Easy kitchen ideas...

Hi everyone. I have been baking bread tonight, so my loving husband cooked dinner for us while I was kneading my dough. How sweet is he! Anyway, I got to thinking of the times when my schedule is running a bit too busy and I don't have alot of time to cook dinner. I have come up with several ways to "add" time to my day when it comes to the kitchen.

One way I save or add time in the kitchen is to do as much in advance as possible. For instance, when I purchase ground hamburger meat for Spaghetti or chili, I go ahead and brown all of it, then split the already browned meat up into sandwich or quart sized ziploc bags. Then put them in the freezer. Since the browning of the meat is the longest process for spaghetti, in my opinion, that is already done. All I do is empty the frozen meat in the pot of sauce, if I don't have any ready made sauce available, and start my noodles. By the time the noodles are done, the meat has defrosted and the sauce has warmed through enough for us to eat. Also, I have started using angel hair pasta, so they cook faster than the regular spaghetti noodles.

Another way to save time is to freeze spaghetti sauce that has the meat already added to it. This makes for easy meals, in minutes. When I make spaghetti, I tend to make more sauce than I need and just freeze the left overs. I have also come up with an easy lasagna recipe, shown below. (The picture above this post is my lasagna.) I can throw this together in minutes and bake within 45 minutes. Dinner in a flash. For those of you wondering, I think that as long as you can get dinner on the table in less than an hour, that is pretty much considered a flash to me. Especially when you consider how many people I cook for everyday. Try this recipe, I hope you like it, and please let me know what you think.

Easy Lasagna

1 box Lasagna noodles

2 quarts of Spaghetti sauce with meat

4 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese

In a 9 x 13 casserole dish, first put down a layer of sauce. Then add a layer of noodles, then cheese. Repeat this until you have filled the dish, ending with a layer of cheese. I cover mine with foil until the last 5-7 minutes, then uncover to brown the top. I usually have enough to make 2 9 x 13 dishes with this amount of noodles, sauce and cheese.

Once you have layered all of the ingredients, bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. You can also cut baking time down to 30 minutes if the sauce is already hot and the noodles are cooked in boiling water on stove top.

I have found that 1 of the 9 x 13 dishes can feed 12 servings, since we usually offer salad and bread with this dish.

I hope you enjoy this, we sure love it. Even my picky eaters will devour lasagna if it is made this way.