The time when I erased a whole post. Without saving it. Like you do.

It was inevitable. The day has arrived. The day where an almost fully-written post gets wiped out without saving it. 

Yup. That's what I did today. Wah wah wahhhhhh. 

Look for a new post, which will be saved probably every other word, tomorrow. 

p.s. - Ironically the post is about a lesson learned and guess what? NOW HAVE A NEW LESSON. #Dammit.

Recipe Hack: Jen's Lunches This Week (#5)

Quick post because I have event in six days (for work), and need to get back to tweaking a PowerPoint, confirming registrations, etc. Or being awesome, however you wish to phrase it. 

Lunches This Week features a recipe hack to my fave casserole: the Spinach and Feta Casserole with Quinoa and Wild Rice. The hack was essentially a happy accident, as I had received some baby spinach and lacinato kale in my Green B.E.A.N. Delivery veggie bin, which I had wilted together - but realized that it wasn't quite enough for the recipe. 

So....in the interest of ingenuity, and the fact that I had also received a lovely bunch of fine looking asparagus, I supplemented in order to get to the required 2 cups of veggies for the casserole. 

Turned out to be a pretty good hack as it was a great addition, both in texture and in flavor - if I do say so myself. And amuses me greatly that it was a hack of a hack. 

I followed the recipe from November to the letter except for the veggies:
- chopped the spinach and lacinato kale into decent sized pieces, threw it into a pan with a few inches of water, popped on a lid and let is steam until completely wilted through. Drained it, let it cool, then squeezed all of the liquid out. 
- chopped the stalks of asparagus into bite-sized pieces, created a foil packet with about 1/2 cup of water, sealed the packet, placed it on a tray and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. I drained the water and tried a piece, which was perfectly steamed. 

The spinach and kale mounted to about 1.5 cups, so I supplemented the remaining 1/2 cup needed with the asparagus pieces. 

Baked the casserole in a 9" x 9" pan, and it made 7 servings, of which, I threw 1 in the frig and the rest in the freezer. 

Oh I do lie a little - I added a nice healthy squirt of sriracha, because everything is better with sriracha!

Since I didn't use all of the asparagus, I plan to make another casserole (since it is incredibly freezer friendly), and use 1/2 spinach or kale and 1/2 asparagus this weekend. I'm curious how it will effect the density and hold-together factor of the casserole. 

Jen's Lunches This Week #5

Monday: I had one container of the Marcella Hazan's best pasta sauce ever + polenta, so had that with 1 cup of my homemade Greek yogurt and 1 cup of sliced organic strawberries. 

Tuesday: 1 serving of the spinach-kale-asparagus-quinoa-wild rice-feta casserole, 1 cup of homemade Greek yogurt with 1/8 c. of Love Grown Simply Oats Gluten-Free Granola. (We were totally out of fresh fruit, but veggie bin arrived Tuesday afternoon!)

Wednesday: 1 serving of the spinach-kale-asparagus-quinoa-wild rice-feta casserole, 1 cup of homemade Greek yogurt with 1 cup of sliced organic strawberries.

Thursday and Friday: planning same meal as Wednesday, although Friday may be 1 cup of diced organic pear.  

I gotta jam and get back to being Event Planner Extraordinaire. Have a fabulous week, peeps!

An expensive yogurt batch.

I made a batch of yogurt last night. 

Nothing remarkable about that, really, except that the previous two batches were utter failures, so I felt much relief and joy that *this* batch worked. 

Enter Genius Spouse, who chimed in with, "Sweetie, for your yogurt, do you need consistent temps? Maybe that's the issue, since we turn the furnace down each night". 

Dammit, Beavis. 

He's completely right. I've been wrapping the warmed crock in two thick, nice beach towels, and leaving it to chillax on the kitchen counter, but we like to sleep in a fairly chilly house. Plus even though it's technically not winter until Saturday, it has been winter for a few weeks.

I also suspect my I-have-no-idea-where-I-even-got-it-or-when thermometer may be biting the dust. I was farting around with it while heating the milk on the stove, and it seemed to have differing opinions of temperature at times. I realize I'm imprecise when cooking, but there is a time and place for preciseness. Fermented foods are up there. 

Yep. It's Going to be *that* kind of week.

First, I forget to add ricotta to my roasted veg lasagna. 

Then, new batch of yogurt fails to take. Wah wah. Not sure if the left-over from last batch that I used as starter was bad. Maybe my thermometer was off. The joys of fermented foods. Sometimes, it just.doesn't.take. 

Owel. #FirstWorldProblemsForSure.

The silver lining is, because I ran out of energy last night to make a new batch of Spouse's bfast burritos, I got up early and made his fresh, then emptied dishwasher, reloaded it, started it, put lunches together for both of us (mine without yogurt though, which does make me sad). In short, I was way more productive by 7:30 a.m., than I normally am. 

Here's a panic inducing thought: three weeks to the christmas holiday. Egads.  

Hope everyone else's week is going well.

Happy Accidents in Roasted Veg Lasagna.

Way back in July, when I first began this blog, in my first post even, I promised to post missteps, in addition to posting my successes - knowing eventually I would have a misstep. Guess what? 

I am in that contingent of folk who are gluten-sensitive, meaning I can eat gluten, but sparingly. I'm always experimenting with ways to cut the gluten out, but without making me feel like I'm missing something. 

With an over-abundance of squash and zucchini in this summer's market bag, I began to experiment with using the squash in recipes and one that has worked well, in a few iterations, is Roasted Veg Lasagna. 

Roasting veggies is basically the easiest thing on the planet. And the right combo of veg leads to a great pasta substitute.