Seafood Lasagna from the Holidays

Really lobster lasagna! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Christmas Eve I had planned to make a Seafood Lasagna. In the days leading up to Christmas I had a power outage for 27 hours and then again for 7 hours on Christmas Eve. It put me way behind on all the things I had left until the last minute. We ended up grabbing Chinese on Christmas eve which is not a bad idea. Why bother cooking Christmas Eve when you're busy with the last minute details?! Definitely something to keep in mind for future busy Christmas Eves (some years I'm completely organized but some years I'm like an unmade bed...)

We ended up having the seafood lasagna on Christmas Day. This past holiday season lobster prices bottomed out around here so I picked up 2 really cheap and thought I'd add them to the lasagna. How decadent! When I cooked and picked through them I was amazed at how much meat they had. I usually have lobster in the summer months around my birthday. But what a difference getting them during the high season! Needless to say, I will revisit lobsters next year during the holidays.

Once I picked through the 2 lobsters I had so much meat that I decided to skip the other seafood, hence my lasagna went from being a "seafood" lasagna to just being a "lobster" lasagna. And it was perfectly elegant for Christmas day.

A couple of good cheats - I got the store made fresh lasagna sheets (no precooking required)and I used 2 packs of prepackaged sauce, a 4 cheese sauce and a light alfredo sauce. Again, this is a special occasion lasagna so decadent is mandatory!

Lobster Lasagna - Serves 12 and freezes beautifully!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups mushrooms
• 2 onions
• 3 small zucchini
• 3 garlic cloves, diced
• 1 tbsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tbsp celery seeds
• 2 lobsters (or crab meet and shrimp), cooked and picked
• 1 1/4 c feta cheese
• 250ml (1c) cottage cheese, reduced fat
• 1 package of frozen spinach, thawed and drained
• basil, fresh 1/4 cup chopped or 1 tbsp dried
• 1 package 300ml 4 cheese sauce
• 1 package 300 ml light alfredo cause
• 1 package of fresh lasagna noodles
• 2 cups shredded part skim mozzarella
• 1 cup shredded parmesan
• 1/4 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
2. Saute the mushrooms, onions, zucchini, garlic, thyme and celery seeds until soft. Remove from the heat
3. Toss in the lobster and mix, put aside
4. Combine the feta cheese, cottage cheese and spinach, set aside
5. Combine the 2 packages of sauce, set aside
6. Toss the mozza and parm
7. Pour a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a 13 X 9 inch baking dish
8. Place a layer of noodles on the sauce
9. Top with 1/3 of the cheese mix, 1/3 of the lobster mix, 1/4 of the sauce and 1/4 of the mozza/parm mix.
10. Repeat 2 more times, ending with noodles, sauce and mozza/parm.
11. Bake at 375 for 40 minutes until golden on top. Let stand 15 minutes. Sprinkle with Parsley.

Enjoy! Nice thing about this recipe is that you can make it ahead. You can even cook it for about 25 minutes a day or two ahead and then heat it through on the day of serving, covered for 20 minutes then uncover for 5 - 10 until golden.

Comfort foods for sick days

You know I love my freezer but never was it more apparent than the week before last when I was home sick with a severe episode of the flu. You know it's the flu when you constantly think to yourself "even my eyeballs hurt". And they did. So you can imagine how grateful I was that my freezer had lots of comfort foods. I have homemade turkey soup, leftover turkey hash and turkey pot pie. Turkey is my comfort food. Although this time I craved salads. Luckily I had romaine lettuce on hand. But there were points during the week and a half of illness ( yup, that long) I did have periods of extreme nausea which is definitely turkey soup time.

I always make turkey pot pie out of the leftover turkey and gravy. Just throw in some veggies of your choice and some form of crust. I've used leftover carrots and turnip and put a layer of mashed potatoes for the crust. Ooo, I've even done a mashed potato and stuffing mix for the crust. That is always yummy. This time I used frozen broccoli, diced turnip and some of my own roasted corn. For the crust I used the Pillsbury cresent rolls. When I cook it I undercook the crust, freeze it and then when I go to reheat it, the crust ends up perfect.

Serious comfort food.

This time of year it's really important to keep some good comfort foods (and cold meds) on hand. You never know when the flu or cold will take you down! So whatever means 'comfort' to you - stock up! And next year I'll be getting that flu shot....