Baked Ziti gone AWESOME!

So Baked Ziti is known for being tasty, comforting and PACKED full of calories.  This is just a healthy take on it...

Here is what you will need:
Penne pasta, cooked with a little bit of olive oil (to keep it from sticking together)
Classico spicy tomato pasta sauce
one medium yellow squash and one medium zucchini
pepper
crushed red pepper
canned mushrooms, drained
1 cup mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
basil leaves chopped
spicy sausage, oven baked

Ziti is pretty straight-forward....I just really, really like this combination and my husband raves over it.  I think this is the best combination that I've done to date.

While I'm cooking the pasta and baking the sausages, I sliced the squash and zucchini in quarter inch slices and then halved them. I sauteed them on med/high in olive oil until soft and slightly browned.  Add some pepper and crushed red pepper (not too much!) and add the drained mushrooms. Cover and turn to low heat.  Be careful to not burn them!

Once the pasta is done, I add a little olive oil to keep it from sticking, then drain and transfer to an oven-safe glass dish. I don't ever measure out how  much pasta I make...I just make as much as we want for a couple nights of dinner. Put the pasta in the dish, add the spicy tomato pasta sauce, stir together.  Add a bit of crushed red pepper.  I love spicy food and my husband is learning to tolerate it....the more I sweat, the better it is.

Now the sausage should be done baking.  Pull it out and slice it up. Usually, I cut it just like I did for the squash: cut it into 1/4 inch slices, then halved.  Add this to the pasta and add the squash and mushroom blend as well.  I put in a few leaves of basil chopped up to add some extra flavor. 

Cover the pasta blend with the mozzarella cheese and top with the parmesan cheese.  Bake in the oven for 45 minutes on 350 degrees or until the cheese is starting to brown and bubbling.  I assure you that you will like this blend.  One or two spoonfuls of this ziti and you will be F-U-L-L.

Best part is, stick the left overs in the oven tomorrow night on 350 and it will taste just as good as it did the night before.

Enjoy all!  Your husbands and kids will thank you!

Winter Rose Wreath

I am new to crafts...I started by making a grapevine wreath like my sister-in-law had posted on her blog, Laforcebewithyou.  I saw this one and had to replicate it.  The good thing about it is that it doesn't take a lot of time or money.

Only a few things that you need for it:
one 16 or 18 in straw wreath
one roll of white yarn
one roll of heathered white yarn
burlap
needle and thread
one 8x12 in sheet of dark green felt
four or five 8x12 in sheet of red felt
hot glue gun
good fabric shears

I started by taking two long pieces of heathered yarn and one long piece of white yarn.  Glue the three ends to the straw wreath and wrap around it.  Continue this until the whole wreath is covered and you can't see the straw underneath the yarn.

I then cut out ten pointed leaves in various sizes from the green felt.  You will place these wherever on the wreath you like them under the roses.  I put three under the main rose on the burlap circle.

I cut a 12 in portion or so of the burlap from a roll I had.  I used a needle and thread to gather the burlap in a ruffled circle. I then cut the burlap circle to three inches in circumference. Take the three largest leaves and glue them to the burlap circle.

Next I make the roses.  I made several different sizes of roses.  For one rose, I cut one very large circle out of a single piece of felt.   For five roses, I cut the 8x12 in felt piece in half and then cut the halves into circles. Then I used the remaining half of a piece to cut two smaller circles for smaller roses. This makes a total of eight roses.  I played with them for a little bit to figure out how I liked the roses.  I decided that I liked them with the ruffles on the inside but solid on the outside.  I attained this look by cutting my circles as you see below...I cut up until the first loop of the spiral in bumps...the bumps portion became the inside of my rose followed by the solid for the outside edge.  The center was glued to the bottom.

 Then just arrange your flowers how you want them on your wreath. 

I have a glass door on the outside of my front door, so I will take a long piece of the burlap, stitch it together and loop it around the wreath and over the top of my door to hang it.

Hopefully you guys like this as much as I do!  I hope to make one for my mom as well.

Coffee Cake Gone Light

This is a recipe for coffee cake inspired by the amazing coffee cake Thomas and I had when we went to Charlottesville a couple of weeks ago.  Now, when I say inspired, I mean that I just started trying out different combinations of ingredients to make my own new favorite.  The one that we had while we were there, albeit amazing, it was anything but good for you.  Here is my own little rendition...

Cake:
1/2 cup fat free or 1% milk
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup egg substitute or 1 whole egg
3/4 cup regular flour
3/4 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar/splenda blend (1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup splenda)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract (maybe almond if you are feeling frisky)
(you can add apples to it too)
I always add a couple shakes of a Penzey's spice called Pumpkin Pie spice - it is the perfect blend of allspice, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and mace

Topping:
1/4 tsp cloves
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (again, I prefer the splenda/brown sugar blend you can buy in the store, so I just put 1/2 cup of it, not packed as it sweetens the same with 1/2 the amount...unfortunately it is about 4 times the cost of regular brown sugar)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp melted butter

Directions:
Beat the mild, oil and egg
Combine the dry incredients, add it to the milk mixture and beat until smooth
Pour into an 8 inch pan coated with cooking spray
Combine the topping and sprinkle over the batter
Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes or until a stick comes out clean.

 Before being baked....I took the spatula I used to mix up and apply the topping to fill in the open spots over the batter.  You could also take a knife and cut through the cake to get some of the topping into the cake for a bit more flavor.

 Right after being baked....really doesn't look much different.

It was still warm when I cut it, so it kinda fell apart.  The bottom part is more of a cake-like consistency.  There isn't all the butter in it that you normally find in coffee cake so it is less dense.  I like it this way because I really like coffee cake because of the topping....but that is just me.  I imagine you could add some butter to the batter to thicken up the cake. 

It is important when you bake with wheat flour to not use ONLY wheat flour....it gives whatever you are baking a funny taste. And it just doesn't bake right.

Anyway, enjoy!

Corn Dip

Now this is a perfect summer dip.  Here are the ingredients:
- 1 can of black beans
- 1 can of white shoepeg corn
- 3 or 4 ounces of reduced fat Feta cheese
- 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup of olive oil
- 1/2 a lime squeezed for juice or two tablespoons of lime juice
- 1/8 cup of splenda/sugar blend

For the can of beans and corn, strain and rinse them.  Put them in a bowl of a container.  I find that one of the medium size ziploc containers holds this perfectly. Add the feta cheese and vinegar.  I use a little less than 1/4 cup of olive oil just to cut down on the fat.  Add the lime juice.  For my splenda sugar blend for this, I do mostly splenda with a little bit of regular sugar.  Then just stir it all together and serve with a bowl of chips.  I prefer having it chilled, which makes it perfect for summer.  I also think that the flavors blend and taste better once it is cold.

My favorite chips with this are the Tostitos hint of lime or hint of jalapeno.  The black bean and garlic ones are pretty good with it too.

Enjoy!

Welcome to my blog!

Hello to the blogging world...I am clearly new to this so I'll just tell you a little bit about me.  My name is Tory and I live in Richmond, Virginia with my husband and two amazing, crazy dogs.  We purchased our house two and a half years ago and got married very soon thereafter. I have a new love for doing crafts and an even bigger love for baking.

I grew up LOVING sweets.  So, it wouldn't surprise you at all for me to say that I am a type one diabetic.  I was diagnosed when I was thirteen...after a morning of making Christmas cookies with one of my sisters.  My love of baking came soon after my diagnosis.  I have been put in charge of all of the holidays desserts in my family.  The reason: everything that I make is reduced sugar, reduced fat. And from what I'm told and what I can taste, it all tastes amazing.  My husband previously didn't like sweets.....now he can't get enough and constantly asks me to make things for him.

At any rate, I decided to start this blog because I figure that I have something to offer to people out there who love their sweets but are tired of all the fat and sugar in them. Hope I can capture some sort of an audience that will appreciate my toiling in the kitchen to find just the right combinations of ingredients to find that "oh so sweet" but not so sugary texture and fattening ingredients.