Crock Pot Lasagna

We love lasagna.  My friend Jenny prepares hers in loaf pans and then freezes them to feed her family of 4 (they have 2 young sons that aren't eating her out of house and home, YET!), my friend Laura makes lasagna using cheese ravioli, and my sister-in-law Lana's is just, well, out of this world.  Lasagna is so diverse; even after all these years, I still try different lasagna recipes.  I even went through a phase where I used ricotta cheese!  I got over that, I guess, but I have never jumped on the bandwagon for cooking the pasta before hand.

I came across a recipe for Lasagna at www.goodenessgracious.com, a cool blog I found through The Real Farmwives of America and Friends community on Facebook. 

I tweaked the original recipe to feed my family of 6 and work in my Crock Pot.

Ingredients:
1 pound browned ground beef
1 1/2 cans spaghetti sauce
8 ounces of bow tie pasta (uncooked)
16 ounces of cottage cheese
4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:
1.  Spray the inside of the crockpot with cooking spray (this REALLY helped with clean up, I don't know why I don't always spray it?!?!)
2.  Brown the ground beef and drain, then stir in the spaghetti sauce

3.  Layer 1/2 the beef mixture, half the bow tie pasta, 1/2 the cottage cheese, and about 2 cups of cheese in the Crock Pot
4.  Repeat step 3. 

5.  Cook on low for about 4-5 hours (This translates into me coming home at lunch to turn on the Crock Pot, or as our pastor's wife does:  get a timer like you'd use on a lamp.) 

The first time I made this, I let it cook from 9am until 6pm and it was too overdone.  It was still good, but the edges were kind of unsalvageable. 

What have you been cooking up in your Crock Pot lately????

Scenes from the fair!

 Well, we have another year of 4-H and showing beef cattle under our belts.  It was a long week that flew by, the days were endless but happened in the blink of an eye, and we are EXHAUSTED!  (I know, none of that made any sense.  Trust me, though, that's how it happened.  If you've ever been a 4-Her with livestock, I'll bet you get it.)   
I'm too tired to put together anything well-organized, so here are just some random cattle-showing pictures for the aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends who are always so supportive of the kids  (also the majority are former 4-Hers)!

Danny and his junior heifer baldy.

Bernie:  mommy to the baldy, she and I are besties.  She and Drew... not so much.  She was kind of sick and tired of the whole deal by Friday night and gave him some 'tude. 

 June bug, one of the twins.  She won Grand Champion market heifer.  (O.k., I'll admit, there wasn't much competition, only two in the class.)

The morning of the open show, waiting to go in the show ring.  Chuckie the bull calf won grand champion Hereford bull calf.  It was REALLY exciting, the judge said lots of great things about the calf, we're kind of excited about next year when he'll be a big ole steer!

And, finally, one of my favorite "Mom" moments:  watching the boys work together showing the breeding stock.  This is our future!  I think we have two very good cattlemen in the making!

 

But, the best part of the week was spending time with friends who put up with our crankiness, helped us out, let us help them out if we could, and supported what I think is one of the best institutions in America--4-H!!!!

At last, 4-H General Projects Day had finally arrived and I was able to reclaim my dining room table!

Last Friday was the day I'd been looking forward to for quite a while:  4-H general projects judging day. 

I'm NOT a procrastinator, so the girls have had their projects finished for at least a week (except for the cookies, which needed to be baked the night before, of course!).   But, this means that their projects have been taking up space on one of the few "safe zones" in our house: my dining room table.  It drives me NuTs! having stuff laying out...

Contents of table (going clockwise):
1:  Bicycle poster-- topic:  ABC bike check, gist: check your "air pressure", "brakes", and "chain" before you set off on a big trip.
2:  American Girl Doll blanket--Holly's visual arts project, she learned some sewing machine basics.
3:  Chocolate Crinkle Cookies--DELICIOUS is all I need to say about these.  Emma did a great job following the recipe and she learned about kitchen measurements, which we all know is the KEY to successful cooking!
4:  Note board-- see previous post :)
5:  Drew's rocket--  finished at the VERY last minute (the night before) because this is Dave's area of expertise and Dave DOES procrastinate.  It launched very nicely, the judges seemed impressed as Drew explained to them what changes he made this year based on the feedback they (the same judges) gave him last year.  I was very impressed by his level of maturity as he "handled" the judges!  I swear, he's 10 going on 35!

So general projects judging day was a success!  The girls had fun presenting their projects for judging.  The judges are so good with the Clover buds, they ask good questions and praise the kids for their hard work.  Drew got a blue ribbon on his rocket, too!  The boys need to put the finishing touches on their crop posters before they get judged on the first day of the fair.  And then there are those cattle...

My Boys are Blessed with Bovine Beauties!

One of my favorite things in the whole wide world is a cow and her calf (I guess that's two things....).  These lovely ladies are all set for the fair (in 1 week and 3 days)!  The Herefords are Drew's, he bought #15 to replace his cow who gave birth to the twins last year. (Fergie developed a tumor on her uterus and wasn't able to be bred again, so she had to be sent to market.)

  

#15, aka "Mackie", calved on Easter Sunday, and her son "Chuckie" is a nice little guy!  He has really curly hair, which is something we're not used to.  He leads pretty well and the work we do this summer will make next summer all that much easier; Chuckie will be Drew's market steer next year.

 

The black cow is Danny's first calf out of his original cow.  "Bernie" has been to the fair twice already:  as a junior heifer calf two years ago and as a bred heifer/summer yearling last summer.  She's a pro! 

 

Her first calf, "Belle", is a cutie and sweetheart (I have a HUGE soft spot for a black white-faced calf; way back when, my 4-H cow looked a lot like Belle)!  She seems to have inherited her grandmother's kicking gene, but we just know to give her hind quarters a wide berth and I've noticed that her kicks aren't as powerful as they were a month ago.  I think she's getting over it--Ha! Yeah right!  That doesn't happen. 

 

Moral of the story:  Just watch where you're walking.

Saying good bye...

We traded our old mini van in for a newer model earlier this month. 

As I was cleaning out 8 years and 4 kids worth of junk, I found this diaper -- THE LAST DIAPER-- in the glove compartment.  By baby number 4, I was done carrying a well-stocked diaper bag and really didn't go too many places very far from home, so I would just leave the house with the kids and a very minimally packed bag of absolute essentials.  I had stashed diapers in the van, "just in case", and often I would go to this stash. 




Well, one lone diaper remains.  Dave and the kids and anyone who rides in my van and finds it necessary to rifle through my glove compartment asks why I still have this one diaper in there!  You see, I have grand visions of someday coming to the rescue at a sporting event, accident scene, picnic, playground disaster, with this trusty diaper to... oh, I don't know... absorb gallons of blood?  Use as a tourniquet?  Be a giant bandage over some terrible, gaping wound? 

Anyway, we passed our old van along to our high-school aged nephews sans diaper.  Sorry guys.  You're on your own there.  The diaper is safe and sound in the glove compartment of my shiny new van! 

I am NO electrician...

So, across the road from my parents' house is one of their two cow pastures.  In this pasture our two fair-bound cows and their spring calves are residing.  Long-story-short, we would like to semi-permanently relocate these 4 to a smaller fenced-off area in the corner of this pasture until fair time.  The problem is that the electric fence doesn't work right now.  Well, the men of the operation thought that I should/could "just go out and walk the fence to find the place where it's shorted out". 

O.K., I'm that desperate to get this mini-pasture into working order (I won't go into the details of what it takes each day to get the cows and calves corralled...), so off we went. 

 

Holly was the official photographer of this ordeal, while Drew--under Dave's orders-- drove the 4-wheeler, in case I get shocked unconscious, or something.

I started at the fencer box (where you turn it on) and walked the entire perimeter of the pasture.

 How am I supposed to check the fence, you ask!?!?  Take a screw driver and touch it every so many feet and it'll spark if it's on.  Doesn't this sound fun, safe, easy, safe, and safe?  
(If you're wondering whether the weeds are the culprit, the guys assured me it's not...)









 I don't think the fence works at all, I never experienced the "arc" that the fence would make with the screw driver.  I really don't know if I was doing it right or if I was expecting to feel something different.  I have no idea...
That white ribbon is a second strand of electric fence that runs one length of the pasture and keeps the cows out of a field of tempting field corn.  That part was mildly electric: when I touched it with my finger is was kind of weakly on, more "sparkly" than "SHOCKING!!!" though. 


Oh well, I didn't make any grand discoveries and we are back to where we started.  It was a beautiful day, though, so I'm not complaining!  Maybe once the hay gets baled and put up, the wheat gets combined and delivered, the straw gets baled and put up, and they hay ground gets sprayed, then maybe the guys can help this gal out with her minor problems ;)   Oh wait, I forgot about the feeder cattle, the manure, the .... oh never mind.  We'll just sort our cows and calves off each morning the way we've been all along.

Another Farm Quiz!

Test your knowledge of straw baling 101:

This kid is:

 a)  5' 4", 80 pounds (with muddy  boots on)
 b)  more help around the farm than his mother (times 3) 
c)  buffing up for seventh grade
d)  all of the above

The first thing you need to know about putting-up straw (into the barn) is:

  a)  it needs to be at least 90 degrees out, with a heat index in the triple digits

b)  you have to first harvest the wheat in a state of the art, ginormous combine (thanks Grandma Lori!)

c)  Grandpa Kent will NEVER be too old to sling bales --in the mow, where it's like 15 degrees hotter than out on the rack!

d)  all of the above

That grin on his face comes from the fact that:
a)  he's not in school
b)  he's doing what he loves
c)  20-30 of these bales have his name on them for his 4-H cattle next year
d)  all of the above

At the end of the day there will be: 

a)  a barn a quarter of the way full of straw (4 loads worth, anyway!)

b)  3 very tired men and 2 very tired boys (Dave, my dad, and our hired man are inside stacking, Drew will soon join Danny on the rack to feed the elevator!)

c)  lightening bugs and a beautiful sunset (because that's what July nights are good for!)

d)  all of the above

 

 

If you answered (d) for all 4 questions, then you aced it, smarty pants!  Keep up the nice work!  You get an A+!!!!

P.S. If you aced this quiz and are new to Living the Daly Life, test your skills at this quiz from last year!  Many Hands Make Light Work!