Grandma's 90th

What a great weekend! It was a quick trip but really fun. This Saturday was my Grandma’s 90th birthday and one of my cousins planned a whole event for the occasion. Scott and I left DC on Friday morning and got back late Sunday night so like I said, quick trip.

When we landed on Friday, we got our rental car and drove straight to Sundance Ski Resort for some late season skiing and snowboarding. We met my older brother, Brad, and hit the slopes only after catching up with Alex Avery, a BYU Marching Band alum and very good friend. He works in the HR department at Sundance and he was nice enough to get us half price tickets and a HUGE discount on our rentals. Thank you, Alex!

After about 4 hours of skiing, I was pretty well finished and it was getting colder and icier which is when I stop. I hate night skiing for this very reason. We were on what ended up being our last run when my brother, who had been attempting to land little jumps all day, went off a jump and landed totally wrong. Right on his right shoulder. Luckily I was behind him so when I didn’t see him get up I came over to him. I assessed the situation and we got him up and over to ski patrol. He was in a lot of pain. I called Scott who got to the lift to get the car for us and after filling out a report for ski patrol we were on our way to Timpanogos Regional Hospital ER. Long story short, we found out he tore all the ligaments from his shoulder and is going to need surgery.

Saturday morning we met up with Cami and Maddie Moody, Heather, Aaron and Gwen Daybell at Denny’s for breakfast. It was great to see them and meet Maddie for the first time. What a cutie!

When we finished breakfast, Scott wanted to take a memory tour around campus. Not much has changed but the new Life Sciences Building is coming along nicely. Looks fantastic! We hit up the Bookstore and bought a photo of the 2013 Homecoming Football panorama. We were there! Not in the band! As actual spectators! It was cool. We also made sure to stop by the creamery for Cookies and Cream Milk. SO DELICIOUS!

Finally the main reason we were in Utah, Grandma’s birthday celebration at Magleby’s in Springville. We had the whole bottom floor to ourselves and there were about 65 people there, including all but 4 of my cousins and my brother, Scott. (These cousins and brother couldn’t travel because either they or their wife was too pregnant to travel and one was serving overseas in the military.) There were other people celebrating Grandma’s life too. She has one brother and sister still alive who came with some of their kids (her nieces and nephews), a few of her cousins, some friends and some very good neighbors. It was a very lovely afternoon luncheon. It was beautiful to see how many people love and respect my grandparents. Even though the day was Grandma’s birthday, we celebrated Grandpa’s 90th a little too. His 90th will be in June.

At the completion of the luncheon, we headed back to Pleasant Grove to spend time with family and watch her open presents. We had an early flight the next morning so we left around 8:30 and spent a little time with Grandma Jackson, which was where we were staying.

Sunday morning we caught our flight going to sunny LAX, lay over for 3 hours and then took a 5 hour flight to snowy Dulles. Upon landing on the white, blustery runway we hoped work would get a snow day on Monday and we did! We definitely needed a day to recover from our vacation.

So on this snowy St. Patrick’s Day we slept in, ate a great breakfast, shoveled the driveway, relaxed, went to Applebee’s for dinner (by this time all the roads were totally clear and snow was melting, oh well) and then watched ‘The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain’. It was the perfect way to start the week after an exciting weekend!

Vegetarian Spinach Lasagna

Dinner time roles around as it so often does and I was unsure of what to fix. I'd been thinking about this spinach lasagna I'd found online but didn't know if it would work out, taste good, be time consuming, etc. But we had all the ingredients, plus a few more, so I figured I'd go for it. (Warning: I did not take pictures because when I'm in the kitchen cooking I do just that, not act like food paparazzi for my blog. Plus, I wasn't sure if it would be a note worthy meal. But as it stands, here I am writing about it so you'll just have to imagine what it looks like.)

Recipe:

8-10 lasagna noodles

1 TBP olive oil

1 tsp garlic (approx. one garlic clove)

1/2 onion, diced

1/4 red onion, diced

1 can diced tomatoes (with juice)

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp basil

salt and pepper

5 oz. spinach

1 cup carrots

1 cup celery

1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

1 cup cottage cheese

2/3 cup parmesan cheese

2/3 cup pecorino-romano cheese

1 bottle spaghetti sauce

1. Cook lasagna according to package directions. Pre-heat oven to 350.

2. In a large skillet, saute garlic and onions in olive oil. Add diced tomatoes after about 5 minutes. Add seasoning (oregano, basil, salt and pepper). Stir.

3. In a food processor, finely chop spinach, carrots and celery. Add to garlic, onion, tomato mixture in skillet.

4. Remove skillet from heat. Mix in mozzarella and cottage cheeses.

5. Heat up the spaghetti sauce.

6. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray and layer the lasagna:

spaghetti sauce (coat the bottom of the pan)

spinach mixture

sprinkle parmesan and pecorino-romano (cheese mixture)

lasagna noodles

spinach mixture

cheese mixture

noodles

sauce

cheese mixture to top

(Make it your own, layer it however you want)

7. Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes.

When I was making this dish, I sort of followed two different veggie lasagna dishes and blended them so I eye-balled a lot of these ingredients. Note on the cheese mixture: I shook the container of cheese until the lasagna looked well enough coated with cheese. Also, I only cooked enough noodles for two layers but had enough spinach mixture for probably three layers. I'm sure other vegetables and cheese could be substituted or added (zucchini, mushrooms, eggplant, ricotta... be creative, make it your own)

So like I said, I wasn't sure how it would turn out but we were both genuinely surprised and had two helpings. I also found some Texas toast in the freezer and quickly de-thawed it, buttered and added garlic salt to it for quick garlic bread. (Oven, broil on high about 3 minutes, until it turns crisp and toasty) A fine meal and relatively quick. Only took about 45 minutes, once I knew what I was doing and not bumbling about the kitchen. I was quite pleased with my melded cooking creation and I will be making it again.

Picture! As promised. This version only had spinach, zucchini, yellow squash and orange zucchini no celery or carrots. It still tasted great.