Cheesy Eggplant and Butternut Squash bake

It has been a while!  Life always seems to take over no matter how hard I try to keep this blog updated every week.  The good news is that Nathan is working on an exciting new addition to the blog...but I will let him tell you about that.  While I haven't been posting new and fun recipes I have still been creating them!  I have several on reserve for future blogs BUT the one that I made tonight was just so delicious I had to post ASAP.  Initially I was going to make my regular ol eggplant lasagna and just tweak it a bit, but then I saw a lonely old butternut squash sitting on my counter and I decided to incorporate it into my lasagna, and I am so glad I did.  While this recipe is grain free it is definitely  Not dairy free (sorry all of you lactose intolerant peeps).  I am lactose intolerant, but cheeses like parmesan, ricotta, cottage, and small amounts of mozzarella don't seem to bother me much, plus I just try to keep my serving size to a minimum, with this recipe that was super hard!

Normally when I make eggplant lasagna I cut the eggplant into discs and throw it in the dish, this time I decided to brush each side with egg, sprinkle a little coconut flour, parmesan cheese, and Italian herbs over it and bake at 350 for roughly 15 minutes (more eggplant parmesan-ish style).

While that was baking I cut a butternut squash in half covered loosely with plastic wrap and microwaved for about 7 minutes, just until tender.  I cubed the squash and spread it out on a lightly sprayed baking sheet, sprinkled a little pepper on it and threw that in the oven for 20 minutes after I removed the eggplant.

 While the squash was in the oven I began sautéing onion, fresh spinach and added red pepper pasta sauce (or any pasta sauce you like).

You can see the baked eggplant in this picture, yum.  Golden brown.

Next comes the cheesy goodness, I mixed roughly 1.5 cups of cottage cheese with 2 eggs a fourth a cup of parmesan and more Italian seasoning.

I pulled the squash out of the oven after they had a nice roasted taste and began layering.  Pasta sauce, Eggplant, Squash, Cottage cheese, Pasta Sauce, Eggplant, 1.5 cups of Ricotta cheese, Pasta sauce, grated Mozzarella cheese.

I baked covered with foil for roughly 15 minutes, and then until the cheese on top was golden brown (about 20 more minutes) uncovered.

I must say this is one of my favorite accidental recipes yet!

Enjoy

Recipe List

2  Medium eggplants
1 Butternut squash
3-4 Eggs
1.5 C Ricotta cheese
1.5 C Cottage cheese
1/4 C grated Mozzarella
1/2 C Parmesan
1/2 onion
2 C Pasta sauce of your liking
Sprinkling of Coconut Flour
Large handful of fresh spinach
Italian Seasoning
Pepper

Buddhism

This week has been busy and exhausting.  I have some exciting news (well to me at least!),  I have been approved to present two presentations on different forms of Buddhism, one being the emerging role of Buddhism practices into Clinical Psychology for healing of Mental Illness.  The other being a semester long immersion into the Buddhist culture in which I will visit Temples, attend sittings and fingers crossed get to attend a 3 day retreat!  Yippie!  I am so mesmerized by this culture and hope that I can incorporate some of the practices that I will learn into my every day life.

At any rate, I am sure I will have another recipe ready for you next Sunday!  I will leave you with this because I like it...

Easy P-Nut butter protein balls

So a Sunday post did not happen, but I will make it up to you with this super yummy and EASY peanut butter protein balls (or bars).

Initially I was going to make bars, but the consistency just wasn't right, so I ended up rolling them into balls and they worked beautifully!

-2 cups of GF rolled oats (or for those of you who are not gluten free, whatever plain oatmeal you            have in the cupboard!)
- 1/2 cup of creamy natural peanut butter
- 1/2 cup of honey
- 1/4 cup of flax
- 1/4 cup of chia

The flax and chia seeds I used roughly 1/4 cups, you can pour them in to taste or leave them out all together.

Mix Mix Mix, form into balls and whala! I put mine in an seal tight container in the refrigerator.  This will be a favorite snack, it is Nathan approved!  I think they taste like peanut butter cookie dough. yum!

Yum, Until next time!

Freezer Mania

I have realized that I will be overwhelmingly busy this semester; 3 jobs, 17 hours of class, training for several athletic events, and of course household and family duties.  After my initial freakout of how am I going to survive the next few months?!?! I had a bright idea, of course, freezer meals!  This is the first time that I have attempted freezer meals.  I ended up making several meals off of one website, added a few of our favorite recipes, and made a super delicious Baked Spaghetti Squash mac-n-cheese.  All of my freezer meals *other than the mac-n-cheese* are grain free.  I used this site for pretty much all of my meals.

***As a side note, I do not follow exact recipes pretty much ever, with these I tried following pretty closely.  I used coconut milk and usually would use goat cheese (I did use regular cheese in The Mac-N-Cheese, For all of the recipes containing meat I used Italian turkey in the Bell Peppers and Jambalaya.  I used ground chicken in the Shepherds pie, and used steak in the Stew.

From her site I have made sweet-potato-shepherds-pie which received a huge thumbs up!  stuffed-bell-peppers, another thumbs up!  Riced cauliflower is AWESOME!  Pumpkin-butternut-stew, which I loved, however Nathan said it wasn't filling enough for him.  Jambalaya, we have yet to try this, but I am very excited about it!  I also packaged my recipe of Vegetarian-white-bean-chili,yummy yum! For each of the recipes above I split the contents from the original recipe into two freezer bags with 2-3 servings per bag, so instead of having 5 meals, we had 10!

I also made 2 loaf size aluminum pans of Meatless-eggplant-lasagna.  While technically not in a freezer bag, it still counts right??  I prepared some easy freezer meals with some leftovers, such as Turkey Italian sausage with onion and green pepper, a couple of turkey burger patties, some chicken breasts to throw in the crock with a jar of salsa..yum yum, great for chicken tacos!

The rave of the bunch was..... Baked Spaghetti Squash!  This recipe is not grain free, as I used rice flour (but you could use coconut flour), I used unsweetened coconut milk in place of the regular milk.  We did not freeze this one, we ate it the evening that it was made.

I poked several holes in my squash and microwaved it for 10 minutes (in lieu of baking it for an hour), I then let it cool and scraped the squash directly into the pan.  Unfortunately *because I apparently suck* I only took a few pictures.

We ate the fake mac-n-cheese with the stuffed peppers, so I have a pic of those too!

Nate even enjoyed that meal, he said that the mac-n-cheese tasted like cheesy rice, yummy either way!

Yep the day finally came, I thought I was happy the day she said "yes" to my proposal but it doesn't even compare to the "I do" she said on January 10th. It was a cold day but with a little sun, trees blocking the wind and the warmth from Sara's glow it felt like spring!! To say I am happy would be an understatement and I am just as excited as the future we are working towards together. Ok enough of my rambling about how much I love my wife, I just wanted to post a few pictures for you all!!!

01/10/2015

We did it!!! blog and pictures to come soon :-)

Lentils and Sausage to ring in the New Year

I recently have put a hold on my non-meatness, I have been running a lot and over-carbing, I was constantly craving more.  For fear that I was not getting enough protein after 2.5 months of not eating meat, I added fish and chicken back into my diet.  It was actually a perfect time to add meat back in so that I could enjoy my favorite New Years dish of Lentils and Sausage ( I used spicy chicken sausage).  Eating this meal is said to bring good luck and fortune to you throughout the year...the luck and fortune have already begun!

While this may not be the prettiest meal, the taste was AMAZING!
What you will need:

-2 tbsp  Olive oil
- 2 tbsp dried Italian seasoning
- 1 large onion
- 2 large carrots
- 1 large parsnip
- 2 large celery stalks
- 2 cups of brown lentils
- 4-5 cups of broth (I used vegetable)
- baby spinach leaves
- fully cooked Italian sausage ( I used spicy, Italian chicken sausage)

I removed the casings from 4 large sausage links and began browning them in a large pot with the olive oil.  I tried breaking them into small pieces as I was cooking them

After the sausage was browned, I transferred it into a bowl.  I then added the peeled and diced carrots, parsnip, onion, celery, and Italian seasoning to the remaining juices and oil left from the sausage.

I sauteed the veggies for roughly 7 minutes ( constant stirring) and then added the lentils, broth and the sausage back into the pot.  I let this simmer for about an hour stirring occasionally.  During the last 15 minutes I added the spinach, I used a packet of finely chopped steamer spinach...It turned everything bright green!  I would suggest using a bag of baby spinach and cook until it wilts.  While the taste was excellent the presentation was lacking (way too green).

This dish even got a thumbs up from Nathan (who claims not to like lentils), it was delish!

Until next time...

Happy New Years!

January 1st has got to be one of my most favorite days during the year.  New beginnings, new goals, new hopes and dreams, and the excitement to have a fresh start.  I have a pretty hefty 'bucket list' of to-dos during 2015.  One of which is to post on this blog at least once a week (Nathan you can gladly help me out with this one!), whether it be a recipe or project, or just a little update on the family this is a goal that I will strive to achieve. 

 Happy New Year, from us to you - make this year count!!