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6 dreamfeilds lasagne noodles (<5 carbs)
2 chicken breasts thinly sliced (0 carbs)
2 cups heavy cream (0 carbs)
1 stick butter (0 Carbs)
4 cups baby spinach leaves (1 carbs)
1 small onion
Garlic (or garlic powder)
Parsley (or parsley flakes)
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
2 cups ricotta cheese (15 carbs)
2 cups grated mozzerella cheese (2 carbs)
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup parmesian cheese (0 carbs)

Prepare lasagne noodles according to package.

In a sautee pan heat olive oil, gently cook the onions and garlic without browning them or the pan. Add the thinly sliced chicken and cook without creating a fond or browning the chicken. Stir in the butter cut into pieces so that it melts quickly. Do not allow the butter to begin to brown. Just let it melt. Add the cream. Simmer, stirring often until the mixture begins to thicken. It may take 10 minutes or more to slowly thicken. Sprinkle in the parsley flakes and salt and pepper to taste.

While the sauce and chicken, place the washed and still damp spinach leaves in a glass dish with a lid and microwave for 4 minutes. The spinach will wilt down and be almost as thin as a sheet of paper on the bottom of your dish. Drain off the water and juices. Only use the spinach and carefull fork it out of the bottom of your dish or it will just create one ball of a mess and won't spread easily in your lasagne.

Mix ricotta, parmesian and beaten eggs well with a spinkle of garlic powder. Set aside.

When the sauce is thicken begin assembling your lasagne.

The cassrole dish I use is about the width of 3 lasagne noodles, so with a little cream sauce or butter in the bottom of my dish:

layer of 3 noodles
a layer of 1/2 of the chicken and cream sauce
a layer of of the spinach
a layer of 1/2 of the shredded mozzerella
a layer of the ricotta/parmesian mixture
a layer of 3 noodles
topped with last of the chicken and cream sauce
and a final layer of mozzerella

Place in a 375 degree oven. Bake for 30 - 45 minutes until bubbly and hot and the cheese on top is just beginning to become golden.

Allow to sit and cool for 15 minutes or so before serving with a nice green salad. Ken's steakhouse light northern italian dressing is 1 carb for 2 tbsp. That is a lot.

Total carb count for the casserole: 23 carbs

The casserole made 8 servings (but could actually extend to 10 servings) 2.8 carbs.

A serving with salad and dressing 3.8 carbs.

Under 4 carbs for a delicious meal!

*Taste the cream sauce and make sure it is seasoned to your taste. The salt and pepper and granulated garlic is adjustable to you palatte which is why I didn't add any measures. We like a fair amount of garlic our italian style foods. I know some people do not. If you leave out the garlic it will a bland dish.

2 chicken breasts cubed
3 tbsp finely diced onion
2 cloves garlic crushed
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp parsley flakes
salt and pepper to taste

1 stick butter
1 1/2 c. heavy whipping cream

1/2 box Dreamfeilds fettachinni

Heat a pan with olive oil, sautee the onions and garlic, add the chicken, sprinkle with the parsley flakes, salt and pepper and stir letting the chicken cook through and become a little brown.

I do not care about a perfectly white colored alfredo sauce so when the chicken is cooked and the fond is in the bottom of the pan (where all the real flavor is) so that when the chicken is cooked I remove the pan from the heat and let the butter melt down into the chicken and herbs and spice. Once the butter is melted and the pan is cooling a bit then add the heavy cream.

Let the pan simmer gently while stirring often. The cream and btter will thicken into a beautiful sauce without adding anything like flour or cornstarch or arrowroot to thicken it. While it simmers and you stir the fond will begin to loosen from the pan and the sauce will turn off white. It is ok! That is all the flavor of the chicken.

Serve over hot pasta.

The only carbs in this is the pasta which is 5 carbs per digestable serving.

1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1 medium onion chopped
2 cans Hunts or Delmonte spaghetti sauce (yes, this is cheating)
4 cups grated mozzarella cheese
12 American cheese slices
2 lbs pasta, I use rotini -the corkscrew pasta

Add the pasta to boiling salted water and cook for 4 minutes. Drain and run cold water over the pasta to cool and stop the cooking process. Set aside to drain well.

Brown the hamburger and the onion in a skillet. Drain well. Set aside to cool.

When cooled add the pasta, hamburger mixture and sauce in a large pan combining well.

Divide in half. Place each half in a 1 gallon freezer bag. Place 2 cups of the mozzarella in a small freezer bag as well as 6 cheese slices. In a 2 gallon freezer bag place 1 each of these bags all inside. Lable: "Crockpot Lasagne". Place in your freezer. This is 2 separate lasagne meals stashed for later.

When ready to cook, thaw 1 of the meals in the refrigerator.

Spray the crockpot with nonstick cooking spray. Add one half the meat and pasta mixture, layer on 3 of the cheese slices and 1 cup of the mozzarella cheese. Repeat with the other half.

Cook on low for 2 hours. Serve with a nice green salad and bread.

Pizza Dough

1 tablespoon active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water (100�� to 110��)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Combine yeast with warm water. Let stand 5 to 10 minutes. Combine flour and salt. Add yeast mixture and olive oil. Mix just until dough comes together. Turn the mix out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 1 minute. Shape into a ball. Place in a well-oiled bowl. Turn to coat with oil and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Leave in a warm place until dough has doubled. The dough is ready to use or you can punch it down and allow it to rise a 2nd time.

Pizza Sauce
1 can Hunts tomato sauce
1-2 cloves garlic crushed
1 tbsp chopped basil

Simmer on the stove top to allow the flavors to mingle and to allow the garlic to loose the raw taste.

It is time to make pizza!

The week before vacation I had to decide what to do with all the produce from the garden. There was only one real answer. Freeze it or can it.

I made a giant stock pot of vegetable soup using all of the fresh veggies that came out of the garden. You can find the recipe here. Yeild: 12 quarts.

I stewed all the tomatoes that came out of the garden the weekend before. Yeild: 12 quarts.

I canned the whole tomatoes that came out of the garden the Thursday before. Yeild: 7 quarts.

Everything else I sent to work with Steven to hand out to anyone at work who would take a bag. He took about 20lbs of tomatoes and gave them away. I just could not do any more with them. I was tired and still battling morning sickness.

When we came back from vacation Steven and I picked a 23 quart stock pot full. Tuesday Colby picked 2 grocery bags full.

This time I made spaghetti sauce and canned it in quart jars.

I was in the middle of scalding the tomatoes so that I could peel and seed them when I remember to get the camera and show y'all the process.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put in the tomatoes and leave for 1 - 2 minutes. I had 3 pots like this one to scald 30lbs of tomatoes.

Using a slotted spoon remove the tomatoes from the boiling water and submerged them in a pan of ice water. You will have to add ice as the hot tomatoes cause the ice to melt quickly -as you can see in the photo my ice disappeared fast. Not only because of the hot tomatoes but because the kitchen at the back of the house is not air conditioned. It was over 100 degrees yesterday. Add to that steaming hot pots and you can imagine how hot my kitchen was.

Once the tomatoes are cooled (just a couple minutes) the skins will slip right off. Cutting them in half and giving them a good squeeze and the seeds will come right out.

Squeezing also yeilds plenty of juice. I always save this to a pan and strain out any seeds that might slip through the collander. This is the clear liquid that seeps out of fresh ripe tomatoes and is known not as tomato juice but tomato water. I'll show you why at the end.

This is the first pot of scalded tomatoes cut and seeded. This is a 16 quart stock pot and when Colby and I finished it was 3/4 full of tomato meat.

On medium heat we cooked the tomatoes until they started to extrude more juice. To the pot we added our own favorite ingredients for spaghetti sauce:

2 cups chopped onion (I only use sweet vidalia onions from Ga.)
8-10 cloves garlic, crushed
5 tbsp finely chopped basil
1 tbsp finely chopped oregano
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp fresh cracked black pepper

The sauce mixture simmered for approxiamtely one hour. During that time the jars ran through the dishwasher to sterilize.

The sauce was ladled into the hot jars right out of the dishwasher. Lids and rings were then screwed on hand tight.

The juice that came from the dripping tomatoes and the squeezing and straining of the seeds was brought to a boil and then poured into hot jars with lids and rings applied.

The jars went into the pressure canner where they were processed for 35 minutes at 10psi.

After processing the jars were removed from the canner and left to cool.

This morning the jars were cold to the touch and the lids had sealed. The tomato juice had separated so that you can see the real juice of a tomato, commonly known as tomato water. Shaking it will recombine the bits of tomato pulp and you can drink it or you can use it to poach fish in or to add to stock for soup or sauce. Many many useful things to do with tomato water.

The juice of the tomatoes in my jars in no way tastes like the tomato juice you buy in bottles at the store. Mine is not thick. It is not salty. It is not filled with preservatives or color additives. Tomato juice in its purest form is a delicious and refreshing drink by itself but you should try adding a dash of hotsauce and some vodka -the best Bloody. Mary. Ever.

Cost Analysis
Tomatoes from garden $0
Quart jars in stock $0
Herbs from garden $0
Spices in stock $0
Yeild: 5 quarts spaghetti sauce and 2 quarts tomato juice
Total cost $0

Being a frugal housewife pays off in so many ways!

-This winter we have our own fresh spaghetti sauce to enjoy.
-My kids will not be eating any preservatives or chemical additives.
-My sauce is 100% organic.
-The children learn a lesson of gardening, providing for yourself and NOT relying on commerically grown foods.
-They also get a lesson in food preservation.
-Steven gets to see my canner in action and how just turning the knob on the stove regulates the pressure in the canner.
-Shows him I can indeed adjust and keep that canner at 10lbs psi with little to no effort. (For the longest time Steven could not understand how I could regulate the the canner without different weighted vent regulator knobs.)

The weekend that I made the soup I also put a bushel of fresh white corn (Silver Queen) in the freezer. We ended up with 30 gallon bags of corn-on-the-cob. My kids love fresh corn and having summer goodness in the dead of winter sure is better than Green Giant nibblers. I am hoping this weekend to get 1 more bushel of corn to cream. Wish me luck!

Preparing the eggplant
2 eggplants, peeled and sliced lengthwise about 1/4 inch thick
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup flour
Bread crumbs
Olive oil
Mozzarella cheese

Lightly salt the eggplant and lay on paper towels to absorb alot of the water they will extrude, about 30 minutes is enough. Lightly coat the eggplant slices in flour, dip in egg, coat with bread crumbs. Sautee them in a scant amount of olive oil until golden brown. Remove to more paper towels.

Slice the mozzarella thinly and refrigerate until needed.

Marinara Sauce
1 large can of Hunts tomato sauce (Normally I am not picky about tomato sauce but if you are cooking Hunts is the best to use, it just tastes different, fresher, doesn't have that bitter after taste some canned sauces have.)
1 can plum tomatoes roughly chopped
10 basil leaves fresh from my herb pot, chopped finely
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small onion very finely chopped
1/2 cup parmesian cheese, grated
black pepper, fresh cracked
salt
Olive oil
Oregano (I do not use oregano. It makes Steven gassy. It is not worth it!)

Heat the olive oil in a sauce pan, add garlic and onion and sautee to release their flavor, do not brown. Add tomatoes and sauce, basil, pepper and salt to taste. (If it is too thin add 2 tsp tomato paste.) Simmer at a low heat for 30 minutes. Add the parmesian cheese. Simmer about 5 minutes until the cheese is beginning to melt. Remove from heat.

In a casserole dish, cover the bottom lightly with the tomato sauce mixture. Make a layer of eggplant slices much like building a lasagna. Cover with a little more sauce. Add a layer of thinly sliced mozzarella cheese. Repeat until you have used all the eggplant slices. Pour the remaining marinara sauce over the top. Sprinkle with a generous amount of parmesian cheese. Traditionally this would be made with a single layer of eggplant, sauce and cheese but I like mine thick and gooey. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20 - 25 minutes. Allow to cool for 15 - 30 minutes before serving.

My kids cannot wait for 30 minutes. They can't wait for 15 either but being the mean mother I am I make them wait.

For plating I make a mound of pasta on each persons plate, top with a generous helping of the parmigiana.

If you are coming over for supper tonight do you mind picking up a nice bottle of Red? I prefer marriage wines like an nice grenache/shiraz. I also prefer Australian wines made by Italians. There is a difference in the soil that adds something to the fruit of the vine. Try it. You'll see I am telling the truth -but it MUST be made by Italians.

Grazie.

1 large cottage cheese, 1 large ricotta cheese, 12 oz parmesian cheese
Mix well. Add more parmesian if the cottage cheese has too much liquid. You want it to look thick almost like plaster.

1 large bag of baby spinach greens - 1 large zuchini grated

Spray baking pan with cooking oil. Place a little sauce in the bottom of the baking pan. Build the lasagne in this order:

Lasagne noodles
1/2 of the spinach leaves
Sprinkle with mozerella and parmesian
Lasagne noodles
1/2 Cheese mixture
Lasagne noodles
Grated Zuchinni
Sprinkle of parmesian cheese
Lasagne noodles
Other 1/2 of spinach leaves
Other 1/2 of cheese mixture
Sprinkle with parmesian and mozerella

Let sit overnight in refrigerator. Take out and set on counter one hour before baking. Bake at 350 degree oven until bubbly and cheese is nicely toasted.

1 can hunts garlic and herb spaghetti sauce - 1 can hunts basil and garlic tomato paste
Simmer slowly till it begins to thicken. Brown off 2lbs hamburger, drain, saute with 3 cloves garlic and 1 chopped medium onion.

1 large cottage cheese, 1 large ricotta cheese, 12 oz parmesian cheese
Mix well. Add more parmesian if the cottage cheese has too much liquid. You want it to look thick almost like plaster.

Spray baking pan with cooking oil. Place a little sauce in the bottom of the baking pan. Build the lasagne in this order:

Lasagne noodles
1/2 Beef and tomato sauce
Sprinkle with mozzerella
Lasagne noodles
1/2 Cheese mixture
Lasagne noodles
Other half Beef and tomato sauce
Grated mozerella
Sprinkle of parmesian

Let sit overnight in refrigerator. Take out and set on counter one hour before baking. Bake at 350 degree oven until bubbly and cheese is nicely toasted.