Merry Christmas

I just wanted to take a minute to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! I will be back next week with all kinds of healthy yummies to help you recover from the Holidays. Thanks for reading, commenting and emailing. I am so grateful and honored to get to know such awesome people and share my love of cooking. I hope your holidays are filled with eating, drinking, presents and lots of awesome people! 

Roasted Green Beans with Fennel

Fennel is such a great and nutrition addition to any veggie dish. I have done a lot of things with fennel, but I've never roasted it. I decided it would be a great time to try with some tasty green beans. Simple and wholesome, this dish could not be easier to prepare. There is no excuse for not eating your veggies when they taste this good. After a crazy week of work, parties and holiday shopping, sometimes the best thing for you is some nice simple veggies.

UPDATE: My skillet lasagna made the Top 9 today!!!! Thanks to Ann for letting me know. Check it out here or click the sidebar ad.

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Easy Skillet Lasagna

The holidays are such a wonderful time of year. However, things get so busy and hectic that I'm having trouble finding time to cook. So I thought it would be a great time to develop something quick and easy that can last a few days. Lasagna is so yummy and delicious, but it's always been a special occasion or weekend meal. No more! This skillet lasagna takes less than 40 minutes to put together and makes an incredible weeknight meal. The best part is that it makes enough for some great leftovers and will keep for 3 days in the fridge.

Don't be intimidated by all the steps, basically you brown up some meat, I used chicken sausage, but you could use turkey or ground beef, and then layer a lasagna in a cast iron skillet and bake it. The key to making this work quickly is to use slightly more sauce than you would making a normal lasagna, the extra sauce helps to "cook" the noodles. I used fresh pasta sheets, which I found at the store, but you can also use no boil lasagna noodles. Either will work well.

As usual, I've lightened up this recipe by using whole wheat noodles, cutting back the cheese, and using lean chicken sausage.


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Wholesome Wednesday Links!

I am SO excited for Christmas! I love the holidays and always have a wonderful time eating, drinking, and catching up with friends and family. I have been fiendishly baking cookies and look forward to branching out into other recipes as well. Tomorrow night, I will be at my friend Meghan's Edible Balls party - where I hope to bring some bacon popcorn balls. I'll let you know how these turn out. Onto the links. 

Healthy Christmas Links:

• TakePart.com just featured my Roasted Garlic Butternut Squash Soup as part of its Christmas dinner menu
• The Environmental Working Group just released a study about the dangers of feeding kids sugary cereal. If you don't know the EWG - they provide lots of amazing scientific info about health risks associated with various products. I find the Cosmetics Database really helpful when making choices about which beauty products to buy. - CBS News
• Here's a fascinating look at the (insane) foodie habits of Kim Jong Il - Bon Appetite
• Uh oh, I guess I shouldn't be eating raw cookie dough - NY Times

Blogs and Recipes I love:

• The lovely Ann, over at Cooking Healthy for Me, made HOME MADE CHEEZ ITZ!!!! I need these immediately. 
• I recently discovered the best blog - Banana Mondaes - Jules combines reading children's books with cooking! She baked the most adorable Apple Ginger Pies while reading Amelia Bedelia! 
• Bon Appetit has the most amazing recipe for Lamb Shanks with Pears - I can't wait to try this

Craig's Scallop Stuffed Trout

I love fish. I don't eat nearly enough of it, but I love it. Usually, on Sundays, Craig and I get inspired at the supermarket and take home a nice piece of salmon or something. Yesterday, Craig decided that he wanted some trout, so I left him at the fish counter to go get some other stuff. He came back with trout and sea scallops and informed me he had invented a new recipe. So we got home and started experimenting.

There are many ways to stuff fish, usually crab meat is used, but I really loved the idea of using scallops instead. Bay scallops have so much flavor and a great texture. I knew they would hold up well in a stuffing. We decided to make the stuffing very simple, some onion, a bit of bacon, and parsley is all you need. Stuffed in the trout and roasted to perfection, this is a flavorful and lean meal that looks really impressive! I am so impressed with Craig's culinary imagination! The best part is that this is actually an incredibly simple dish to prepare. The prep is simple and then you just throw it all in the oven.

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A Night Out at Sweet Ginger with Serve and a Chance to Win!

Because I'm constantly cooking and blogging, we don't get to go out to restaurants very often. So it's always a nice treat to try someplace new. Craig and I walk by Sweet Ginger in Union Square when going about our errands and had always wanted to give it a try. We love Thai food and had yet to find our go-to Thai place since moving to Somerville in August. I also feel strongly, especially during this time of year, to support as many local businesses as I can. It was also the perfect time to try out the new Serve program from American Express. Serve is a digital payment platform that allows you to send and receive funds from your mobile device. Dining out in groups can be tricky, especially when some people are paying with cards and others with cash. Serve eliminates all these issues by allowing account holders to just transfer money from their phones or computers instantly, thus  making splitting a check so much easier. Serve asked some food blogger to test out the service, so I signed up and decided to give it a try. 

The best part of this: my readers are now eligible to win a $100 Serve credit just for commenting on this post! So comment often in the next 7 days and you can win!!!

Signing up for the account was simple, I was initially wary, but once I learned that Serve uses American Express security, data protection and technology, I felt so much better. I signed up, linked my Serve account to my debit card so I could send funds, and a few days later I received my serve card. It works sort of like a gift card, I can use it wherever American Express is accepted. I planned on paying with my Serve card and having everyone else just transfer their portion into my Serve account. 

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