The Pioneer Woman's Lasagna

Everyone says they have the best lasagna ever. Ever. But no other lasagna has ever wowed me as much as Ree Drummond's. It really is The Best. Ever. Period.

I made it for our valentine's day dinner (yes, and just now getting to post it). We ate it for dinner and then Leon took it to work the next day for his co-workers. The thing weigh about 10 pounds and I forgot just how good a homemade lasagna is.

Bib with Button Closure

I was really productive during nap times this weekend! I made two bibs from Lots of Pink Here! and one was actually for the baby. Ten months later and he finally has one of his own. But I didn't have any more velcro from using them on my neices bibs, so I used a button and elastic closure.  I made them with white flannel backing, instead of the terry cloth so many others use.

Baby Onsie and Toddler Tie Shirts

I've made the tie shirt onsies from Crap I've Made before and just recently I needed to make a few more for a baby shower gift. And then the oldest asked why all these babies had tie shirts but he didn't. Well what a great idea! So I scaled up the pattern for the five-year old.

 Only difference is that I sewed a zig-zag instead of a straight line.

Easy Apple Pie Bites

Sometimes apple pie is just not worth the effort. Enter these easy-peasy apple pie bites. And at about 100 calories each, won't take that long to run off on the treadmill!

1 tube cresents
1 medium apple, cut into 16 slices
Cinnamon and a little sugar

Arrange two apple slices on each cresent roll
Dust with cinnamon and a little sugar
Roll up, and add a little more cinnamon to the top

These wind up to be soft, so maybe a little butter on top would crisp them up, but then you might have to run a little longer. They are acutally just the little sweet that hits the spot!

Tuscan Garlic Chicken

I am on a quest to find new to me recipes for the usual chicken we eat two or three times a week. I'm seriously the most boring, predictable cook ever. I feel bad for my husband. And I dont follow amounts, I estimate everything unless I'm making cupcakes. Then I do measure and double the amounts.

I started with the recipe from Olive Garden's website, but got impatient. And I didn't have spinach or the right noodles. But it tasted great and I think it would be easy to add other ingredients to it. Like mushroooms- if I ate mushrooms.

Tuscan Garlic Chicken
3 chicken breasts, sliced at an angle (so they are a little flatter)
1 C Flour
1 T Italian Seasoning, maybe more
Salt and pepper to taste
1 Red bell pepper, cut into small strips
1/2 Onion (I use only sweet onions), cut into small strips
1.5 C Heavy Cream
.5 C White wine or chicken broth
1 lb pasta
Dredge the chicken in a flour mixture with italian seasoning, black pepper, salt and whatever else you like. I cooked these on the stovetop in a little olive oil in batches, moving them to a plate.

Then I cooked half a sweet onion and about a tablespoon of minced garlic for a minute or so. Add one bell pepper that has been cut (although I thought it needed two). Here you could add your other stuff, i.e mushrooms or other veggies. Asparagus or zucchini??

Add .5 cup white wine or chicken broth and about 1.5 cups of heavy cream. And all the recipes tell me if I just let it cook the sauce will thicken. This step has never worked for me. I always have to thicken it with cornstarch..so I added a little water/cornstarch mix to thicken the sauce.

Add your chicken back to the mix and warm up.
Meanwhile you should have been boiling a pound of noodles. I think fettuccini would have been a better choice than my bowtie that I used, but I used what I had.

Garnish the top with shaved parmesan and serve it up.

Butternut Squash & Apple Baby Food

The baby's favorite food is anything orange. And in that catergory is butternut squash and applesauce. I bought two squashes and a big jar of naturaly applesauce. Had this been summer, I would have made my own applesauce, but I like easy workarounds anyway.

Split and seed the squash. And meat side down, pour about an inch of water in the dish, maybe more.

 Bake in a 350 oven for about 40 minutes. Then I check them with a knife for doneness. They should be soft and have no resistance. Then they come out like this, sometimes they cave in for me.

Scoop out the flesh and I add natural (no sugar added, organic, etc) applesauce. You can add as much or as little as you like, but I usually make it a 70/30 split. Then instead using ice cube trays, I spoon the mixture into cupcake pans and leave a little space so it makes popping out the frozen food easier. Store in a freezer ZipLoc bag.

And your baby will enjoy.

Coffee Cozies

Our beautiful SIL Cindy made these for each of us girls for Christmas (isn't she crafty?). So I was obviously inspired and just had to make some more coffee cozies! 

This one is actually a gift for my BFF Kelley - she's had a tough week and may need someone to do something nice for her.  And since this is actually her fabric...

I ironed on some interfacing for stability and insulation and then cut out my pattern (I'll get it posted soon). Here's the fabric I used -- inside blue flowers is just cotton and the bright pink and green flowers is actually a flannel fabric.

Elastic loop on the one side - should have about one inch of loop. I doubled mine back around so it may be a little more reinforced.

Then I made a template for the flowers by cutting out two hearts, a small and large one. You can see I drew around the heart onto the pink felt (looking red in the pic). The larger flower was made with four heart "petals." And then I sewed it directly onto the outside piece, lining up with where the loop would meet the button. This will later prove to be a little bit of a design flaw on my part. I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone, but in the end, you can see that part of the flower is covered.

And here I took off my sewing foot so I could sew the button onto the small three-petal leaf onto the larger flower.

I put the right sides together and sewed all the way around the cozie, leaving about a two inch gap on the end closest to the flower. Turn it right side out and sew the opening. There you have it.  You can see how the larger flower is covered, but my BFF is the best and said she liked it. I think next time I would place a single button or other fastener a little closer to the end and the flower embellishment more towards the center.