Don’t put Clearasil on your Baked Ziti

Friday night, Rob and I went to a fancy Italian restaurant where we had the most incredible meal. The salad was served warm with grilled eggplants sitting happily on top. Rob ordered Pumpkin gnocchi that just melted in the mouth. I ordered candy-shaped ravioli filled with bits of lobster and other shellfish. It was so yummy! I told Rob that we should try our hands at making dinner and he agreed. So last night, I made Baked Ziti. I didn’t follow my mother’s recipe. Instead I googled BAKED ZITI, hoping to find a recipe that contained both meat and ricotta. You’d think that would be pretty easy but it wasn’t. I must have been 5 or 6 pages into the search before I found this recipe. It was very easy and pretty quick. I have made an edit on the sauce and mozzarella amounts and because I changed the recipe a bit, I gave it a new, kick ass name. HOO HA!

Warm and Comforting Baked Ziti

1 lb Ziti, cooked
1 lb Hamburger, cooked
1 15 oz pk ricotta cheese
¼ c Parsley
½ c Parmesan cheese
1 Egg
1 c Shredded mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 – 2 jars Tomato Sauce of your choice

Mix ricotta cheese, egg, parsley and Parmesan cheese together. Carefully mix hamburger with this mixture. Add ziti. Mix in 3/4 of the sauce of your choice. Spread in a pan. Put the rest of the sauce on top. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese on top. Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes. Yield: 6 servings

As I made the made the main course, Rob grilled eggplants so we could try to duplicate the Eggplant Salad. He found that the eggplants really soaked up a lot of the Olive Oil which turns out wasn’t a good thing. Regardless, once they were cut into little squares and placed on the salad, I thought it was delicious and just as fabulous as the salad at the fancy schmancy Italian restaurant near Rob’s farm.

Dessert was Lemon Squares that I made from a mix. I think it was Betty Crocker. It was so easy and didn’t take more than a 1/2 hour to mix up. After our fabulous dinner we put Thunderbolt and Lightfoot into the DVD player. Our running commentary seemed to focus on whether the Jeff Bridges character was supposed to really be as gay as he seemed. Sadly, something was wrong with the DVD. It just froze and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to budge so we just turned it off and went to bed.

Today is my cousin Preston’s Christening. I am looking forward to seeing my cousins. Rob is coming along so he gets to meet the rest of my dad’s side. Should be interesting.