Lasagna Rolls!

Tytus and I make Lasagna Rolls. We kept it simple. Lasagna sheets, ground turkey meat, jar tomato sauce, and many kinds of cheese. If you want to make a bechamel sauce or add ricotta it's up to you. The amount of cheese and sauce to use is also up to you.

You can make the meat and sauce mixture and cook the noodles ahead of time. That way you can later assemble and bake in case you're involving others in making supper. 

The best thing about this is you can pre-prep most of the meal up to a couple of days ahead. The other great advantage is the lasagna roll holds together without resting long. Unlike regular lasagna that may turn into soup and spread out on the plate if not given enough time to set up.

Ingredients:

6 lasagna sheets (about half a box)

1# ground turkey meat

1 to 1 1/2 Jars of your favorite tomato sauce

1 bag mixed cheeses shredded

1 bag mozzarella cheese shredded

Hot-dogs, Fries, and more...

Little Valley Academy gets an all beef hot-dog with fries and applesauce...because these are the "little guys" we cut the hot-dog in two length wise(less of a choking hazard).

Valley Fellowship Christian Academy gets an all beef hot-dog, fries (this is an older picture still showing chips, but its fries now), chili, and shredded cheese. So really you could have chili-cheese dog or chili-cheese fries, or even just at the chili separate. Yes, to many options maybe? Ha.

Herb Baked Chicken and Baked Potato!

Herb Baked Chicken, Baked Potato with Sour Cream, Cheese, & Butter...Broccoli and Bread!

Of course that is to involved for the little ones so Little Valley Academy had chicken tenders, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and slice of bread.

Valley Fellowship Christian Academy 

Second Day Lunch Menu

Day two, loaded baked potato! Was that a real sentence? Ah, I don't care its my blog.

The word on the street was there were no complaints today that anyone heard. Yesterday there were a few complaints but that was because I was hoping with all the emphasis on food, food shows, health, and Michelle Obama messing with the public school system lunches that these kids taste buds would have evolved to enjoy or try hummus. Not so much. I am not sure about the rest of the country but in the south its "Ranch Nation" or maybe "Ranch Country". We don't even bother saying Hidden Valley Ranch or Ranch Dressing. We love it on about everything!  That, and HOT SAUCE y'all!!!

Ok, back to the spuds. Baked potato, chili, cheese, bacon bits, butter, sour cream, and a side salad! And yes, with ranch! LOL!

My right hand man Roberto has had to learn how I do things at a fast pace. He's holding up well, but it is only day 2...

Eggs in Lasagna?

A lot of people over the years ask me how to make lasagna. Sometimes they just want a recipe, and some want me to tell them step by step how I make it...So for those of you who have asked I found a really simple video for making lasagna (I guess I should define it's like most North American lasagna's) posted below.

Here are some of the usual questions I get when it comes to lasagna:

• Do you have to put an egg in it to bind it? No, I haven't for a long time. Just use the shredded mozzarella you have and put about a third of the total recipe amount in your ricotta (or cottage cheese) mixture, when it melts in, it helps bind. Most problems are not with binding the lasagna, its with letting it rest long enough to congeal/setup so the lasagna becomes firm again.
• Do you have to buy no-cook noodles to bake it without boiling the noodles first? No, I never have. There may be some 'secret' process I don't know about with those noodles, but I just use the regular noodles.
• Why do some people put cottage cheese in lasagna? Or Ricotta? Preference. I prefer ricotta. But some will simply put a nice bechamel sauce in it.

I make a mean chicken Florentine (spinach) lasagna BUT I will save that for another post! The possibilities for lasagna are many; Meats, sauces, veggies...how do you make yours?

 

Deep Fried Macaroni and Cheese

Terrible. I know its just terrible to make something so good and fattening and deep fry it for even more flavor. But what was also terrible is the recipes that I found when I googled deep fried macaroni and cheese. Some wrote about frying it in a skillet and adding ingredients and some wrote recipes that I believe they never tried like; use (a national known brand of) frozen macaroni and cheese and scoop it out of the foil package and bread it with white bread crumbs? How do you 'scoop' frozen macaroni and cheese? And just how did they bread it without a binder and being frozen? Terrible.

The recipes that sound good give you no pictures. And one recipe goes so far as to add meat, tomato, and...now how is that macaroni and cheese?

Make Ricotta Cheese: its easy!

Over at Stumptown Savoury, Gareth has an excellent blog that I enjoy.  He also has a post about making ricotta cheese at home, which is great because I can share it with you! (without having to write about it again myself)

I have tested doing it the way he says and it came out as good as his pictures show.  Here is the link  Home Creamery: Whole Milk Ricotta.  Come on people, it has four ingredients: Milk, Heavy Cream, Citric Acid, & Salt!

What can you make with Ricotta?  Lasagna, Manicotti, desserts...Gareth has already listed two more ideas on his site to go with his ricotta recipe. (just click Stumptown Savoury above)

Also, there is a link on his site for ordering citric acid which is one of the ingredients...But if you don't want to wait maybe this will do the trick for you:

I have had great success in finding Sour Salt (brand ROKEACH) in the Kosher section of Safeway food stores. Sour Salt IS citric acid, check the ingredients there is only one – citric acid.

About 5 1/2 ounces for $2.19 – plenty of cheese making citric acid.

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