Lasagna and Garlic Bread

My parents have been wanting to come over to see the finished upstairs for awhile. Depending on how you define "finished" it might still take us awhile to get there, but I wanted them to come over anyway :) There was enough progress since the last time to show it off. Since they were coming over on Monday after work, I wanted to get as much done on Sunday as I could. This required a meal that could be assembled ahead of time - seemed like a perfect time to knock another item off my list - lasagna!

I found all sorts of fancy pants recipes for lasagna with homemade pasta and crazy ingredients like spinach :) , but I knew that my family (and really, me too) would more appreciate the simplicity and deliciousness of The Pioneer Woman's recipe.

Not from the green can.

The lasagna came together pretty quickly and easily on Sunday afternoon. We covered it up and put it in the fridge overnight, and just had to bake it for 30 minutes on Monday night - perfect! This lasagna really IS good and will please anyone (so long as they eat meat that is - and a lot of it). I did add a few things here and there, and just used regular pork sausage, not hot. Oh, I also used crushed tomatoes instead of whole because of poor little Ben's hatred of tomato chunks. What a baby.

To round out the meal, I also made this garlic bread (another item from the list!) which was very good! I wanted it to be more garlicky though... the flavor wasn't as pronounced due to the roasting before adding it to the filling - if I make it again I might try adding a clove of non-roasted garlic.

Before the 2nd rise

Another note - as you can see, my swirl was not very ... swirly. I'd recommend making a pretty thin rectangle and rolling it up tighter to make a prettier swirl. Click here for a better example of the swirl potential of this bread.

For the "healthy" portion of the meal, I made ceasar salad with homemade dressing again, using Smitten Kitchen's recipe. Again, very easy and tasty!

My sister made the Barefoot Contessa Coconut Cupcakes for dessert - they are my mom's favorite :) They were delicious as always! Unfortunately for Liz, I only got one photo before my battery died. I had a few glasses of wine by that point so I wasn't about to get up to find my replacement :)