Later that week, I had 2 sprouts!!! I was insanely excited. I brought them in and put them in my kitchen window. I anxiously watched the other 3 pots. After about a week I decided to dig in some more. 1 clove was just gone...it must have came out in the rain. The other 2 were mush. So I did what anyone else would do. I planted again. These all came up at different times but they all came up. The last one this morning.

It turns out, it takes 9 months for Garlic to be ready, so I have about 8 months to go before I can harvest my first 2 heads. If they don't die, I'll share the harvest pictures with you all!!!

Busy day

Currently we are vehicle sharing while some work is being done on our vehicles. I needed the car today, so I had to get as much done as I possibly could. Mishka had a vet appointment for some of her puppy shots, so she got to go to Tractor Supply and the Co-op. By the time I got her home, she was super ready for a long nap.
I was surprised to find she is up to 21 pounds already.

I'm going to try and catch up on a few things tomorrow, along with trying to get in my sewing room and trying some more on the crochet pattern I'm working on. Some days it feels like I can get a lot done and then other days it feels like I can barely get anything done.

Coffee break

I'm back to being a housewife as you all know. You would think that I would get bored easily, but in all honesty, there is always a lot to do, especially if you have an older house. They seem to need to be dusted more. Of course add in the puppy with 3 older dogs, and there are extra walks, and messes to clean up.
I thought I would share some more pics of Mishka and the others so that you all can watch her grow up with us.

Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole

So, Frank, as you all may know, is a type 1 diabetic, he has been since he was 6 years old. Luckily things are a lot better for people living with this disease over the years. There is no cure, and there probably never will be no matter how much money we dump into research. Happily, so many new recipes have come about, some are great, and some are...well we won't be fixing those again. I plan on sharing the good recipes with you all in hopes that you all may enjoy them as much as we do. I still plan on sharing the dessert recipes that I fix for the family gatherings, and holidays and such. Frank can enjoy these desserts as long as he 1 remembers that you can have them within reason, and 2 he remembers to take his bolus shot.

I've made this recipe a couple of times now and can tell you it easily doubles to take to a family meal or pot luck dinner. It's not overly expensive and has all of the flavors of a bacon cheeseburger that you love. Unfortunately, I lost the calorie/carb count, and haven't found a program I like to run all of the ingredients through to get the calorie count. This is one of our most favorite recipes out of the ones I've found.

Ingredients
1/2 pound of bacon
1 pound ground beef
1/2 sweet onion
1 clove garlic
4 tablespoons cream cheese
2 tablespoons reduced sugar ketchup
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
4 large eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon hot sauce
8 ounces grated cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon fresh dill

Instructions
Dice the bacon into small pieces and fry until crispy over medium heat.  Remove bacon from pan and set aside. Drain grease from the pan.

Add the ground beef to the skillet and cook until browned, crumbling as it cooks. Then drain the fat. Then add in the onion and garlic, with the beef and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add the cream cheese, ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and seasoned salt to the skillet and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until combined.

Spread the beef mixture into a greased 8x8 baking dish, and top with the cooked bacon.

Crack the eggs into a medium bowl, and whisk together with the heavy cream until combined. Stir in the pepper and hot sauce.

Pour the egg mixture over the beef and bacon evenly.

Top with the cheddar cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until set and golden on top. Sprinkle with dill before serving.

I fixed 2 side dishes of veggies to go with this, mostly because I suppose you cannot have too many veggies.

On a side note, I'm still totally working on that crochet pattern. It turns out that I'm a little bit rusty, but I think once I get through this one, I should be able to get back in the swing. I really hope that you all enjoy the pattern that I'm writing!!!!

Mud Hen Bars

As funny as the name of this delicious dessert sounds, there is nothing funny about just how tasty it is!!! I'm one of those that can only repeat a dish so many times when it comes to going to family meals and enjoys trying new things to share with the family. I can spend hours searching for new recipes, accepting and rejecting. So this week, I have this delicious dessert recipe to share with you all!!!!

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, room temp
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 Whole egg plus 2 eggs separated
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup mini marshmallows
1 cup semi-sweet choc chips
1 cup light brown sugar, packed

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Spray a 9x13 baking pan lightly with cooking spray

In a large bowl, cream together butter, granulated sugar, 1 whole egg plus 2 yolks and vanilla until smooth.

Add in flour, baking powder, and salt and mix until just combined, and then spread in prepared pan.

Top with Chocolate Chips and mini marshmallows

In a clean mixing bowl with the whisk attachment on mixer, beat the 2 egg whites until stiff peaks form, about 2 minutes on high. Then fold in the light brown sugar, and stir it gently until its completely combined and there are no lumps.

Spread this mixture on top of the chocolate chips and marshmallows.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until top is golden brown.

Allow to cool completely before cutting into squares.

Note: you can store this in an airtight container on your counter for up to 3 days.

as you can see, I love my Pyrex Mixing bowls!!! I use a combination of both new and vintage. It just goes to prove that this stuff is made to stand the test of time!!!!

changes

Hello there again. Yes, I know I just posted some pics of the puppers, but this blog post doesn't go along with that particular post. So, I thought that I would just do two different posts today.

We're planning on making some changes here on the farm. Frank is still in the same line of work, however, he's Monday through Friday, mostly day shift, but I never know when he will be home. It's not a bad thing, and I"m not complaining one bit. I enjoy knowing that we can have the weekends together for the most part. His new position allows me to be home, and to be a full-time dog mom, and quilter. (I'm going to be making t-shirt quilts)

I'm going to be getting out of chickens for a while. The raccoons have been such a huge problem for us. They have been a heartbreakingly huge problem. I'll admit that I get attached to my hens, and my roosters, and when these attacks happen it makes things hard. We won't be out of them permanently though. We are going to completely redo the housing, and the run. We will be putting a roof over the top of the run, with a slant to deal with the snow and the rain. Then we will reinforce everything around the bottom to ensure that nothing will be able to dig in. I'm also planning on adding some barbed wire along the top, and electric wire at various points. The electric wire will only need to be on at night, so I'll probably make it solar powered and have it plugged in as well in case its an overly cloudy day. Basically, I'm going to dump everything I have into protecting my hens.

I want to look into changing rabbit breeds. I'm thinking along the lines of New Zealand. They grow out faster, which is what we need. I'm not worried about being able to breed more. I worry about over breeding. Some people will say you can't over breed rabbits, but I don't believe that's true. I like to know that my girls are well rested and can be the best moms they can be.

Frank wants to get into raising quail. I'm all for that and think it could be fun, and exciting. We've been watching tons of youtube videos. We also found some pickled quail eggs at Rural King, and they are really good!!!! They definitely don't taste like pickled chicken eggs. I think I could raise them just for the pickled eggs!!!! However, we have a lot to do around here before we can start in on the quail.

Well, that's about it for this day. I have lots to do and little time to do it, because I've spent more time playing on the computer today than I normally would.

Pictures

/Sorry there are no pics of the hound, but she's rather hard to get a pic of if she's not sleeping. She's always on the go. As you can see, we love our Huskies, and having 3 again is quite the treat. They interact like no other breed on the planet.

I wanted to post this yesterday but started cleaning out one of my kitchen cabinets and that ended up taking up more of the day than I thought it would. However it's a rainy day today, and that means all 4 of the pups are in the house, and getting stuff done isn't as easy as when they can just go in and out as they please. Plus we're still working on being able to have Mishka and Bella in the house together. Right now, Sam and Jasper and Mishka are good together inside, outside all 4 are fine, but that's outside. We know not to rush things, and that it's going to take a little time. Time, however, is on our side.

I've been looking at some new recipes, and can't decide what I'm going to try first. I know with Autumn just around the corner, I'm looking at some yummy cold-weather recipes. There is nothing like comfort food this time of the year.

August more than a year since my last post

Hello there...It's been an insane year, full of ups and downs. I don't know if anyone even still reads my blog, or even wants to. I suppose I'll fill everyone in on everything. I need to get back into the blog universe.

So just over a year ago, I went back to work. I went to work for Tractor Supply here in Woodstock. I absolutely loved it there. Yes, Loved.  I had to give it up for multiple reasons. First Frank got a promotion at work, and it keeps him from home a lot more, and he requested that perhaps I could go back to staying at home. Our schedules meant that we weren't seeing each other as much, and we were getting behind on a lot here at home. Then, there was the damage that I did to my right hip, the one that still needs to be replaced. So...I reluctantly agreed that perhaps staying at home wouldn't be such a bad thing.  I am however teaching a class once a week at the Sew and Vac in quilting.

I'll catch you all up on the Dogs because I know you all love my dogs. Jasper is doing great, he needs to go on a small diet, but he's great. Sam had to go on meds because he's been diagnosed with autoimmune disease. Thankfully it only affects the skin on his nose, under his eyes, and his anal glands. He's been on his meds for just over a month now, and so far, everything is looking great. The skin on his nose is growing back perfectly. Bella is doing well, I'm having a hard time controlling her eating,  So I bought some diet food that I'm about to switch them too....in all honesty even Sam could use a few pounds off. Now for the big pet announcement...drum roll, please!!!! Last month we brought home a female Siberian Husky puppy that we named Mishka. She's a brownish reddish color with blue eyes. I promise I will have pictures in the near future.

I'm hoping to have lots more recipes to share, we got an Instant Pot, and I'm seriously in love with it. It's made my kitchen life so much easier, and I love how tender it makes the meat. I'm planning on sharing some of the recipes that we love.

In the spring, we have to start over with all of our chickens. We had another bad year with raccoons. We need to drop a bunch of money into completely redoing all of the housing and run area. We plan on trying to raccoon-proof our chicken run. I'm hoping we don't lose anymore this year, even though I'm not getting any eggs.  Having a farm is as much heartache as it is work and dedication.

Well, I will end this here. I fully intend to try to get back to posting on a regular basis now that I'm home again, and hopefully, I'll have lots of pictures, recipes, and maybe even some new crochet patterns.