Chicken Béchamel Lasagna

A few years ago I made a Chicken Béchamel Lasagna, and my friend Angie has been on my case ever since to make it again, and actually write down the recipe for her!  Last night Gimpy and I were having her over for dinner with a few others, so I decided to make it and actually write down what I did for once.  This lasagna is great, and if you are looking to make it more low carb, you can do it as manicotti instead.  I did that once for a ski weekend because another friend was making a lasagna with red sauce, so I wanted to mix it up.

Chicken Béchamel Lasagna
1 lb chicken
1 lb spinach
7 cups milk
1 lb mushrooms
1 cup onion, diced
3 garlic cloves
1 stick unsalted butter
4 cups shredded parmesan cheese
1/2 c flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Balsamic vinegar
Package of lasagna noodles

Preheat oven to 350.  Put chicken in a pan, and cover with balsamic vinegar.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until cooked through.  Cool, then shred in the food processor.  In the meantime, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil.  Blanch your spinach and remove it.  Put your pasta in the spinach water and cook until al dente.  Drain and set aside.

Put the butter in a deep pan, melt and add the mushrooms.  Cook about 5 minutes until tender.

Add the onions and diced garlic, and cook until translucent.  Add the flour, and cook for 2 minutes to form a roux.  

Whisk in the milk, and cook 5 minutes until it starts to thicken, stirring occasionally.  Add the salt, pepper, nutmeg, 2 cups of the cheese, and the spinach.  Cook another 5 minutes, stirring frequently.  

Spray your lasagna pan with olive oil, and then put 3/4 of a cup of the béchamel sauce on the bottom of the pan.  Set aside a cup of the sauce, and add chicken to the pot of sauce.  Begin to assemble your lasagna with a layer of pasta, sauce, parmesan cheese, and continue till your ingredients are used up.  For the top layer, use the sauce that you set aside without the chicken on it.

Cook in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes.  Cut, serve, and enjoy!  Of course I forgot to take a picture of the finished lasagna, but at least I wrote down the recipe for Angie this time!

Another Banner Year

It's January 1st, which means that everyone in the bloggosphere is doing a year end wrap up, so I think I'm obliged to as well!  2011 was an amazing year, my life is so blessed in so many ways.  I have the most unbelievably amazing boyfriend, fantastic friends, and a wonderful family.

We started the year with the Gimpster's friends visiting from Virginia, me teaching him how to snowboard and a few celebrations of St Patrick's Day.  Gimpy's brother got married down in Virginia Beach, we had a luau, a suit party, and I ran the Long Branch half in my best time ever (2h 02m)!

The girls and I went into the City for the Derby, and had a blast at the Preppy Pub Crawl.  Gimpy got a new job locally, and we celebrated with wine tasting, hiking, and just having a great day together.  We had some more weddings, more birthdays, and did some boating.

We had a mechanical bull riding party, the girls and I had a killer tailgate at the Kenny Chesney concert, and we hosted a White Party to rival P Diddy's.  For that, I made vanilla pudding shots!

Vanilla Pudding Shots
Packet of vanilla pudding mix
1 cup cold milk
1 cup cold caramel baileys

Mix the pudding powder with the milk and baileys according to the package direction and put it in small cups.  Chill for a few hours, and then take them like a jello shot!  So tasty, it's like vanilla frosting!

We went on the wine bus tour, and did some apple picking.  Had Halloween, twice.  Went on Santacon, which was not very well organized, did some sewing and had the 4th annual 12 Bars of Christmas.  We had a wonderful Christmas in Virginia with Gimpy's family, and got the amazing news that the people whose house we're buying signed the contract!

So we have lots to celebrate in 2012!  I am so looking forward to this year coming up.  Gimpy and I have so much to be excited for.  We close on our new house January 27th, and will be cleaning and moving in that weekend. It's a huge step for us, but I am so ready for this next stage in our life together.

On that, I resolve that I will be much better about blogging in 2012!

Happy New Year!

Butternut Squash Gnocchi

There is a restaurant in town that makes this unbelievable butternut squash gnocchi.  It is the right amount of sweet, salty, and completely delicious; the perfect Fall meal.  I could eat it by the bucket, and so could most of my friends, but at $8 per plate it's not a habit to get into!

The Gimpster and I are house shopping - yes, you read right - house shopping, so our house budget is taking away most of our restaurant and bars budget so I was determined to get this one right.  I need to get the sauce right also, but I mastered the gnocchi!

Butternut Squash Gnocchi
1.5-2lb butternut squash
1/4 cup brown sugar
pinch of nutmeg
2 pinches of cinnamon
2 tbsp butter
3-4 cups of flour
Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 400.
Chop the butternut squash into little cubes and put in a glass baking dish.  Toss with brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg and chop the butter into 8 pieces and sprinkle them around.  Bake for 45 minutes until fork tender.

Put in a bowl and mash with a fork until there are no lumps.  Let cool to room temperature.

Add flour a cup at a time until it forms a dough that pulls away from the sides.  It took me close to 4 cups to reach the right consistency.  Flour a smooth surface and your hands.  Put a pot of slightly salted water on the stove and bring to a boil while you begin to roll out the first thing of gnocchi.  

On the floured surface, make sure you have a small pile of flour on the side and put a scoop of the dough on the board.  Roll a long thin piece of gnocchi out, and cut into 1" pieces.  I pinch mine from the sides so they look a little bow shaped, but you can use a fork to give them the traditional grooves if you'd like.  

Drop one into the boiling water and let it cook for 3-4 minutes until it floats to the surface.  Taste it, if it tastes gummy or falls apart in the water you need more flour.  If it is good, roll out all the dough and boil the portion you want to eat.  In a small pan, heat up some butter, pour over the top of the gnocchi, and top with shredded parmesan cheese.  

This recipe ended up making enough that I froze several portions of it.  To freeze, put a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet, put the gnocchi on it and put the sheet in the freezer.  Once they are solid, peel off and put in plastic bags and freeze.  

I Love Fall, and Especially Apple Picking

There is something magical to me about Fall.  It's my all time favorite time of the year, the crisp air, the beautiful colors of the leaves changing, pumpkin spice latte, boot season, and let's be honest, much better hair weather than the Summer time! 

A few weeks ago the Gimpster and I went apple picking with a small group of friends.  The sad thing was - it ended up being 80 degrees and it was the second weekend of October!  Needless to say, I could not wear any of my cute boots, but we did get to go on a hayride.

The next weekend we were headed to Virginia for Gimpy's homecoming, so I had to figure out something to do with all of my apples aside from the required apple crisp that I made that afternoon.  I wanted to be able to use a lot of apples - I had 28 or so to cut up and cook - so I made two batches of apple cumble coffee cake.   



Apple Crumble Coffee Cake

For the cake:

1 stick unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups peeled, cored, and chopped apples

For the crumble:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp cinnamon

4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 350. 

In your mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time until fully mixed in.  In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients.  Add to the wet ingredients a little at a time, alternating with the sour cream and vanilla until all are blended together.  Fold in the apples and pour into a buttered 13x9 baking dish. 

To make the topping, mix the dry ingredients in a new bowl and cut in the butter with a pastry cutter, or if you're like me and don't have one, two knives.  Pour the crumble over the cake and bake for 35-40 minutes. 

Once I made the coffee cake, I realized I still had a TON of apples left, and I didn't know what I could do with them all.  I don't have the freezer space right now to freeze whole pies or anything!  Luckily a co-worker told me that you can easily freeze apples.  I set off right away peeling, coring, and slicing the rest of my apples so that I now have about 6 baggies in my freezer each filled with 2-3 apples ready to be thawed and used in baked goods all winter long!

Happy 95th Birthday Grandma

My paternal grandmother is one of the strongest, most amazing women I've ever met.  She married a man she loved and very importantly respected, raised six strong sons, traveled the world, and continues to teach everyone around her on a daily basis.  This weekend, she turned 95, and we had a big family birthday party to celebrate. 

I was in charge of flowers, so I went out to Whole Foods and looked around to see what would be appropriate for five centerpieces on a beautiful Fall day.  I am a big believe that the mark-up florists charge is astronomical, and I know their overhead is huge, and flowers are fragile so they need to have their prices to make a decent living and profit, but I also think with a little imagination you can create something beautiful for considerably less money. 

Gimpy and I went after church to check out the flower selection.  They always have beautiful blooms, and have much more of a selection than other grocery stores, and better prices than a florist.  I picked out some Harvest Bloom roses, which have an interesting meaning - friendship that's falling in love.  I got some beautiful mustardish colored daisies, some hypericum berries, and some greenery.   I think they came out beautifully.

Negligence

I have been a total slacker this summer.  I stopped working out, went to far too many happy hours, and spent all of August taking care of The Gimpster after yet another ACL surgery.  Don't even get me started on how much I want to pull a Shane Stant on the jerk that maliciously took out his knee...

That being said, I promise to write all about new fantastic barb-e-que foods, the White Party, this year's wine tasting mini-bus, vanilla pudding shots (seriously, amazing), and more.  Starting this weekend - so by Monday there will be a new post.

xoxo,
Little J

A Perfect Date

Gimpy starts his new job on Monday, so we decided that we should do something fun together, and I should take a vacation day this week.  We settled on Thursday, and I arranged for the day off.  Wednesday night we mapped out our strategy, and decided that we would go to two new wineries - one of them just opened May 1st - and go hiking. 

We got up early yesterday, and went to Fairway to get some bread, cheese, fruit, tomatoes, and pack my little wine picnic basket. Then we got on the road! 

The new winery we went to was called Paradise Hills.  It was a beautiful new building, but they were getting their growing pains out.  One of our favorite things is being able to collect a signature glass from each winery we visit, but sadly they were out of glasses AND their most popular wine.  I guess we'll have to go back! 

From there we went up the street to Gouveia Vineyards, because we knew they'd be an amazing place to have a picnic, and we weren't disappointed!  There were several places we could sit and overlook the vineyards, and I was in heaven.  

I unpacked our picnic while I sent Gimpy in to deliver a slice of my new favorite cheese (Parrano) to the ladies who helped us. It was a beautiful day, and a delicious spread.

We stuffed ourselves silly, and then went hiking for a little over an hour.  When we got home, exhausted, we had some sushi and went to see The Hangover II.  Hysterical.  If you haven't seen it yet, GO! 
I hope you all have a great weekend!