Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year Everyone!

May you all have a good productive, prosperous & exciting new year ahead.


2008 went by pretty quickly, I was pregnant at the start of the year and delivered at the end of May. I took 3 months maternity leave and came back to work in September. It was the fasting month then which was followed by the Hari Raya break, and before you can say, “Is it the end of the year already?” , It really was the end of the year marked by the Year End School Break. The kids are going back to school next Monday and Zaim is already 7 months. My how time flies!


My New Year Resolutions this year are:

1) Limit my spending – and to help me achive this I will

a) I vow to spend in either Cash or with my Debit Card ONLY!!! As an added measure, I have already kept my 4 Credit Cards in a locked drawer as of yesterday evening.

b) I will limit my lunch outings to KLCC & Pavilion - as in I should not go to these places so often

2) I will make sure that I take the kids out to play more often.

3) Try as best as I could to go to the gym 3 times a week.

4) Be a better Muslim, including reading the Quran more often amongst other things

5) Try to be a better person to everyone i.e wife, mother, daughter, employer (to my maid), D-I-L, friend, etc.

6) Be a better staff to my boss and co-worker to my office mates

7) Control my temper!

8) Invest more time in a new hobby.

How did I spend the New Year’s Eve and the New Year Day itself? Well, I totally missed the fireworks. Didn’t even try to stay up for it. I had my RPM class in the afternoon and was totally tired by nighttime, that I went to bed after reading a couple of pages of the current book that I’m reading. The New Year Day itself started of pretty early. Since the kids were still asleep, hubby and I decided to sneak out for a quick early breakfast. When we came back, I was in the mood to cook. So I ended up cooking a Spinach and Cheese Lasagne (pictures below), a Chocolate Chip & Banana Muffin - tried a recipe that I have never tried before and also made Banana Smoothie. In the evening, still had some energy left to teach Nayli to ride her bike without the 2 training wheels. Quite a productive day, not a bad start for a New Year.

Nayli and Zarif on their bikes.

Little Zaim, watching from his stroller.


All together now, on their wheels.

Nayli did it on 1st try.

Taking a break from his bicycle, kicking ball with Mama.

Banana Smoothie - main ingredient... duh!!!

All that you need really. For a healthier smoothie,

you can switch the Vanilla Ice-Cream with Yogurt.

The Smoothie. I blended with my new Hand Blender, lovely contraption.

Must talk about it more soon.

The banana muffins, dead easy. Before.

After.

What follows are the steps to make my version of Spinach and Cheese Lasagne. Basically, the original recipe is actually Spinach and Cheese Cannelloni. Since Canelloni are hard to find unless you frequent more High End Supermarkets. I opted for Lasagne. I also added in between the Spinach and Cheese Layers a few layers of tomato based sauce in order to lower the Cheesiness (a.k.a muak) factor that some members of my family may not tolerate too well. I'm afraid, I cannot include any measurements, because really, unless I am baking I don't measure stuff when I cook.

Ok, we start with the ingredients:

Spinach

Leaf picker (separate the leaf from the stems) - Nayli was also rather pro-active to

request for a bowl of water for her to dip and clean some

sandy bits that she found on the leaf.

Leaf to be cut thinly, like so. I think it should be finer than this.

2 types of cheese. 3 types more preferable. I only had two,

and even that one of these have been 1 month passed expiry date.

Since the pack was unopened, I assumed it was still ok. As of to date, all members

of my family are alive and kicking and did not suffer any stomach upsets ok!

Prepare the tomato based sauce. Just saute some onions then

add Diced Canned Tomato. Add some bolognese spices and of course

the mandatory salt and pepper to taste. You do not need to make it too salty

as we are also adding the cheese sauce later.

These cheese sauce was basically, the normal white sauce (butter, milk and flour),

just add a lot of cheese and then finally the spinach.

The lasagne sheets.

This is the first layer, in this case, I started with the tomato sauce.

Just spread a thin layer, depending on the thickness of your casserole dish and

the amount of sauce that you have prepared.

Then, cover it with a layer of lasagne sheets.

Then pour a layer of the Spinach and Cheese Sauce Mix onto the lasagne sheets.

Do not worry about the Spinach and Cheese Sauce dripping to the layer below.

It is inevitable. This is what makes is even better.

More lasagne sheets on top of the Spinach and Cheese Layer.

Time for the Tomato Sauce layer again.

More lasagne sheets, basically repeat these steps until

you run out of both lasagne sheets and sauces.

The final Spinach and Cheese layer.

I seperated a little bit of the white sauce that has not been mixed with Spinach.

What I did as the finishing touch is to pour the leftover white sauce at the top of the

final Spinach and Cheese Sauce and then scatter some Mozzarella Cheese on top of it.

Then you just bake it in the oven and let it cook slowly.

The finished product, there seems to be a hole in the middle,

because it bubbled up quite high when I took it out of the oven,

I couldn't stop myself from popping it. Hence, the Spinachy Well that

you can see here.

This is how it looks like when you slice up for serving,

multi layer of goey cheesy tomato mix.

Serve with some salad, just to add some crunch to your dish.

Slurping away!

Oh, yes and some Garlic bread on the side too.

However, this little fella still prefers the Astro remote. Ha!ha!ha!

Zarif hugging Zaim, very rare occurence, so I have to blog this. He!he!