Dude's Birthday

It's been a while since I've posted on here!  Yikes!  I need to keep up with this more!

Let's see, what's happened this past week?  Well, Dude was home all week instead of out of town for business, so that has been WONDERFUL!  Hopefully he doesn't have anywhere else to go for a while!  His birthday was yesterday, so for his birthday gift I got him this nifty little Sunrise Clock.  It's supposed to make waking up in the morning a little easier and a little gentler.  We have it programmed to where a light slooooowly starts to come on for 30 minutes prior to our actual alarm time.  It's pretty nice and works pretty well!  It's a lot less jarring than a normal blaring alarm clock. 

Also for Dude's birthday, I made zucchini lasagna.  It.  Was.  Awesome.  :)  Instead of using pasta, we used very thinly sliced zucchini to make the layers.  Here's the scoop!

Ingredients:
2 lbs Ground beef (grass fed if you can get it!)
1 1/2 jars of your favorite sauce (because I'm lazy and didn't want to make my own, I just bought the Organics brand Tomato & Basil sauce because it does not contain any added sugar or sweeteners)
2 lbs of zucchini, peeled and sliced into SUPER thin strips (best done with a wide mouth peeler)
15 oz. container of ricotta cheese
1 egg
A handful of fresh parsley, chopped
At least 12 oz. of mozzarella

First, I pre-heated the oven to 325.  I cooked up the ground beef (seasoned with garlic salt and pepper) and added the sauce, and while that was warming I sliced up the  zucchini.  Then I mixed the ricotta with one raw egg and the parsley, and I cut the mozzarella into chunks I could place around the pan.  Once I had all my ingredients I started the assembly.  I had a 9 x 13 inch pyrex baking dish, and I scooped out half of the meat sauce and spread it in the bottom of the pan.  Then I took the zucchini slices and layered them on top of the meat.  I had a lot of zucchini slices so I did about 2 layers just to make sure I got good separation between the layers.  Then I tried my best to spread out 1/2 of the ricotta mixture (it didn't work very well because the cheese was sticky and the zucchini was thin and pulled up pretty easily).  Then I added some mozzarella, and did the whole thing over again!  Another layer of sauce, zucchini, cheese, and more cheese.  I covered it with foil and cooked it for 30-45 minutes @ 325.  Then I took the foil off and turned up the oven to 350 and cooked it for another 15 minutes (until the mozzarella on top was all bubbly and starting to get a little toasty looking).  It was seriously good, and I don't even like lasagna on a normal basis!  Dude loved it, and that's what really mattered :).

For his other birthday present, we got him a fancy shmancy boning knife to help him cut up the whole chickens we buy.  :)  I'm looking forward to him using it!  We also got 2 boxes of Hatch green chiles from Central Market yesterday...so my car smells like green chile.  Awesome.  Dude was able to use our food saver and seal up bags of the green chiles so we could put them in our deep freezer. 

Well I think I've rambled on long enough...I'll be back soon to share more stories!  The next few months will be busy with football season, weddings, trips home, etc., so I'll have lots to talk about! 

Farewell for now! :)