Skillet Lasagna

Here is the Recipe I promised. I did not have any zucchini on hand (although my first one is growing in the garden!) so I substituted two shredded carrots and no one even notices they were there!

Skillet-Style Lasagna

6 dried lasagna noodles, broken into 2-3-inch pieces
1 portion of make ahead ground beef
1 medium zucchini, shredded
1 jar mushroom pasta sauce
1 cup ricotta cheese
¾ cup shredded mozzarella
2 tbsp parmesan

Cook pasta according to package directions, drain.
Brown ground beef.
Add zucchini; stir while cooking 1 min.
Remove meat mixture from skillet, drain.
Arrange half noodle pieces in skillet, cover with half the pasta sauce.
Spoon cooked meat mixture over sauce.
Spoon ricotta in mounds atop meat and sprinkle with ¼ cup mozzarella.
Arrange remaining noodle pieces.
Top with sauce and mozzarella.
Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
Cook covered, over medium heat, about 10 minutes or until heated through and cheese is melted.
Remove skillet from heat and let stand, uncovered, 5 minutes before serving.

First pick of the season

These are the first veggies from the garden this year. They look great, too bad I don't like peas! Lulu loved them though!Phil started giving Regan piano lesson 2-3 months ago. Here they are learning a new song.

How Regan really feels about piano!

Coming soon...

I tried a new recipe last night for skillet lasagna that was yummy. I forgot to take a picture of it, but I will post the recipe later.
To get you started... Something my mom taught me to do to save time when cooking with ground beef is to brown my ground beef when I bring it home from the store and put it in the freezer, that way I can just pull it out when I need it. I have taken it a step further with my new menu plans. I go to BJ's at the beginning of the month and buy 5-6 pounds of ground beef and brown it with half a large onion, chopped and a few cloves of garlic. I separate it into 1 pound portions and freeze it in quart size freezer bags. Then when I am ready to make tacos, or lasagna etc. I just pull a bag out in the AM and let it thaw. I will try to remember to take pictures and post recipes as I make other things I use this "Make Ahead Ground Beef" in.

Love this idea!

Check out Sycamore Strings idea for Muffin Tin Monday. I love it!

Seasons

Okay, so I tried not to totally overwhelm you with pictures from the recital and just pick my very favorite ones, but it was not easy. Today we are trying to recoup. The house is a disaster after a weekend on the run. I am catching up on laundry and trying to find the living room floor. Hopefully life will be back to normal tomorrow!

Regan, before the showYou are the Sunshine of my Life

Taylor, in the middle, was Mrs Renee's assistant

Regan's "Fabulous" smile :)

Mia and Regan

the whole class

curtain call

That's the end!

Regan was "Fabulous"!

Well, we survived the weekend of non-stop dance! Regan was awesome. She did so well and smiled so big. We are so proud of her! After three days of rehearsals and performances, Regan is still bouncing off the walls, while I can hardly stand I am so tired! It was a lot of fun though, despite the exhaustion. Both Friday night and all day Saturday I got to be in the thick of things back stage as mic assistant. I had so much fun I am thinking about going back to help next year even if Regan does not take a class :) Today we brought the other kids and we all sat in the audience and got to watch Regan dance. I will post some pictures tomorrow, but until then, I am posting some pictures of the lollipop cookies I made for the girls in Regan's class.

These cookies have some history. When the girls got to see their costumes in the catalog, before they came in, the models wearing their fabulous costumes were holding big lollipops. All the girls were sad to learn that that they were not going to get lollipops with their costumes. I had planned to give Regan a big lollipop after the show in stead of flowers, but when I saw these I knew that they would be perfect for the girls, so I decided to give the cookies a shot and they turned out pretty cute! They were a huge hit with the girls and lots of fun to make.

Lollipop cookies

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• assorted colors of paste food coloring
• 24 lollipop sticks
  

Directions:

1. In a bowl cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth.
2. In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir till soft dough forms. Divide dough into fourths. Tint each with a different food color. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Working with half of each color, shape dough into 3/4 inch balls and for each cookie place 1 pink, 1 green, 1 blue and 1 orange ball together to make 1 large ball. Shape into a 12 inch long roll (like a snake), starting at one end, coil roll to make a 2 3/4 inch round cookie. Place cookies 3 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Carefully insert lollipop sticks into bottoms of cookies.
4. Bake cookies for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and store in an airtight container.

Here are pictures of our processthe colors I used

I refrigerated the dough for a hour then made these ball and refrigerated them for another 30+ minutes.

before I baked

after I baked

all wrapped up and ready for the girls!

a perfect match for the costume!

Just for fun

I just got this picture in my email from the YMCA's pool opening Memorial Day Weekend. Not exactly the best picture of us all, but it is so rare to have the whole family in a pic, I thought I would post it.
Regan's dance recital is this weekend, so starting at 4pm this afternoon Regan and I will do nothing but eat, sleep and dream "dance" until Sunday evening! Right now I am doing some last minute baking for the girls in Regan's class. I will post pictures and recipes if it all turns out well! Have a great weekend!

Human Alphabet

So, the kids came in from outside today and said they wanted to do a show for me and they were going to make letters with their bodies. So, can you guess what letters these pictures are?

This one is my favorite!

Answer key, top-bottom: A, L, X, Q, K.