Holy Scrumptious Lasagna, Jacob-atman

Since the two of us were married, partner meal planning did not occur without Jacob suggesting lasagna.  So, I felt his birthday would be a perfect time to whip up a bit of his favorite pasta.  I really like the format of Cooking for Engineers for recipes in general.  My favorite from their recipe collection is the lasagna and their chicken pot pie. I followed their directions pretty closely.  However

Ingredients for meat sauce:

  • 1 T olive oil
  • 1 onion
  • 1 1/2 t granulated garlic (or 6 cloves of garlic)
  • 1 lb ground beef
  • 1/2 t each salt and pepper
  • 1/4 C heavy cream
  • 28 oz puree tomatoes
  • 2 14.5 oz of diced tomatoes

Cook onion in oil.  Add the granulated garlic right before adding the meat.  Then brown the meat and season with salt and pepper.  Add the cream and allow to warm.  Add tomatoes, then allow to simmer for a few minutes.  (A lid is preferable so that now you can work on the cheese filling).

Ingredients for cheese filling:

  • 15 oz Ricotta cheese
  • 1/2 to 1 c of Parmesan cheese (I’m sure the fresher this is, more would be better)
  • 1/4 C basil leaves (I don’t like too much salad crunchiness in my lasagna so I reduced this to 1/4 C)
  • 1 beaten egg
  • 1/2 t each salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients until smooth.  Pretty simple huh?

Remaining Ingredients:

  • 16 oz Mozzarella, shredded.  (We just bought block and shredded it ourselves, probably the best way to go with most of these ingredients)
  • 12 oven-ready lasagna pasta pieces (one box, in most cases)

Now lay out the pasta, and top each with the ricotta mixture.  This makes it easier to evenly distribute the cheese filling.

In the bottom of a 9″x13″ casserole dish place a bit of sauce, just to keep the pasta from sticking/burning. Lay three pasta/cheese pieces in, pasta on the bottom.  Top the layer with mozzarella and then sauce.  Repeat twice: pasta/cheese, mozzarella, sauce. But with the last three turn them upside down and place the pasta on top of the cheese.  Top this with the last of the sauce and then the end of the cheese.

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There is an awesome diagram of the layers at the end of the CfE recipe.  One important factor is to try to keep things even.  I put my shredded cheese in a measuring cup and divided it into 4 portions.  The sauce can be more eye-balled but pay attention!

This meal was amazing.  Jacob really enjoyed it.  We ate it for like a week as leftovers.  And with a base like this the recipe can be modified to your tastes, like more mozzarella, more herbs in the sauce maybe, or different meats, or no meats at all and some more vegetables.

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This may take a while to understand, find the ingredients, and put together, but let me tell you.  It is worth it!

D-I-Y: Haircut

For the first year of our dating, my now-husband complained about every single hair cut he ever got.  It was uneven.  It was too short.  The neck was done wrong.  He got to hating getting haircuts so much he would have dreams about hairdressers lopping off parts of his ear.

I decided to take matters into my own hands.  The first time Jacob let me cut his hair he was scared to death.  Ok, I would have been too.  I had never used scissors on a head of hair, unless you count that time I was sent home from school, but that boy’s hair just walked into my scissors!

Since that scary first-try, we have bought a Flowbee.  I grew up on a flowbee.  My sister was the only one in the family with hair that did not fit in the flowbee, so we all got hair cuts from home.  It really is a miracle machine.  It gives such a consistent cut.  You can just write down the entire family’s length and give them the same hair cut every time.  And for Jacob we just leave on the length he likes; the only time we change it is when I put on the angle trimmer.

What I really love is that the flowbee takes the guesswork out of the hair cut.  This also means that it can be done in a reasonable amount of time with absolutely no training on my part.  I can handle neck trimming and treating around the ears, and I’m learning sideburns (but I like them way longer than he does…darn).  So the little snips are easy enough.

I start with the flowbee, and before I used a flowbee, the goal is to get the entire head of hair the same length.  Once this is accomplished I trim around the ears.  I never touch his bangs, that length seems to work, but Jacob hates hair in his ears, or touching his ears.  I connect the trimmed ears around the neck and follow his neckline to see where it lies well.  I can trim his neck pretty high with it still looking good.

The last thing that is just personal to him, I assume, is what he calls his “wings.”  This term incompasses several problems he finds with his hair, all residing around his temples and above his ear.  Sometimes it can be extra poofy here and I need to thin it out.  And it also refers to extra hair falling into his face, he likes a sharp line around his face.

Cutting hair at home can be an adventure.  It can build trust.  It saves us a lot of money.  Yes there is an initial investment of flowbee and electric trimmer kit, but we enjoy not throwing our money to some person who does a job we aren’t even satisfied with anyway.  I really love how patient my Jacob is with me and my learning process, it is key to our enjoying this activity.

Our next goal is to have Jacob try to cut my hair, just a little trim to keep the split ends to a minimum.  I have a lot of hair, so a lot of fudge-room, but that way we could both be removed from salon process.

Slow-cooked Roast

Sundays can feel very long sometimes.  Our church’s services last three hours each Sunday.  We try to eat lunch right before but we just cannot help being hungry when we get home.  Jacob has always been quite impatient for food, and this is exacerbated on Sundays.   So, our favorite meals on the wonderful Sabbath day are meals that are ready when we get home.  Right now for us that means crock pot meals.  Our two favorites currently are from his mother’s kitchen, chili and pot roast.  I’ve always made pot roast in the oven but Jacob and I have perfected the art (or are at least headed there) of slow-cooked chuck roast.

Ingredients:

  • 1 to 3 lbs chuck roast
  • 3-5 red potatoes chopped to large bite sizes
  • 3-5 carrots chopped to about same size
  • 1 onion microwaved for 5-6 minutes (not burning or melting)
  • 1 can of cream of mushroom soup

High for 6 hours or Low for 11-12

We put it on High from about 10 or 11 until 4:30-5.  There is plenty of room for timing with a slow cooker; we usually can just put it on our plates when we get home.  Please be sure to check the temperature with a meat thermometer before chowing down, just in case.

To prepare the pot, we place the meat in first, and place the potatoes and carrots on opposite sides of the roast, while the onion is microwaving.  Then top the meat with the onions and soup.

This past time we dressed up the meal with gravy.  I took the juices from the pot, the moisture released from the roast and the soup that was free and not coating the meat or vegetables, and put them in a warmed frying pan.  I whisked the juices as I added flour, giving the flour enough time to cook a bit and thicken the gravy.  Amazing topping.  This meal is also served great on top of rice, and as usual, this helps it go further.

Sam’s Club Membership

Jacob has always been set on getting a membership to one of the nearby HUGE stores.  I really feel they have no other name, they are huge, everything they sell is huge, you get the picture.  So early in our marriage, before school started, I went shopping, price shopping.  I walked all over both Sam’s and CostCo, we have both in the same main shopping area 30 minutes away, and wrote down the prices of the things we could possibly want. This is a very important part, you cannot forget to do this at the store you normally shop at as well, which for our non-fresh food happens to be walmart.

After price comparing, and having a bad experience at Costco, we bought our Sam’s club membership.  Online we saw they had a wonderful reward for students wanting a membership: $15 gift card.  Sweet.  That made the price the same for a CostCo or Sam’s membership and I feel more comfortable at Sam’s, and they sell cheap gas there for Jacob.  But when we bought the membership the lady claimed they just stopped doing the student membership.  We bought it anyway, but Jacob complained to corporate because their website was then wrong.  And they said just go back in and we will fix it.  We got our gift card from Sam’s for being a student, and they had another, newer offer and gave us the money for both of them.  Therefore, we only had to save about $10 this year to pay for the extra membership expense.

We really love our membership.  Jacob stops there on the way home from work for gas.  I love buying my meat, cheese, milk, and cereal there.  Those are our best finds.

We eat a lot of meat for two people so this was an important thing to look at, Sams for some reason has the most reasonable meat.  Ground Lean Beef (90/10), which is the kind we perfer, is found there cheaper than the Walmart 85/15.  And as we have found out on another trip we can get about-to-expire meat even cheaper at Sam’s too.

Dairy is something else we fly through.  We eat cold cereal nearly every morning for breakfast, sometimes I switch it up for Jacob and make him eggs.  We discovered the name brand milk (2% is around $2.30) for a whole dollar cheaper than the Walmart brand, and sometimes milk is found closer to four dollars! We also lover our cheddar.  They sell the big 2 lb blocks for a fraction of the unit price found elsewhere.  And with cheddar you can make it last longer in the freezer, if you don’t think you can use the entire block soon.

Cereal can be up to 10 cents less per oz.  One draw back is you have to buy two bags at once of any given cereal.  But we go through cereal so fast we do not mind.  Frosted Mini Wheats, Life, and Honey Nut Cheerios are some of our favorites.  And you just rotate which one you use, unless it is life which both bags get used before a different kind is opened!

We manage to find other ways to save money, buying a huge 25 lbs bag of flour for the price of only two 5 lbs bags.  Or buying spaghetti sauce in three packs to save a few cents per unit as well as stock up on some food storage.

A few words of warning that we have run into:

  • Check the use by date, always! Can you really eat 12 packages of saltines in 2 months?  Some items have great dates, but it really depends on your situation and affinity for the product.
  • Some things are not a deal.  This is especially true if you are an avid coupon clipper.  Fruit in winter is not very cheap at Sam’s and can usually be found cheaper elsewhere.  In general, check your prices on a regular basis, or at least a seasonal basis.
  • Here today, gone tomorrow.  Do not depend on what the store will have in stock.  Each Sam’s get different deals and they all have rotating inventory.  And every time I’ve been in there I’ve heard at least 2 people say to their spouse/shopping buddy, “They move stuff around every time I come here, I can never find anything.”  I haven’t personally had that problem, but apparently others have.

Maybe a membership could be right for you, it truely depends on your circumstances, it might make more sense if you have 4 kids than if it is just the two of you.  But I love not having to go meat shopping every week, because we keep a month’s supply in the freezer.  It is definitely worth a look.

Best Brownies

On my first finale of my first Dessert Week I will now share my first photo on this blog.  One year ago today, Jacob and I celebrated his birthday.  I drove down 1 hour away from where I lived, to where he lived at the time and made him a heart shaped brownie and a picnic dinner.  We then went to a local park and celebrated by making sandwiches and watching the sun set over the water. It was a wonderful day!

Jacob's Birthday

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 C oil or melted butter
  • 1 C sugar
  • 1 t Vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 C all-purpose flour
  • 1/3 C baking cocoa
  • 1/4 t baking powder
  • 1/4 t salt

Beat those wet ingredients until thoroughly mixed.  Add the dry ingredients. Do not over mix this batter or they won’t be soft brownies but tough ones, one tip that helps is whisk the dry ingredients together before adding them.  Place the batter in a 9×9 pan.

Bake at 350 F for 20 to 25 minutes or until brownies pull away from the pan around the edges but is still moist.  The ever-useful toothpick tip will not work here, at least if you have yummy, gooey brownies.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

I wish I could say that for this Dessert Week that I made each day’s dessert for my loving, deserving husband, but alas, he only get’s the one posted tomorrow for his birthday (I’ll make a note for his next birthday).  However, we made these wonderful, scrumptious cookies for our very first 6 month anniversary (of dating).  It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work.  We ended up with a huge 6-kiss cookie out of pure weariness.  This is one of the classic Christmas cookies from my childhood, and is a lot of fun with a group! (Be sure to buy extra kisses for snacking, they disappear like crazy!)

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 C shortening or margarine
  • 1/2 C peanut butter
  • 1/2 C white granulated sugar
  • 1/2 C brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 t vanilla
  • 1 3/4 C flour
  • 1 t baking soda
  • 1/2 t salt
  • 2 T milk
  • Hershey’s Kisses!

Cream the first ingredients, then beat in other wet ingredients. Sift dry ingredients and gradually add, try not to over mix. And finally finish off the recipe with the milk.

Roll the dough into balls. Keep them small, maybe 1″ diameter spheres.  Then toss the ball into a bowl of white sugar and coat it gently.

Bake a sheet of these in a375 F oven until the tops are slightly cracked, this takes about 5 minutes. Be unwrapping the kisses now, if you haven’t already. Pull out the batch and squish down each ball into a cookie with a kiss in the middle.  Put the cookie sheet back in for a minute and a half more. My recipe card also states that a double batch of this yummy cookie makes over 100 cookies!  Plenty for you, the family, the guests, and Santa.

These cookies are yummy to eat right out of the oven (or rather, right off the cooling rack) because the chocolate is still gooey.  But chocolate is good in any form so letting them cool and waiting until after dinner is also a good choice.  One piece of advice I have is that if you are going to take these somewhere, say a potluck or a Christmas party, I would press the kisses flat while they are cooling.  This trick facilitates stacking and compact storage in a single container of a good amount of cookies and the least likelihood of a cookie loosing its chocolate friend.

I apologize for the Christmas theme in March, I’m already getting sad knowing that the holiday is so far away.  But these cookies are just so associated with the holiday for me I almost cannot think of them in a better situation (although I’m sure there are plenty of other great celebrations to use this yummy cookie for!).

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Here is another one for Dessert Week!  I love oatmeal raisin cookies.  Maybe it is because I, in a way, trick myself into the idea that I am eating a “healthy” food, I mean it has raisins and oatmeal just like a good granola does, right, right?  And Jacob really enjoyed how these turned out, not an undercooked softness or a gingersnap breaking cookie, but a cookie with a crunchy oatmeal with still-soft raisins, perfect!

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (1/2 pound or 2 sticks)  butter, softened
  • 1 cup brown sugar, packed
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 2 large eggs, well beaten
  • 1 Tbsp vanilla
  • 3 cups rolled oats (not instant)
  • 1 1/2 cups raisins

Bake at 350 F for 10-12 minutes.  A while in the freezer with some extra baking soda gives the cookies a bit more shape, but more flour might also help the problem.  (I put the balls out on a metal pan right after I put the stoneware cookie sheet in the oven. Then just filled the partially cooled stoneware with some more chilled cookies for the next batch.  Some more time in the freezer might have been good, but I don’t need to save some for more batches, this is a small enough batch on its own.)

Elise, the blogger who shared this recipe, reminds us: do not overbake these cookies. The edges should be brown, but the rest of the cookie should be very light in color.

The nutmeg was a bit strong.  I’m learning that although I enjoy nutmeg, it can really take over your tastebuds if its ratio is too high in a recipe, I’ll cut it in half the next time I bake these wonderfully scrumptious cookies.

I found this recipe at Simple Recipes.  But I found another one as well, and would love to make this cookie with an applesauce base by David Lebovitz.

Crazy Cake

In continuation of Dessert Week for my husband, I submit an old family favorite.  My mother told me my father’s mother (born in 1910) had used this recipe because in the Great Depression eggs were hard to come by.  The name is from the fact that making a cake without eggs is just “crazy.”  The suggestion of any other kind of cake was futile around my birthday, so I guess you could say I was crazy about it, ;)

Ingredients:

  • 2 C sugar
  • 3 C all-purpose flour
  • 6 T cocoa
  • 1 t salt
  • 2 t baking soda
  • 2 t vanilla
  • 2 T vinegar
  • 10 T melted butter
  • 2 C cold water

I feel like these instructions are quite wanting without pictures but I will try to explain the amazing fun this cake can be.

Place all the first five ingredients in a 9×13 baking dish (I love that this can be so easily halved and put into a 9×9!), and mix well with a fork.  This should result in a consistently speckeled powder.  Next, carve a smilie face into the powder, two eyes and a smiling mouth.  One eye is for the vanilla, the other for the vinegar and the smile is about to be a yellow, buttery smile in need of a good brushing.  Enjoy your cute creation.

Now enjoy the destruction with the addition of the 2 cups of cold water and fluff with your fork.  Make sure all the powder has been mixed in well, as a youngster I would usually miss the corners and there would be quite a bit of unedible dry flour down there when the cake was sliced.

Now put in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 350 F.  Use a toothpick to check if it is done.  Stab the middle of your cake, when it comes out clean your cake is ready.  But be sure to be gentle when pulling it out and pushing it in while checking, this cake has a tendency to drop in the middle.

Top with your favorite fudge or chocolate icing, or with my mother’s favorite: confectioner’s sugar (a good substitute for my icing-hating hubby), and voila! An eggless chocolate cake that will not last long in almost any home.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Welcome to Dessert Week!  In celebration of my husband’s birthday this Friday I will be sharing some of his (and my) favorite recipes all week long.

I’ll start off with one we made for the first time last night.  I got the recipe out of the 1981 Deseret Recipes.  I really like this book because it gives me simple ideas, not all the convoluted 25-ingredient recipes of other books.  This is mainly a food-storage and simple vegetables kind of book.  I made the peanut butter oatmeal cookies. The following is the recipe cut into thirds (it originally made “9 dozen” cookies, we are only 2 people, have mercy!)

Ingredients:

  • 1 stick of softened margarine or 1/2 C soft shortening
  • 1/3 C granulated white sugar
  • 1/2 C brown sugar, packed
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 C peanut butter
  • 1 C all-purpose flour (actually 1 1/6, so a heaping cup?)
  • 2/3 t baking soda (again, eyeball more than a half teaspoon)
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 2/3 C oatmeal, uncooked

Beat first set of ingredients until smooth, then beat in the egg and peanut butter one at a time.  Now add the flour and its buddies.  And finally add the oatmeal.

Bake at 350 F for 12 to 15 minutes.

I loved plopping these cookies, the batter was held together nicely by the peanut butter.  However, this also resulted in a sort of dry cookie, but we both concluded they were perfect with a glass of milk!  Jacob had the same luck when he scraped them off, nice and clean.  Maybe I need to add more flour to my other cookie recipes, since they are always so flat and sticky.  Jacob agrees we should make them again, so one more recipe on the favorites list.

(Slightly) Wheat Pancakes

Jacob tried very hard to surprise me on Valentine’s day morning with hash browns in bed.  He failed miserably and I ended up with cereal, but I gave credit for the effort!  That afternoon, he actually searched for a recipe and we had hash browns with cheese and ham for our dinner.  They were amazing, but we were still hungry.  So I made us some pancake batter; I altered it by adding a bit of wheat flour.  They turned out really good.  Jacob is a very good flipper, he even made pancakes in the shape of our initials, he is such a pro!

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup wheat
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 large eggs, separated (whites whipped)
  • 3 tablespoons butter, melted

We used a non-stick frying pan over medium heat.  We used a large pan so we could fit 2 at a time, obviously a griddle would work well also, but we aren’t so lucky to have one.  We waited for bubbles to flip (sometimes I need to peak to check if it is brown), then it won’t even take half that time for the other side.

I love eating breakfast foods, all the time.  And hash browns and pancakes are my favorite!  I would like to add sausages or bacon to our normal repertoire of meat.  And bacon is such a good flavoring for so many dishes!