Caprese Lasagna

I was perusing Lauren's blog looking for something to make tonight. I stumbled across a tag for "Favorites," which seemed like a pretty good place to start. I found the recipe for Caprese Lasagna on there. It looked perfect; it got a stunning review from Lauren (I believe she said something along the lines of, don't even read what I have to say, just go make it), it combined my favorite flavors of mozzarella, tomato, and basil, and required me to buy only one thing from the store. Awesome!

Lauren wasn't kidding--you should definitely make this! It's a great recipe for summer days, it isn't hard, and it's delicious! We thought it would be really good with spinach too. This fed four adults plus the kiddo ate all of his serving too!

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or grated
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 cups milk
• A few grates fresh nutmeg
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 box oven-ready lasagna noodles
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• Half a bunch (about 30 leaves) basil, chopped
• 4 Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced

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Yields: 4 servings

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Preparation

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Place a large saucepot over medium-heat and melt the butter. Add garlic to pan and cook until aromatic, about 1 minute. Sprinkle the flour over the butter and garlic, and cook for about 1 minute. Whisk the milk into the butter-flour mixture and bring up to a bubble. Add the nutmeg, season with salt and ground black pepper, and simmer until thickened, 3-4 minutes.

Assemble the lasagna by ladling a small amount (about 1/4 cup, just eyeball it) of the sauce into the bottom of a 9x13" baking dish and laying 3 lasagna noodles over the sauce. Top the noodles with a third of the sliced tomatoes, a third of the basil, 1/4 cup of sauce and a third of the shredded cheese. Repeat until all ingredients are used up, topping the lasagna off with a final layer of sauce and shredded cheese.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake the lasagna for 30 minutes. Remove the foil from the baking dish and bake another 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbly. When ready to serve, top with remaining chopped basil leaves.

Italian Sausage and Tomato Rotini

Found this on kraft's website.

What You Need!

3 cups rotini pasta, uncooked

1 lb. Italian sausage, casing removed

1 can (14-1/2 oz.) diced tomatoes, undrained

1 yellow pepper, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1/4 cup KRAFT Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing

1 cup KRAFT Finely Shredded Italian* Five Cheese Blend, divided

Make It!

COOK pasta as directed on package.

MEANWHILE, crumble sausage into large skillet. Cook on medium heat 10 min. or until done, stirring frequently; drain. Add next 4 ingredients; stir. Cook 5 min. or until peppers are crisp-tender, stirring occasionally.

DRAIN pasta. Add to sausage mixture with 1/2 cup cheese; stir. Top with remaining cheese.

I had a pound of turkey sausage in the fridge getting ready to go bad, so decided to use it up last night. There aren't too many recipes one can make when one hasn't been to the grocery store in a while, at least, not using what I had on hand last night!

So, I found this and it was tasty. I had half a yellow pepper in the fridge, which worked great. I even had the Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing, although it wasn't Kraft's. I used regular old mozzarella, sprinkled with some Parmesan cheese.

I read some reviews (after i started cooking, of course), and many commented that this was bland. So, I added some garlic powder and Italian seasoning to the mix before serving (had I been paying attention, I would have added minced garlic in with the onion..next time). I also would probably add some sliced mushrooms in; they would have been a nice addition here. We both liked this one, although could not get The Boy to even try it.

I like this one!