Welcome to My Kitchen

This is the place that I love to be. I like to be creative and cooking is what is doing it for me these days. It's kind of a necessity and it makes me feel accomplished. I like knowing what we are eating and where it comes from. I go out of my way to make sure this happens.
I like that I don't buy several household staples from a grocery store. I enjoy making applesauce, jams and jellies, apple butter, spaghetti sauce, spicy mustard, pickles and anything else I can.
I like getting dirty, getting my hands into things, feeling and experiencing my food from the beginning to the end. I like making things, growing things and bringing those two together to create a healthy meal. I like nourishing others and knowing that I did my best to give them the best.











Friday, March 25, 2011

Dinner Mishap and Success!! Asparagus Lasagna Recipe/Review and Pic.

Well, my plan yesterday was to make the onion soup and sour dough bread.  The bread had sat for two days and was ready to be made.  It looks ugly but Chris says it tastes great!  I didn't try it yet.  The onions I had were sprouting and other things so I tossed them and went to plan B.  I already had the butter and olive oil in the pan when I discovered the nastiness of the onions and I hate to waste so...  I decided to try out the recipe I had in my head for asparagus lasagna. 
You will need:
1/4 cup butter ( I used 1 TBSP oil and 3 TBSP butter since I had started the onion soup recipe.  I always use unsalted butter for cooking and baking.)
1/4 cup flour
2 cups FF milk
dash of pepper
1/2 tsp. or more of hot pepper sauce (I used Tabasco)
1/2 cup FF milk
2 cups 2% milk fat cheddar cheese (I used Meijer brand)
1 bunch of asparagus, ends trimmed off and remainder cut into 1/2 inch or so pieces.
6 lasagna noodles (I used Kroger brand Whole Wheat, Whole Grain)  I really liked that they listed their nutritional info. as 2 1/2 noodles for a serving instead of by ounces.

Directions:
Boil lasagna noodles and blanch asparagus.  Blanching is easy.  Just put the asparagus in boiling water to take off the crispness about 2 minutes and then submerge in a bowl of ice water.  Drain the asparagus and set aside.
In sauce pan, low heat, melt butter and add flour.  Stir 3 minutes.  Gradually stir in 2 cups of warm milk.  (I microwave mine for about 1 minute in a Pyrex measuring cup).  Turn up the heat, stir until sauce is just boiling.  Turn the heat down and let simmer for about 2 minutes.  Add pepper and hot sauce.  Stir in 1/2 cup cold milk, simmer.  Stir in 2 cups of cheese.  After this is totally mixed and all flour is dissolved, add the cooled asparagus.  Mix this together.
Spray a 2 qt. dish with cooking spray.  Put three lasagna noodles down followed by cheese/asparagus mixture.  Top with additional three lasagna noodles.  If you like your noodles crunchy, put this in the oven now.  Otherwise, top with tin foil first.  I cooked it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.  When you take this out, the sauce will seem runny.  I let it sit for about five minutes before cutting.
Nutritonals:  This made 9 servings.
butter- 9 WW points, flour-2 WW points, FF milk- 5 WW points, pepper and hot sauce-free, cheese-18.5 WW points, lasagna noodles- 9.5 WW points.  Total= 47 WW points.  Divide by 9 for 5.2 WW points per serving.


This doesn't look the prettiest but it was awesome!  I ate two servings!!!  Maura cleaned her plate.  Nolan ate his without any complaint and Chris said it was amazing.  I will make this again for sure especially when fresh Michigan asparagus is in season.

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