Nessa's Bliss: recipe

16 May 2016

Have I ever told you how much I love lasagna?? Well, I love it. It is probably one of my all time favourite comfort go-to food. The problem was, I just always assumed it was too difficult to make it on my own. So, whenever I was craving lasagna, I was never able to fulfill my cravings. But, on days when my mom was feeling all chef-like and made lasagna, my tummy was always happy! No surprise about where this post is going, this past week I've been craving lasagna. And, instead of just craving it, this past weekend I decided to cook my own batch of lasagna! And, to my surprise, it was actually easy! Like, so much easier than I thought. Also, it ended up tasting SO MUCH BETTER than I thought it would! I think that was mostly because I knew what I liked, so I customized and mixed different recipes together! PREP TIME: 30 minutes (if you're a beginner cook) Total Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes INGREDIENTS: - 1 lb. lean ground beef - 1/2 lb. ground Italian sausage - 2-1/2 cups of shredded cheese of your choice (I used mozzarella) - 1/2 cup of parmesan grated cheese - 2 cups of ricotta cheese - 1/4 cup of chopped parsley - 1 egg, beaten - 1 jar of tomato sauce (650mL) - lasagna noodles (a lot of recipes says 12... I didn't use 12, however) - 1-1/2 cups of water
INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Preheat oven to 350 °F 2. Place grounded meat of your choice in a large pan/skillet on medium-high heat. 3. While the meat is being cooked, mix 2 cups of ricotta cheese, 1-1/4 cups of mozzarella, 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese, 1/4 of chopped parsley, and egg in a bowl until evening blended.

5. When meat is cook, drain meat using a strainer, and place the drained cooked meat back into the skillet/pan. Pour in entire jar of pasta sauce. Pour 1-1/2 cups into the pasta sauce jar; cover and shake the jaw well. Pour the water in the skillet and stir evenly.

6. In an empty pan or baking dish, place 1 cup of the meat sauce and spread evenly across the dish. (This is your bottom layer!) 7. Take 3 (or 4 depending on the size of your dish) uncooked lasagna noodles across the pan. 8. Take 1/3 of the ricotta cheese mixture, and spread evenly on top of the lasagna noodles.

9. Add 1 cup of meat sauce on top of the ricotta cheese mixture.

10. Repeat steps 7-9 two more times (for a total of 3 layers).

BONUS STEP:
I like my lasagna nice and cheesy. So, before repeating steps 7-9, I like to sprinkle shredded cheese before adding another layer of uncooked lasagna noodles.

11. On the last layer, you may have some extra meat sauce left over; spread it on top of the last layer of uncooked lasagna noodles followed by shredded cheese and parmesan cheese.

12. Cover the baking pan with tin foil, and bake the lasagna for a total of 1 hour, removing the tin foil after 45 minutes.

Well, there you go! See how much more simpler that was! And, its even more delicious than it looks! Hope you enjoy this recipe!

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12 April 2016

Why I Switched to Almond Milk + Banana and Almond Smoothie Recipe

12 April 2016

lifestyle

Why I Switched to Almond Milk + Banana and Almond Smoothie Recipe

Have I ever told you I switched the type of milk I drink? Weird topic, I know. But, really I have! For almost a year now, I've stopped drinking regular cow milk and instead opted for almond milk. This even includes the coffees, teas, and lattes I regularly purchase at Starbucks and Second Cup. And, I've yet to regret the switch.
Friends have often ask the question, "why?" And, I have to say at first, it was a personal (and health-related) decision. I'm not a doctor or anything, but around this time last year I noticed a weird change with my body. My body just no longer liked dairy products! From the milk I drank to the cheese I ate, my body just couldn't take it. Other's told me it was "impossible" to become lactose-intolerant years later, but my research says otherwise.
Like I said, I'm not doctor, but I am an expert when it comes to my body. And, it was at that moment I stopped my daily intake of dairy products, and switched to almond milk. My body reacted differently. Although I was becoming used to the idea of drinking black coffee, I was able to drink my coffee with milk again, and I was happy.
Almond milk, like other milk products and regular cow milk have benefits (benefits I basically googled myself). So, I am in really no position to convince you to make a life-altering switch to almond milk. I'll leave that decision up to you. But, I will say this, the health benefits are just as healthy as regular milk.

With that, I decided to share with you my favourite breakfast smoothie recipe. I personally love this very simple and easy recipe, and the best part is that it tastes so much better with almond milk!

What you'll need:

1 banana
Almond Milk (I personally like using Vanilla Almond Milk)
2 tablespoon of oats
Ice (optional)

Instructions:

Place banana, 2 tbsp of oats, and almond milk into a blender of your choice
Blend until smooth (or to your liking!)
Serve yummy smoothie!

Notes:

This can serve up to 2 cups
If you want a cool smoothie, you can blend the ice in step 1!
You can substitute almond milk for milk of your choice (But, I'm telling you, you're missing out!)

What's your favourite breakfast smoothie recipe?

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19 October 2013

Home Made Mexican Pizza

19 October 2013

food

Home Made Mexican Pizza

Hmmm.... What should we eat?

Once I start blogging more on a regular basis, you'll soon realize come to realize that I have a love for food, and the bf has a love for cooking. You'll also soon realize our spontaneous attempts to make different things, almost all the time, in hopes to avoid the unhealthy act of purchasing fast foods.

So last night we were talking about what should we eat instead of wasting our money on junk. Since I have a lot of ground beef at home, I suggested let's make something with ground beef. And my search began! I went on google and looked for recipes with ground beef, and I had a lot of options - tacos, spaghetti, meat loaf, shepherd's pie, lasagna, sloppy joe's and the list continues on and on.

Because I have a love for spaghetti and lasagna in general, and we made tacos just last week, we decided to go on a different route. And out of no where we decided to do a home made pizza. As we were talking about all these different ideas of how to make the actual dough, we randomly decided to create a mexican pizza.

Since I'm not a professional cook, I'll just do my best to describe everything as best as I can. (Note that the instructions and ingredients given, are for making ONE mexican pizza. To make more, simply double the portions)

Ingredients

1/2 lb of ground beed
10 flour tortillas
1/2 cup of diced onions
1 red pepper
1 cup of shredded cheesed
One bottle of spaghetti sauce
2 scallions

Directions
1. Prep work is important. Like what we did, we had two people doing prep work to speed up the process. - Shred your cheese until you approximately have one cup. In our case, we chose marble cheese and decided to shred more than one cup of cheese since I am a huge fan of cheese.

- Along with shredding cheese, cut up your red peppers. You can cut 1 or 2, it is up to you. If you do not like red peppers, you can simply replace it with store bought peperon

- Next, you want to cut up your onions into small diced pieces. Since I love the taste of onions in my food, we decided to cut up a little bit more than needed to add a different taste to the pizza. The onions will be used to mix with the ground beef.

2. Time to cook the ground beef. Heat the ground beef until it is brown, and to your liking. Then, drain out all the excess oil. Afterward, add onions, salt and pepper for your liking.
Also, preheat your oven to your comfort.
(Note if you want to add more taste to the ground beef, simply add them here in this step)

3. Toast the tortillas.
At the same time (or after heating the ground beef), place the tortillas on the oven pan. Put on low heat to slowly toast the tortilla. After around 10 minutes, take them out of the oven to cool off.

4. Grab one tortilla and spread a reasonable amount of spaghetti sauce on one side of the tortilla shell. Afterwards, you want to take a good amount of ground beef and place it on top of the spaghetti sauce.

5. Place another tortilla shell on top. Again, on top of this tortilla shell, spread a good amount of spaghetti sauce on top of the tortilla shell. Here you add on the rest of your toppings - Cheese, onions (if you want more), tomatoes and red pepper.