Maker Monday: Steffie's "No Ricotta Zesty Lasagna" Recipe

 

1 24 oz container of cottage cheese
1 bag shredded mozzarella cheese
1 bag pizza blend shredded cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 eggs
1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb hot Italian sausage
1/2 medium sized onion diced
1 jar Newman's Own Sockarooni spaghetti sauce
1 jar Classico Organic Tomato, Herbs, and Spices spaghetti sauce
1 box lasagna noodles
Spices & Herbs (italian blend herbs, red pepper flakes, seasoned salt, Garlic Garlic, cheyenne pepper)




Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat water in large pot until boiling. Added a teaspoon salt along with 12-15 lasagna noodles (12 if you want fewer layers and 15 if you want more). Follow directions on box for cooking, but remember to stop a bit short of done because they will continue to cook in the oven. It is best to drain right away and pour in cold water over the noodles to stop  cooking and keep noodles from sticking together until time to layer ingredients.

Mix onion, beef, and sausage in a skillet and brown. Add full jar of Sockarooni and half of the Classico THS sauce to skillet and let simmer. Add in spices and herbs to taste.

In medium sized mixing bowl, mix half a container (12 oz) cottage cheese with Parmesan cheese and two eggs. Stir until thoroughly blended and set aside.

In a 9x11 oven safe pan, begin layering your ingredients. First layer should be meat sauce to prevent noodles from sticking. The sequence goes as follows: red sauce, noodles (3 or 4 across depending on your preference), cottage cheese mixture, noodles, red sauce and cheese, noodles and so on until your layers near the top. The top layer should be meat sauce topped with a layer of shredded cheese. Sprinkle on additional herbs and spices as desired.

Cook for 30 - 40 minutes until cheese on top is lightly browned.

Some other ideas for ingredients to include would be spicy pepperoni, switching out half of the beef for turkey, and swapping out sauces for whichever sauces you and your family like best.

Maker Monday: Three Sisters' Stew Recipe

 

 

This recipe is inspired by the traditional Native American "Three Sisters Stew / Soup." This stew came about naturally based on the three sisters companion growing techniques used by the eastern tribes such as the Iroquois and Cherokee. They often planted corn, pole beans, and squash together because they are mutually beneficial to each other. Click here for more info on how they benefit each other and reading material on other companion growing methods. They would have used what is readily available for the season, so given the current season, I chose to use late season corn, acorn squash and rutabaga, and kidney beans. If it were mid-summer, I would have used instead yellow summer squash and zucchini squash, fresh summer corn, and green beans.


Ingredients

10-12 cups of chicken broth
1 1/2 lb chicken
1 medium size rutabaga peeled and cubed
1 small acorn squash peeled and cubed
2 medium size red potatoes cubed
1 1/2 cups shredded carrots
1/2 small onion diced
2 cups sliced button mushrooms
2 cups broccoli lightly chopped
1 cup fresh corn
2 can dark kidney beans drained and rinsed
Juice from 1 medium size lime
1 jalapeno diced (remove seeds and pith before dicing) 
1/2 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon ground cheyenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika
1 tablespoon Italian spice blend
Salt and black pepper to taste

** During summer months, rutabaga and acorn squash can be substituted with yellow squash and zucchini squash. Sweet potato would also be another late summer to early fall option as well. For a little more richness to the broth, you can add a bit of milk as well.**


Set aside broccoli, chicken, salt, and black pepper. Combine all other ingredients and cook on medium heat, covered. While that begins to cook, brown chicken and then chop into bite-size pieces. When root vegetables are about half way cooked, add the chicken and broccoli to soup. Continue to cook until vegetables are tender. Salt and black pepper to taste.

Servings: 8-10

The Lie of Growing Up

When it comes to our relationships with our parents, do we ever really get to grow up?

I’m adult woman. I've spent almost as much of my life on my own as I did in my parents' home. Why does the thought of being in the house with my mother for six days create such a violently negative reaction? Don’t get me wrong. I love my mother. I would do anything for her. But … we rarely see eye-to-eye on anything.

Our relationship has been comparable to a destructive force of nature since I was old enough to refuse to wear the endless supply of frilly dresses she bought me. I was six years old. Things have only gone downhill since then. We didn't agree on what I wore, what toys I played with, or what activities I wanted to participate in. As I grew older she agreed even less with what I wore, she detested the people I chose as friends, and let’s not even start on how she felt about the few people I dated who were brave enough to come over to my house for a visit. Now … it’s pretty much the same, but she has more to dislike. Now she can add not linking where I live, what I do for a living, and the fact that I do not visit often enough.

I only visit my parents once a year for Christmas, and I’m a ball of nerves leading up to every visit. I should have ulcers for the hours of worry that goes into each holiday “vacation.” I purposefully limit our trips to three days plus travel just to reduce the time for conflict. You see I say reduce time and not reduce the chance of conflict. I know it’s going to happen at some point during the visit, but with only three days, it doesn't happen as frequently.

I think a lot of our continued conflict boils down to the fact that I've changed and she hasn't.

I spent the first twenty something years of my life being peacekeeper in our household. I took the verbal abuse that was dished out, and I held my tongue. My mother is like a hurricane. Once she gets going, there’s no stopping her until she’s done. Growing up, I dealt with that by making myself as unnoticeable as possible with the theory that if she doesn't notice me, she won’t start yelling at me for something. If she wasn't able to pick the fight then she didn't have the opportunity to push my buttons and engage me. Engaging in those fights only left me frustrated and hurt and crying.

I grew up, I moved a little farther away with each relocation, and in so doing slowly distanced myself from the chaos. At this point in my life, I’m just not willing to take the abuse and stay quiet. I don’t sit by meekly. I give as good as I get, but I like to be sneaky about it. I know if she starts an argument and I take the bait, it’s only going to end badly for me. She always wins in those situations. But if I never engage, I take that away from her. Nothing makes her angrier than someone walking away from her attempt at starting a fight. I hang up the phone, and I don’t answer the return calls. I delete the emails and Facebook posts. I disengage before anything can start.

I’m her only child, and I've decided if she wants to keep me in the loop she has to respect my right to make my own decisions even if she doesn't agree with them. I've made good choices and bad choices, but ultimately, I’m the one that has to live with the consequences. I refuse to be controlled and manipulated. I've made calculated decisions in my life to try to alleviate that constant strain, and I've been pretty successful at it overall.

And, yet, here I am feeling my stomach tighten into knots at the thought of being in the house with her for six days. No wife with me to put my mother on good behavior. No car of my own to use as a quick escape route. No support network to act as a buffer between what I know to be true and what I’m sure I will hear her say at some point during my stay. No alcohol or sex to take my mind off of things. 

It’s not a situation I want to put myself in, but I need to be there for more important reasons. It’s something I have to do. I'm not a teenager any longer pushing boundaries and establishing independence. That battle has already been fought. I grew up. An adult child and her mother at some point have to be able to set it all aside and be the friends they couldn't be during the growing period, right? And so I have to tell myself the lie that everything will be different this time. To quote one of my favorite movies and pieces of literature, "I like the pretty lies."