Delicious Spinach Lasagna

Spinach lasagna is one of my favorite dishes of all time and I thought you might enjoy it too, so I am going to share my recipe!

Okay, so I like to start all my major cooking/baking adventures with filling my sink with warm soapy water and tossing any dishes laying around into it while I cook and dropping things in once I am done using them, it makes clean up super fast.  Also, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Ingredients:

• 9 lasagna noodles
• large can of your favorite pasta sauce
• at least 2 pounds of mozzarella cheese
• 2 cups of cottage cheese (or ricotta-I prefer ricotta but my husband likes cottage cheese)
• Parmesan cheese
• 1 bag of salad spinach (or you can use two packs of frozen spinach, but you have to thaw them then) 

Directions:

1.  Cover the bottom of your lasagna pan with a thin layer of sauce to keep the noodles from sticking.

2.  Layer three noodles in the bottom of the pan (I put my broken noodles on the bottom).

3.  Layer half of your cottage cheese, 1 cup of mozzarella cheese,  half your spinach, some tomato sauce, and sprinkle with Parmesan (you can use more or less of any ingredient, to make it to your tastes).  Add another layer of noodles and repeat.

4.  Add final layer of noodles and cover with pasta sauce, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan.  Put this in an oven at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, you can tell it is done when you can see the cheese bubbling on the sides.

5.  While your lasagna bakes, clean up your mess.  This is what time my timer read in order to get my entire kitchen back in order after this (start time was 45 minutes, so it only took 6 minutes to get everything clean!)

6 minutes to a clean kitchen, yes please!

Even my stovetop was cleaned up!

6.  Remove your lasagna, let it sit for at LEAST 15 minutes before cutting it to serve. (This helps it to firm up and not fall to pieces when serving).

Then enjoy!  One of the best parts of this meal?  It can be prepared in advance and cooked the next day and it reheats well in the microwave for leftovers for lunch or dinner!

What About You?  Do you enjoy spinach lasagna?  What are your favorite dishes?

House Update

I know I have not posted anything on my house in forever.  I believe I left off on the pictures of all the cat craziness and sanding.  We had a LOT of help with the painting by throwing a painting party!  The rules of a painting party are these:  workers will be paid in food and beer, have fun, and get the place painted!

Our friends Lauren, Phil, and Callie all came from out of state to visit and help paint.  It was great to see them all, and they were all quite the help!  Our local friends Matt and Theresa also helped Thomas and I to get a lot of wall/ceiling covered in a pretty short amount of time.  I think we all had fun, and a lot of painting got done!

Lauren taping off our bathroom vanity.

The boys attempting to reattach the light/fan fixture in the living room...there was a lot of cursing done by Thomas.  I also believe there was a threat on my life when I took this picture...something Thomas said about hoping I died in a fire or something...he was so unhappy.

Theresa cheerfully painting the kitchen yellow! 

Lauren painting the accent wall in our bedroom.

 Overall, I think everyone had a decent time getting to hang out and paint, we did not pain all weekend though!  We also took a break to watch The Avengers in the theater down the street from our house and went to the local Arboretum to enjoy the nice weather and see the beautiful flowers.

I love visiting the arboretum and introducing other people to it.  The flowers are always changing and they have so many different types of gardens--my favorite is the pollinator garden, with the rose garden next in line.  

What About You?  Do you enjoy painting?  What about the other aspects of painting (sanding, taping, etc)?  What are your favorite types of gardens?

Sorry It Has Been So Long!

Hey everyone!  Sorry I have been away from blogging for so long.  When things get busy, it just does not seem like a priority and seems to fall to the wayside :/  I probably need to do what others do and establish a posting schedule to try to keep me writing at least once or twice a week.

What I have been up to, the quick update (I plan on posting more detailed accounts of everything I am listing here!):  new house maintenance (painting, edging, removing toilets/vanities/baseboards, and picking floors), changing over addresses on everything, trying to live between two places, two days of awesome family time during the family reunion, big projects at work (and a massive breakthrough!), and ArtsFest!

Maybe it does not sound like a lot, but it sure FEELS like it!  I have also been working on my procrastination list and whittling it down today, which makes me feel great and productive.  I have decided that I will be doing the Insanity workout with my husband and today will be the first day...cannot decide if this is exciting or terrifying for me...guess you will get to follow some of my progress :D

So that is the quick update, with more detailed posts to follow.  I will let you know when/if I decide to schedule regular posting days!

What About You?  How do you decide when you are going to blog?  Do you have the habit of letting things go when you are busy and how do you cope with it if so?

Today's Cooking Affairs

So today my bananas were going overripe again...so of course I made my chocolate chip banana bread recipe!  Cannot wait to eat a slice for dessert after my corn chowder!

So the corn chowder recipe is just like all of mine, ADAPTED!

I started with this recipe and adapted it to look more like this:

 Ingredients
1 tablespoons butter
1 chopped onion
4 chopped carrots (they were on the smallish side)
3/4 cup chopped spinach
1 minced garlic clove
A dash of dried thyme
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 cups 2% milk (you can use more or less depending on how thick you want your chowder)
2 cans creamed corn
Salt and black pepper to taste
Dash of cayenne (which I was out of today :(  )

Directions
Heat the butter soup pot over low heat. Add the onion, garlic, carrot, spinach, and thyme and cook until the vegetables about 10 minutes, stirring often. Dust the vegetables with flour and stir to coat everything. Pour in the creamed corn and milk (My can opener was at the house since I cooked chili there a while ago and so I muscled open the cans of corn with my utility tool from my purse!).  Season with salt and pepper and simmer until the mixture is heated through.

That is how I change recipes...somewhat dramatically I guess, but it turned out super yummy even though it is missing the tiny bit of spice kick I wanted to add!

Hope you try this and like it.

What About You?  What would you do if you were in the middle of a meal and realized you could not get a can open without a traditional can opener?  Have you tried my banana bread recipe yet?

I Love My Job

So, for those of you that do not know, I am a lab/research technologist in an entomology lab.  Mostly I supervise the undergrads, make sure people get paid, offer advice, stock the inventory, help on projects when the loads are tough, and work on my own projects at the same time (It can be exhausting).

Occasionally I get really cool/fun opportunities as an entomologist and this week included one of them.  The post doc in my lab wanted to go out and catch leaf hoppers and tree hoppers for a project we are collaborating on and I got to go with her!  Now I know this does not sound all that great, but it was awesome.  I felt like such a little kid.  I was basically running through grass with a butterfly net and catching everything.  I got to see so many different kinds of insects (and spiders) and it was neat to see how many leaf hoppers I could get.  I ended up catching eight different morphotypes (they looked the same to the naked eye, but they might technically be a different species).

Here are my leaf hopper/tree hopper catches!

What About You?  Have you ever been pleasantly surprised by a task you were assigned at work and thought it was a ton of fun?  What was it?

The Inside (Before)

So as the post before this noted: we bought a house.  This also comes with the caveat that...this house needed a lot of help on the inside (note: I get to learn handy household skills!)

So naturally we did what every person who buys a house does before they buy a house:  make a set plan of how to attack all the things that need to be addressed about their house and what order to do it in...which immediately was thrown to the wind the day we bought our house (at least for a day) when I thought up this epic first night scenario.

Master Bedroom

Our snuggle nest in the Master bedroom

The day we bought our house we were supposed to do work on it...instead we made a blanket nest in the master bedroom, bought sushi, did laundry, and snuggled while watching a few episodes of Game of Thrones in our new house :D  (new skills acquired: how to run our washer/dryer).  The Master bedroom connects to the hallways and the bathroom (via our closet) and has lots of natural light.





After that free night our next night involved removing all of the items from the walls (screws, hooks, tacks, nails, and the things you put on screws to give them more support...the ones that expand once you have put them in your walls and make huge holes coming out...).  The lady who lived here must have had a million things on her walls...we had a handy pile of odds and ends that came out of the walls that literally would overflow both of my hands cupped together (crazy!).  Also, there were spots that looked like she had taken a board with a nail and hammered it in several times close to the same spot...cannot figure that one out.  She also put those screw supports in EVERYTHING...good thing I learned how to spackle like a boss :D  Also, took the face plates off all of the electrical sockets and switches (we have NO shortage of them).

Master Closet
Our master closet connects the bathroom and the master bedroom.  It had a janky wire shelving system we removed, and all the screws that held it in had those screw supports...(new skills acquired: removing shelving, spackling).

I don't know if you can see all the holes here, but this closet had about 100 holes...oh dear God, the spackling O.o

Laundry Room

Our laundry room has an entrance to the house from the autoport, which is nice in case it is raining.  Our house came with an energy efficienct washer/dryer set (lucked out here!) and a big old hole in the wall from the door handle (new skills: patching and spackling large holes, and installing doorstops).

And...since I do not think I have mentioned this yet...the lady who lived her was a cat lady...some of her light sockets had face plates with cat stickers.  This is the window in our laundry room, which has paw prints coming up the wall from the door to the outside, across the windowsill, and down the other side...and this is all in textured paint!  (new skills acquired: sanding crazy cat lady textured paint off the walls..., learning never to paint with textured paint...because if you do not remove it whoever buys your house will want to murder you)

The paw prints stop in the middle like the cat is looking out the window. 

Kitchen
The kitchen is connected to the laundry room, the hallway, and the living room.  The kitchen is actually pretty nice and the red-checked curtains inspired me to pick a pale yellow color for the paint in here :D  I think all we are planning on really doing in here is painting and reflooring--there are some burns in the linoleum...and I am not really a fan of the pattern but my husband likes it.  (new skills acquired: using pieces in a room to inspire the rest of the room, liking yellow).

The lady who lived here before was handicapped, so I can reach everything!

Bathroom
The bathroom is connected to our closet and the hallway.  The tub is super-nice with black and white tile which will match my bathroom aesthetic (black and white, with pops of color).  See those funny blobby shapes between the baby blue and light pink wall paint...that is a lining of cats...with paw prints...in textured maroon paint...SERIOUSLY?!  If you can see the holes in the wall and floor by the toilet, there were metal handicapped bars installed, like the one by the tub.  We removed them (including the one still present in the picture) to give more space to the room.  We also plan on reflooring in here and possibly replacing the toilet.  (new skills acquired:  patching massive holes, removing handicapped equipment--Thomas did most of that though--, and that sanding is now a dirty word.)

Hallway
So yeah, crazy cat lady with textured paint strikes again...this lined both sides of the hallway...
(new skills acquired: not crying, removing sanded particles from everything in the vicinity)

The Office/Guest Bedroom
The office is at the opposite end of the hallway from the master bedroom and really just needs a coat of paint--the stuff that was in here was...very light orange...not sure what to call it other than that.  Also, it needs new carpet (as does the rest of the carpeted area, this lady was a smoker and a cat owner...this carpet has seen much better days).  (New skills acquired:  laying painter's tape)

Living Room

This is the front entrance to our house and connects to the kitchen.  It has a lot of windows and needs new flooring.  Also, see that foot wide strip at the top of the wall?  It is textured paint...we just said meh and painted over it...we might power sand it and paint it again, I think neither of us is super happy with it at the moment, but I think we will see how the stencils we made look on the textured paint before we do anything. (new skills acquired: picking/making stencils).

Okay, so while this lady was a crazy cat lady...I love cats and am so pleased and tickled that they left this cat coat hook.  It was the most adorable thing.  :D

This is our before we did much to the house set of pictures, all the new skills I put up were learned during the progress of the work, which I will post more about.

What About You?  What do you think about textured paint?  Do you think the cat things were cute or overkill?  Do you have any weird things about your house that if someone bought it they would think were weird?

We Bought a House!

So, first off--I am back!  I intend to try to post somewhat regularly now that I have a working computer and am not on vacation/dealing with having just bought a house.

So recap: we bought a house!  It is a two bedroom home with a living room, kitchen, and laundry room that used to belong to a lady in a wheelchair so we have nice wooden porches with ramps and the cabinets and counters are at the perfect height for me (I am 5 foot 3 inches, so most counters/cabinets are just a tad too high to be comfortable)!

It was somewhat of a stressful adventure with all the paperwork, showings, and new jargon as well as having to deal with what one person said via another person...caused a few mix-ups but nothing too serious!  Our house is super cute...and most importantly awesomely ours!

This is the view from the street, it came with the raised garden in the front, and we intend to keep it!  It is sort of a hodgepodge type of garden, but I quite like it.  I never was one for the same flowers to be standing all in a row...looked like too much work.  This also, makes me feel more like it is a more natural occurring grouping, with flowers that bloom all the time :D

We have a nice driveway with a parking spot in front and a wooden carport in the back 

And lots of big windows to let in natural light 

View of our standing garden from our carport

One of the three sheds that came with our property.

Our house from the back of our property.

Raised garden in our backyard with a beautiful purple flowering dogwood

The beautiful walking path that abuts our backyard and runs through the neighborhood.

We have a lot of plans for our new house and yard and I will be updating as we get things done, or that is the plan.  We have already been working on some updates, but I will post those later this week so I have more posts for you to look forward to :)

What About You?  What was your most exciting purchase in your lifetime?  What are some of the ideal things you think you would look for in buying a first home?