Chicken stuffed with Spinach and Ricotta

Hello again!

Well, I managed to snag some chicken breast for $5 at Publix, and found a recipe that I was sure to enjoy.  I love the idea of stuffing poultry because it tends to scream for help from other ingredients.  I love chicken, mostly because you can add so many flavors to it.  It's like a canvas for food.  Today, I decided to stuff it.  I made a very Italian chicken breast stuffed with spinach and ricotta.  I thought of it as a lasagna without the pasta. I decided to serve rolls with it on the side, though Albert thought a salad would be nice instead.  I am not a fan of salads, so I chose not to pay attention to him.  What else is new? haha

In the end, my dish came out delicious! I hope you enjoy it!

INGREDIENTS
3-4 chicken breasts
1 container of ricotta cheese (15 oz)
1 bag of mozzarella (8 oz)
1 box of frozen spinach- thawed and drained: squeeze out all the juice from the spinach
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese-grated
2 eggs
salt and pepper to taste
1 jar of red pasta sauce, I used vodka sauce (it was on sale!)

DIRECTIONS!
1. pre heat the oven to 350degrees.
2.  Cut a pocket into each breast and season them inside and out with salt and pepper
3.  Put the chicken aside.
4.  In a bowl, mix the spinach, ricotta, eggs, 3/4 of the mozzarella and Parmesan together to create the filling
5.  Fill each chicken breast with the filling and put them in a lightly greased baking dish.
6.  Glop the rest of the filling right over the chicken.
7.  Pour the red sauce over the chicken and top it with the remaining mozzarella cheese
8.  Bake for about 50-60 minutes, and let it cool for about 10 minutes.

ENJOY!!

Lasagna Night

I made my famous lasagna and for dessert, I made probably the easiest cake ever: pineapple upside down cake.

Eileen's Awesome sausage/spinach lasagna:

Ingredients:

lasagna

Spinach

Red Sauce:

1 lb ground beef

3 links of Italian sausage

1 small (not tiny) can of tomato paste

2-3 good tbsp of Italian seasoning (oregano, rosemary, thyme, basil and marjoram)

pinch of salt and pepper

White Sauce

14 oz ricotta 

14 oz cottage cheese

1/4 lb grated Parmesan

tsp salt

1. cook the pasta.Cut open the sausage links and mix that with the ground beef, and marinate it with the seasoning and salt and pepper.

3. In a rather large pan, add about a tbsp of oil.  I used extra virgin olive oil, but any type will do.  When it's nice and hot, add the seasoned meat.

4.  Brown the meat.

5.  Add the tomato paste to the meat and let it cook in, stirring it every few minutes or so.

Make the white sauce

1. Mix all the ingredients for the white sauce and put it aside.

Put it all together!!

Layer the lasagna however you like.  I put the meat on the first layer, then the white sauce, topped with the spinach.  I usually leave a little extra of both sauces to put right on top before smothering it in shredded cheese.  I used "three Italian cheese"

For the pineapple upside down cake!!! 

Ingredients:

1 can of sliced pineapples

pineapple cake mix (this made things much easier after I discovered it)

maraschino cherries

whatever else the cake mix calls for

brown sugar

1.  butter the bottom of a 13x9 pan.

2.  Evenly coat the bottom of the pan with the brown sugar.

3.  Add the pineapple slices to the bottom of the pan with the cherries

4.  make the cake mix, as it says.  Substitute a portion of the water with the remaining juice from the can.  

5.  Bake the cake for as long as it says.

Refrigerate and Enjoy!!!!

Tonight's Menu: Caprice Salad, My famous Lasagna, and some kind of dessert.

Albert really wants to have a dinner party, so I figured that my lasagna would be a slam dunk.  (Go Celtics!)  I plan on dressing that up with spinach and sausage.  In addition to that, I will be serving caprice salad, since that's fun, easy and tasty, and I hope to be making some sort of dessert, I'm just not sure what.

Here's what I can think of in 5 seconds:

Strawberry Shortcake
Lemon Bars
some sort of pie

and that's about it.

I've been scouring allrecipes.com and foodnetwork.com to maybe find something new.  Any suggestions would be FANTASTIC!  


Thanks,
FAB

Italian style Pork Loin

It was amazing!!! At first, I had no idea what I was going to do.  Since I'm going home for the holidays, soon, I haven't gone grocery shopping in a while and my food inventory at home is really thin.  I had pasta sauce, pork loin and broccoli to play with, so my creation for tonight was to be Italian.  Now, usually I make my own pasta sauce, but since I decided to use what was on hand, I did it this way:

INGREDIENTS!
2 loins
1 medium sized jar of pasta sauce
fresh rosemary
dried thyme
fresh oregano
salt & peppr
olive oil

1.  Butterfly the loins.  Keep them looking like a boat, so the sides are up and not flat.
2.  Rub them with salt, pepper, olive oil and oregano
3.  Liberally rub oregano, thyme and rosemary on the inside, and let it sit for an hour.
4.  Pan sear the loins for 2 minutes on each side
5.  In a baking dish, pour about 2 tbsp of oil, then place the loins.
6.  Pour all the pasta sauce all over and around the pork.
7.  Bake at 425degrees for about 40-45 minutes.
8.  Let it stand for about 15 minutes after you take the pork out of the oven.
9.  ENJOY!