NEW SITE!

Hi guys!!!

I have some super awesome, amazing, SPECTACULAR news for you!

Drumroll please…..

…..

……

I have a new site!!

You can now check me out at www.myfreckledlife.com and see my brand new blog design that I’ve basically been slaving over for the past several months. And by slaving over, I basically mean yelling curse words at my computer while it mocks me with error messages.

You know, the usual.

I realize that some of you may be thinking “But I thought this already WAS http://www.myfreckledlife.com?” Yes, you are correct. But I am now on a new host server, and if you’re currently seeing this page it’s PROBABLY because you are reading it through a blog reader of some kind. Am I right? For some reason, technology is once again getting the upper hand and it wont automatically switch people over to my new subscription feed. Stupid.

SO, with that being said, I ask you to please hop on over to my new blog and subscribe! Otherwise I’ll hunt you down.

Totally kidding.

Kind of.

That’s all I got for you, folks! Again, head on over to www.myfreckledlife.com and let me know what you think of the new site!

Summer Vegetable Lasagna

So if you’re reading this post from my website (as opposed to a blog reader), you might notice something different…

That’s right, I have an entire new blog design!!!

This was a LONG time coming, guys. In fact, I think I promised it to you in like February. Yea, it’s bad. It just ended up taking 1000x longer than I ever thought it would, and I ran into a whole lot of road blocks along the way.

In fact, here is a SUPER shoutout to my husband, the amazing computer engineer, who basically ended up doing a good chunk of the finalizing stuff for me yesterday because the computer stuff was WAY over my head!

I’m sure there are going to be a few kinks and issues to deal with in the next few days, so please bear with me as I get everything 100% completed!!

 

Summer Vegetable Lasagna

Since my focus was on getting the ole blog fixed up yesterday, I don’t really have too many exciting things to tell you about my day. Except about what I ate for dinner.

I got the inspiration for a summer veggie lasagna from Iowa Girl Eats and her Famer’s Market Lasagna. Except I wanted to tie in this bad boy that we purchased (kind of on a whim) from the farmers market this week: fresh goat milk ricotta.

Guys, this stuff is dreamy. It’s got the creamy consistency of ricotta with a nice goat cheese kind of flavor. Heaven.

The lasagna recipe itself is pretty basic, but I loved incorporating some of the fresh veggies we also picked up at the farmers market this week. You could really put in any of your favorite summer veggies (or change it up for fall) and make it your own. Chris also suggested adding in some spicy turkey sausage for an extra kick as well.

Summer Vegetable Lasagna

Adapted from Farmers Market Vegetable Lasagna via Iowa Girl Eats

Makes 6-8 servings

Ingredients:

• 10oz lasagna noodles (approximately 12 noodles)
• 2 large shallots, chopped (or 1 small sweet onion, chopped)
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1-2 medium zucchini, chopped
• 1-2 medium yellow summer squash, chopped
• 24oz favorite pasta sauce
• 24oz ricotta cheese (I used a mix of goat milk and regular)
• 1/2 cup packed fresh basil, chopped
• shredded mozzarella cheese
• olive oil
• salt & pepper

Directions:

1. Add lasagna noodles to a large pot of salted, boiling water. Cook until al dente then drain and set aside. Spray with olive oil if you need to stack them.
2. Heat olive oil in a very large skillet over medium heat. Add shallots and saute until translucent, approx. 3-4 minutes, then add garlic and saute for 30 seconds.
3. Add zucchini and squash, season with salt and pepper, and saute until just slightly starting to turn translucent, approx. 4-5 minutes. Add pasta sauce and turn heat down to medium/medium-low, then simmer until zucchini and squash are tender, 5-7 minutes.
4. In a large bowl combine drained ricotta cheese and chopped basil then set aside.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees then spray a 9×13″ pan with non-stick spray. Spread a small amount of the vegetable/sauce mixture into the bottom then layer in 3 cooked lasagna noodles followed by 1/3 of the ricotta cheese mixture and 1/3 of the remaining vegetable mixture. Repeat layers 2 more times.
6. Sprinkle shredded mozzarella on top then cover pan with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil then bake for an additional 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbly.
7. Enjoy!

 

I actually made this ahead of time on Sunday afternoon and kept in in the fridge. It was super easy to grab and drop in the oven on a weeknight. I definitely devoured a nice big slice after getting home from my favorite butt-kicking Cardio, Strength and Intervals class that had me sweating like a beast.

Enjoy!

So tell me: What is your favorite way to enjoy summer vegetables?

Ticks, Tacos and Talking Shop

Good morning!!

Or should I say Congratulations! We have officially survived the weekend!

Haha, I always felt that way in college when Monday morning came around. Not that I was really all that crazy of a college kid, but just in the fact that weekends in college usually revolved around way too many activities and way too little sleep.

Anyway, I’m sad/happy to say that I don’t actually have a TON of stuff to recap for you. This weekend was actually fairly chill, for the most part. Which was desperately needed around here, let me tell you.

But let’s look anyway, just for S & Gs, ok?

Friday

After battling traffic on my way home on Friday afternoon, I quickly threw some snacks together for our Friday night bible study meeting. No pictures because people started arriving while I was finishing up, and I don’t know everyone QUITE well enough to tell them about my little corner of blogland quite yet.

We ended up getting out a little early though and decided to go catch a movie! There are so many good ones out right now! We decided on The Internship because we were looking for something funny. And let me tell you, it definitely lived up to the previews. It was SO funny and dorky and I loved every second of it!

(source)

Saturday

We were up SUPER early on Saturday morning (which is just wrong in my opinion) to hit up the farmers market because I had a work function that I needed to be at by 10am.

We picked up some green beans, 2 squash, zucchini, mini Sonoma bread & red, white and blue scones (from Great Harvest), whole wheat pita bread, goat milk ricotta, and eggs. Most of these are new to us products (we’re trying out this whole farm fresh egg thing to see if it’s REALLY that much different), so we’re excited to try them out!

After my work event, which went from 10-11, I sat in traffic for 2.5 hours to get home. Yes, 2.5 hours to go the < 30 miles to my house. Insane. I even had to stop by Wawa for some sustenance because it was nearly 2pm and I hadn’t eaten anything since 7:30!

Finally I made it closer to home and decided that since my workout plans were out the window because of time, I might as well swing by a get a quick haircut. Just a trim though, nothing exciting!

I made it home just in time to change and head out on our next adventure: Hiking at Caledon State Park with Chris and his sister (and all our dogs)!

I intended on taking more pictures, but ended up getting totally distracted by the hike itself and didn’t even think of it until we got into the car! Boo!

Laney sure enjoyed herself though! She was one pooped puppy dog by the time we got home!

Chris, his sister and I headed home and made some simple turkey tacos for dinner. The weather was so gorgeous that we were even able to eat out on the deck and spend some time relaxing.

Which was good, because then we started to find some ticks on us. And spent the next 2 HOURS pulling ticks off of us and the dogs. Probably more than 75 in total. It was RIDICULOUS. And let me tell you, trying to get a dog to sit still while you pull 25+ ticks off of them is not an easy feat.

Needless-to-say, that basically took up the entire rest of our evening. Stupid bugs.

Sunday

Luckily we got to sleep in a little on Sunday morning to recover before heading to church.

After a quick grocery stop, I headed home to change because Chris and I had big afternoon plans: The start of half marathon training!

I’m probably going to talk about this more later, because I think it deserves a post of it’s own, but we are signed up for the Hokie Half Marathon in September and we have some lofty goals for this one! Last time we were running for experience. This time we’re running to improve our time. Which means a very different kind of training plan than last time around. 

So we headed out on a 5 mile run, and tried to pick up the pace. Guys, this was seriously one of my worst runs EVER. EVERRRRRRRRR. There were tears. and curse words. and lots of stopping to keep from totally melting down. I hit a total mental block. Bad, just BAD.

We ended up cutting it to about 4.5 miles, and made it back in a very pathetic (and MUCH slower) time than planned. Just not my day.

Thankfully I didn’t have time to stew about it, because I had to hop in the shower and head down to Richmond for a VA Bloggers meet up!

(Please pardon the fact that I look like a half-face giant in the picture. I should clearly not try and pretend that I’m tall in group pictures and stand on my tippy toes in the back. Not a good look for me.)

We met up at Chuy’s Mexican Restaurant in Richmond, and spent a few hours chatting about Blogging, life outside of blogging, significant others, and various other random things.

I love these kinds of meet ups, because it’s so nice to not only meet other bloggers, but get the chance to “talk shop” (HA!) with others who understand the weird quirks that come with a hobby like this. Like everyone pulling out their smart phone to instagram pictures of their dinner. The norm.

 

Anyway, there you have it – my not-so-exciting-yet-still-very-fun weekend. Complete with ticks. Gross.

So tell me: What did you do this weekend? Have you ever had to deal with ticks before??