Chocolate Lasagna

Chocolate Lasagna from Olive Garden is sinful! Homemade chocolate lasagna is just as delicious. I kid you not. Be prepared to not want to step on the scale for a few days. I made this batch for some out-of-town friends we had over recently. It's a great summertime dessert--so cool and delicious.

CHOCOLATE LASAGNA

Package regular Oreo cookies

6 TBSP melted butter

1- 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 TBSP cold milk

12 ounce tub Cool Whip, divided

2 – 3.9 ounce packages Chocolate Instant Pudding

3 1/4 cups cold milk

1 1/2 cups mini chocolate chips

First, food process or crunch Oreos in a baggie with a wood roller until they are finely crushed. Melt butter and combine butter with the crushed Oreos. Spread the mixture on the bottom of a 9 x 13" dish.

Mix the cream cheese with a mixer fluffy. Add in 2 TBSP of milk, and sugar, and mix. Stir in 1 and 1/4 cups Cool Whip. Spread this mixture over the crust.

In a separate bowl, combine instant pudding with 3 and 1/4 cups cold milk. Whisk until the pudding starts to thicken. Use a spatula to spread the mixture over the previous cream cheese layer.

Spread the remaining Cool Whip over the top. Sprinkle mini chocolate chips evenly over the top. Place in the freezer for 1 hour, or the refrigerator for 4 hours before serving.

Fast Recipe: Southwestern Won Tons

I love yummy, quick recipes. This is one my family raves about! I try to tell myself it has healthy contents but you do have to fry the won tons so that probably cancels any healthiness out. Try not to focus on that and concentrate on the yummy factor. It's off the charts.

INGREDIENTS

1 pkg. won tons

1 red bell pepper

1 can black beans, drained

1 pkg ranch dressing

1 chicken breast, cooked (I boiled mine then cut into cubes)

Shredded chedder cheese

Oil (for frying) Optional item--ranch dressing to dip won tons in

Prep work: Begin by chopping a red bell pepper, shredding cheese, draining can of beans, and chopping chicken. Set aside.

In a frying pan, add chopped bell pepper and cook on medium heat until tender. Add most of the can of beans, chicken, and a small handfull of cheese. Stir. Add half the package of ranch dressing. Stir.

Set the mixed items aside and start spreading out the won tons.

Fill half of each won ton with the chicken mixture.

Have a side glass of water ready. You will coat the sides of the opposite half of the won ton that doesn't have the mixture with some water.

You will then close the won ton by folding the angles over. The water will help you to seal them shut together.

You will then heat your oil and once it is pretty hot, you will submerge four won tons at a time in oil to fry. You won't keep the won tons in very long at all. Make sure you have some tongs and can turn them over quickly so as to cook both sides.

Once you have fried all of your won tons, serve them up with some ranch dressing. They're quite good alone. It's the only meal that my son eats the beans and doesn't complain. This recipe is really tasty. I think the powdered ranch dressing inside gives it a unique flavor. The melted cheese doesn't hurt either. I hope you like it as much as we do!

Recipe: Simple Bruschetta

I love me some bruschetta! I've had complex bruschetta with many ingredients including olive tampenade. And I've had very simple ones with few ingredients like this one. I like simple best. My good friend gave me this recipe and it is such a hit with MiniMe. She cheers when I tell her we're having it. Sometimes, on a meatless Monday or in place of dinner, we'll just have bruschetta. Recipe available for download here. And if your husband is like mine and "thinks" goat cheese isn't good, then don't tell him you're using it, he will never know. Trust me on this.

Here are the ingredients (minus the olive oil and baguette bread--sorry I forgot it in the pic!).

Start by cutting your baguette bread in slices, then dip each slide flatly in some olive oil that you poured in a plate. Then sprikle the bread with garlic salt and place on a cookie sheet to toast. Set you oven on the lowest broiler setting.

Your toasted bread should look something like this:

Then, you want to spread some goat cheese and place a few diced tomatoes on your bread and put back in oven. This step is mainly to heat up the cheese and tomoatoes so you don't need to keep them in very long at all. Make sure that you watch the bread closely. Your bruschetta can go from perfect to burnt very quickly.

Top with basil and serve. Feel free to sprinkle with more garlic salt. I think that is what makes it especially yummy.

Recipe: Best Broccoli Cheddar Soup--Hands Down

Downtime. We needed it. We miss it. A snowstorm last month gave us the opportunity to have some. We stayed in our pj's all day. I made some homemade bread and soup. Do you love Broccoli Cheddar soup like it do? Mmmmmm... Panera Bread has the best version ever. I'd compare my soup recipe to theirs. If you love BC Soup, you have to try this recipe! Download the PDF here.

You start by steaming broccoli.

Then you bring the butter ingredients to a boil.

Once the broccoli is steamed, you add the broccoli to the boiling butter mixture after adding some chicken broth and milk (it's all in the recipe).

You have to add the cheeses so they melt in the mixture. Once they've sufficiently melted, add salt and pepper to taste and serve. Yummy! It is even tastier with some homemade, warm bread to dip in. Best veg out day ever.

Lentil Soup and Ham

My mom loved lentils. They were gross to me as a kid. Now I really like them! They are so good for you too!

We lost heat in our house and soup was my solution. There is nothing better than soup on a cold day! Even better on a cold day when your house is also cold. Mmmmm good is right!

I love the ham in this soup and the spinich adds some yumminess too. In all honesty, the kids weren't big fans of the soup but I didn't expect them to be. As I said, I wasn't too fond of lentils as a kid either.

Lentil Soup and Ham

Olive oil

1 chopped onion

4 garlic cloves

5 cups chicken broth

1 cup dried lentils

1/2 cup chopped carrot

2 bay leaves

3 cups chopped spinach

1 cup chopped ham

1 can diced tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Heat oil in a dutch oven. Add onion and garlic and saute for 5 minutes. Add broth, lentils, carrots, and bay leaves; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add spinach, ham, tomatoes, thyme, and pepper. Simmer for 10 minutes. Discard bay leaves and enjoy!

We've been eating better lately. Do you feel like you eat better in the fall/winter? I always feel like in the summer we tend to eat poorly because of barbeques and parties, etc. Come winter we tend to get back on track. The kids don't exactly think our healthy eating is good. MiniMe said the other day, "When are we going to start eating good food again?"

My Favorite Things Thursdays

It's Thursday and time for My Favorite Things. Do you have a favorite receipe, app, link, craft, product, fashion trend or perfume to share? Link up, anything goes.

I am so excited to share this recipe with you. It isn't my recipe but it's my new go-to recipe for a soup to make on a blustery day. Yum! My family is IN LOVE with this Lasagna Soup recipe. You start with making a "lasagna-type" soup base.

On the side you then make a cheese topping with mozzarella, cottage cheese (the recipe calls for ricotta but I prefer cottage cheese), and parmesan cheese.

Then you add the cheesy topping to the soup and stir and eat. My kids are crazy about this one. I was even able to put it in their thermoses for school the next day.

My Favorite Things Thursdays

Happy Thursday! Time for My Favorite Things Thursday linky party.

So, one of my favorite things of all time is my subscription to Cooking Light magazine. If you're a current subscriber, you know what I mean! I get my magazine and sit down and pick out and dog ear the recipes I'm going to try out that month. I love that the receipes are so timely and usually include fruit that is currently in season.

I'm excited to try these lemonbars this month!

The Dinner Tonight section features fast weeknight menus and includes a "game plan" to help you ensure that you are efficient and have a healthy meal quickly! I'm excited to try this Chicken Tostadas and Avocado Salsa recipe. Delish!

The Super Fast section features 20-minute meals. I've got this Herbed Shrimp and White Bean Salad planned for this week. Twenty minutes? I'm there!

The magazine features a few vegetarian recipes (although many of the receipes can be altered to be vegetarian friendly) and a Feed 4 for Less Than $10 budget cooking section.

Recipe Roundup--An Organizational Tip!

D o you have beloved recipes that you've saved over the years? If you're like me, you stuff them in some box and when it comes time to find it, you fumble around searching just to find that right one. One day it drove me so crazy, I decided I would change my system and organize my recipes.

Step 1: Organize recipes by categories. My categories are Chicken, Pork, Beef, Pasta, Salads, Desserts, Soups, Breads, Dressings and Dips, and Miscellaneous.

Step 2: Purchase a large binder, a box of clear sheet protectors, and white 8 x 11" card stock. And make sure your printer has enough ink!

Step 3: Type each recipe out. I know this sounds daunting! Believe me, I do. It took me more than a month and I would do it on the laptop in the evening while watching TV. Try to have fun with this step. Use some cute fonts. Amanda has some adorable free fonts here. I also took cute clip art and gave each category an image. I know there is much cuter art out there, I just Googled "clip art."

Step 4: Print out the recipes on cardstock so they aren't flimsy. When I know I'm going to make a certain recipe and I'm in a hurry, I just take that recipe out of the binder and take it into the store with me. That is why cardstock is a good option so the recipe stays in good shape. Paper will do too though!

Step 5: Place them in the binder and now you no longer have to search and search and search for your favorite go to recipes! I cut some of the photos out from magazine recipes and just taped them on before I placed them in the sheet protector. Pictures help me remember why I like the recipe in the first place so they're important to me if the recipe comes with one.

Step 6: Buy yourself a magazine box or something cute to keep the recipes you haven't typed in yet but will type later. I used to just keep them in the front of my binder but it got to looking messy and defeated the whole reason I started the project.

Now, when I have some downtime (yeah right!), I will type in a recipe or two. The other nice thing about having your recipes saved in a document is you can just email them to friends when they ask for your recipe for something. I also like that with the sheet protectors, you can drip water on them and just wipe them clean!