Taste and Create: Skillet Lasagna

One of the first blog events I ever participated in was Taste and Create, hosted by Nicole over at For The Love of Food. I still remember the delicious Apple-Banana Bread I picked from my partner, A Whisk and a Spoon's blog. Delicious ... and something I never would have chosen to make on my own. I don't like to bake so I rarely do it. I find that I skip over those sorts of recipes and usually don't even think about making them. That's the great thing about the Taste and Create event; it can push you outside of you comfort zone a little and let you try something different. Usually with great results.

This month I was paired with one of my favorite bloggers: Bellini Valli of More Than Burnt Toast. I had big plans because looking at her blog, I couldn't decide on just one recipe. I mean with recipes like Greek-Inspired Chicken Burgers or Greek Salad with Oregano Marinated Chicken, or Bourbon and Brown Sugar Flank Steak with Garlic-Chive Mashed Potatoes, I could plan the whole menu for next month just from this blog! (Can you hear my family in the background saying "Please do!!" LOL!) Reality intervened and before you know it, it was time to post my Taste and Create Dish. I looked around to find a recipe that I already had the ingredients for and came up with Skillet Lasagna. I figured it would be good. It's pasta. It has cheese. Gotta be good, right?

Nope.

It's not good.

Skillet. Lasagna. Is. Awesome!

We all loved it, and that doesn't happen all that often around here. All three kids ate it and commented how good it was. Picky ds even asked why I hadn't made this when his friends spent the night last weekend! Woohoo! Definitely a keeper. :-) (Shhh! Don't tell them it had spinach in it! Somehow they didn't notice.) I did make a slight change. I used Italian sausage instead of ground beef. And I added some sauteed onions and garlic as well. Quick easy and delicious. And all the kids liked it. My idea of a perfect recipe!

This month's event is being hosted by Min from The Bad Girls Kitchen. Be sure to check out this month's Taste and Create event!



Skillet Lasagna
Recipe from More Than Burnt Toast

8 oven-ready lasagne noodles (in this case Mafaldine)
1 pkg chopped spinach
1 lb lean ground beef
3 cups pasta sauce (your choice or homemade)
1 cup partly-skimmed ricotta cheese
1 cup (4 oz) pizza shreds ( a blend of mozzarella, provolone, Parmesan and Romano cheeses) or other shredded cheese blend of your choice

Place skillet over high heat. Add beef and cook breaking up clumps with a wooden spoon,
about 3 minutes until no longer pink. Add pasta sauce and ½ cup water and bring to a
simmer.

Add noodles and spinach to pan. Cover and simmer 5 minutes (10 minutes if using Mafaldine), stirring.

Dot with spoonfuls of ricotta cheese, then sprinkle with cheese shreds. Cover, reduce heat to
low and cook 3 minutes until cheese melts.

Remove from heat; serve from skillet.
Serves 6

Taste and Create VIII: Mom's Apple Banana Bread

For taste & Create VIII, I was paired with Stephanie from A Whisk and a Spoon. Stephanie lives in Australia and let me warn you, you can spend an awful lot of time paging through her blog and drooling over her gorgeous pictures. I had to laugh when I found out that I was paired with A Whisk and a Spoon because I am so not into baking. Stephanie obviously is and I worried what she would think when she saw my blog. I doubt there's a single baked good in mine.

I'm not sure why I don't bake. I like a good cheesecake or muffin as well as the next person. I guess I had this idea that baking is messy and precise and, well, just not me. I may have to re-think that position. After going through all of Stephanie's recipes (and gaining a couple of pounds just looking at the pictures!) I settled on a happy compromise: Mom's Banana Apple Bread. It has three bananas and two apples in it. That makes it healthy, right? ;-) Yummy was never in question. I love banana bread. Add in pieces of apple sauteed in brown sugar and cinnamon and how could you possibly go wrong? The recipe was simple. It went together in no time at all (with the help of my new stand mixer. Yeah!) And the apples filled the kitchen with a glorious cinnamon-y smell (I kept thinking how nice those apples would be as an afternoon snack, but I was good and added them all to the bread. Next time though ... )

Definitely a hit around here. Even the picky girls loved it. I'd planned to take some up to my mom but there isn't enough left! We'll definitely be making this one again and again. This is definitely one recipe that's worth running a couple of extra miles for!

Taste & Create

This is so not going to be good for my diet. I think I'm gaining weight just looking at the pictures on Stephanie's wonderful blog, A Whisk and a Spoon. I decided to participate in this month's Taste & Create blog event over at For the Love of Food and of course, the month I seriously started a diet to get rid of that extra ten pounds that's slowing me down, I got paired with someone who bakes the most deliciously fattening looking foods! ::sigh::

What's a girl to do? I'm going to do what any self respecting food blogger would do. I'm gonna go run a couple of miles and come back and bake something that's gloriously high-cal, gooey, sugary and totally forbidden on this diet!

And I'm gonna love every minute of it!