Lots and Lots and Lots...Part 1

Once again, I got behind in my blogging. It has gotten a little more difficult since I can only use my husband's computer (and he takes it to work with him every day). Literally everything other computer in this house is broken (all 3!) so I have to wait til he gets home and for Baby to give me a break so...it just hasn't happened in a while.

A lot of things have happened in the past two weeks (two weeks, right?) so I'm going to split this up into an post about recipes and a post about things I have created! I'm so excited about all of it. This is my recipe post.

The first recipe I have is a side dish of mushrooms. I am actually not a big fan of mushrooms but I can tolerate them and I know they are good for me so I put them in lots of things. The picture of this recipe alone is what made me want to make them. I found it on pinterest and I just had to make it! Here is the recipe. I did make a couple changes.

• I used garlic powder instead of garlic cloves (we rarely have garlic cloves in the house)
• I used dried thyme rather than fresh thyme (again, we don't usually have fresh herbs in the house)
• We find it a waste to buy bread crumbs so we just toast our bread and then put it in our little food chopper. I used two slices, which gave us a LOT of bread crumbs but I actually liked all the extra. If you were trying to stick closer to the recipe, I'd only use one or maybe even a half.
• No lemon juice
• We also didn't pay attention to which way the stalks were facing when we fried them or baked them.

These were phenomenal! I would highly recommend them, even to people who don't care for mushrooms. I will make this recipe again and again. We had 3 people eating them with no leftovers, after using a whole package of mushrooms. We served them with spinach lasagna roll ups.

The spinach lasagna roll ups were also really good. My mom and husband were especially impressed with them. Another easy recipe. I happened to have ricotta and lasagna noodles on hand (which NEVER happens in this house) and I knew what I had to do. I did think the roll ups were a creative way to serve lasagna without actually serving lasagna. They also help great with portion control.

I left out the parmesan (surprise, surprise, we don't keep parmesan on hand) and just used extra mozzarella. We also used fresh spinach, sauteed til soft, rather than frozen. We used a whole jar of spaghetti sauce but I felt like that was a bit much (I'm not sure how that amount compares to the amount that was called for but I had no use for a little bit of a jar of sauce so I just automatically used the whole thing). I filled mine a little too thick so I did have extra noodles at the end but I just covered them in the extra sauce and it worked out fine. 

Also, my mom and I made 3 loaves of banana bread because we had a LOT of frozen bananas to bake with. A little trick I didn't know is that you can peel frozen bananas (unless you're smart enough to freeze them peeled) with a butter knife. It goes really quick and the frozen bananas still mix well in the dough. This recipe is super simple and the prep time is also really quick. You can easily leave out the chocolate chips. Next time, I might. They were good but I like banana bread without them too. I also have a tendency to butter my banana bread and that turned out a little weird with the chocolate chips. 

With each loaf of bread, I used 4 bananas. I did the first ones as a double batch (and obviously did the 3rd loaf by itself. 3 times the recipe wouldn't fit in my mixer). It had a great banana flavor but I didn't think 4 was overdoing it at all. Depending on the ratio of wet and dry ingredients, I bet you could get away with adding even more banana. 

Lastly, I need to document my recipe for cheesy broccoli rice casserole. I know I have mentioned it before but when I needed it, I couldn't find the recipe. As usual, I made a few changes.

• I always use shredded cheese rather than cheez whiz. That stuff just grosses me out.
• I use brown rice instead of white (since that takes 45 minutes on its own, I usually make a batch of it during the day and then throw it in the fridge until I am ready to use it with dinner. This method also works really well when you want to make fried rice.) 
• Sometimes I leave out the onion if I am trying to cut the prep time in half. When I do this, I occasionally add minced onion (spice) but not always. 

Okay I think I am done with recipes! I hope that didn't get too long. Now onto my post about my projects!