Happy Thanksgiving and a Recipe

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it and a wonderful weekend for the rest of you. I'm doin' the "Happy Dance" because all of my cooking responsibilities are done and it's not even breakfast time! WooHoo!

Thought I'd share the recipe for Butternut Squash Lasagna that has become a Thanksgiving tradition for us.

3 lbs. butternut squash, quartered, seeded, peeled and cut into 1/2" cubes (about 9 1/2 cups)
Trust me, if you can find it already cut up at Costco like I do, this goes a whole lot quicker!

3 T vegetable oil

4 cups whole milk

2 T dried rosemary, crumbled

1 T minced garlic

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter

1/4 C all-purpose flour

Nine 7 x 3 1/2" sheets of no boil lasagna noodles (I use Barilla because they're nice and flat)

1 1/2 cups freshly grated Parmesan (about 5 oz)

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 450 and oil 2 large shallow baking pans.

In a large bowl toss squash with oil until well coated and spread in one layer among the pans. Roast squash 10 minutes, then season with salt. Stir squash and roast 10 minutes more, or until tender and beginning to turn golden.

While squash is roasting, in a saucepan bring milk with rosemary to a simmer. Cook milk mixture over low heat 10 minutes and pour through a sieve into a large heatproof 1-qt. pitcher or measuring cup.

In a large heavy saucepan cook garlic in butter over moderately low heat, stirring until softened. Stir in flour and cook the roux, stirring, 3 minutes. Remove pan from heat and add milk in a stream, whisking until smooth. Simmer sauce, whisking occasionally, 10 minutes, or until thickened. Stir in squash and salt and pepper (white if you have it to avoid the black specks if that bothers you) to taste. (I smoosh a bit of the squash into the sauce but leave plenty of chunkiness too.) Sauce may be made 3 days ahead and chilled, it's surface covered with plastic wrap.

Reduce heat to 375 (or preheat if you've made sauce ahead) and butter a 13x9x2 " baking dish.

Pour 1 cup of sauce (it will not cover the bottom completely) and cover with 3 lasagna sheets, making sure they don't touch. Spread half the remaining sauce over the pasta and sprinkle with 1/2 cup Parmesan. Make one more layer in same manner with 3 sheets, remaining sauce and 1/2 cup Parmesan and top with remaining 3 lasagna sheets.

In a bowl with an electric mixer beat cream with salt until it holds soft peaks and spread evenly over lasagna, making sure pasta is completely covered. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup (or more like I do) over cream. Cover dish tightly with foil, tenting slightly to prevent foil from touching cream and bake in middle of oven 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake lasagna 10 minutes more, or until bubbling and golden. Let stand at least 5 minutes before cutting.

Since I've been doing this for awhile, I thought I'd give you my observations and tricks. First of all, no matter how you do it, it takes longer than it says to bake. I've always found that the top layer of lasagna sheets tend to curl up and you get some hard ends sticking up. To avoid this, you can either snap off the corners of the outer noodles before smoothing on the whipped cream, or do like I do and assemble it in advance (minus the whipped cream layer) and cover and refrigerate it overnight. Remove it from the fridge well in advance of baking (or again it will add that much more to the baking time), and let it come to room temperature, then apply the whipped cream layer and bake as directed. I've found the over night thing helps the noodles soften a little before baking and anything I can do in advance, I'm all over it! If the top layer curls, you can either turn them over, or push them down a bit before adding the top layer of cream. (I still bake it longer to get a nice brown crust on top. YUM!)

This is great for a dinner party because of the whole make ahead thing. The recipe says it serves 6 as a main course but it's pretty darn rich. I usually serve it as a side dish. Particularly yumbo with pork, or in the case of Thanksgiving, roast turkey.

Again I have to say thank you to all of my cyber friends for the love and support you give me on a daily basis. I am truly thankful to share this day with you and wish you a wonderful holiday.

Now what do I do? Craft maybe? Who knows, I may just be back with a project. We'll see. xxD

Macabre Monday Movie Mayhem; Nightmare on Elm Street Challenge

It's time for another Macabre Monday (no rest for the wicked) and the challenge is Movie Mayhem ....A Nightmare on Elm Street. YIKES! Well, I'm overwhelmed with the whole Thanksgiving thing, so my card is hardly what I'd call "creepy", much to the relief of many of you, I'm sure. But I just LOVE the Punky Teens Halloween stamp "Freddy" from Simply Betty Stamps, and seriously, who better to carve your turkey? The frame and "Turkey Day" is from a DCWV stack. The sentiment is computer generated and the drippy goo(ravy) is an MS punch.

I got my trial pack of Wobbles (WooHoo! Thanks Agnes for the info!) and attached one to Freddy. Makes him move, all the scarier. What is it with the whole "macho turkey carving thing", anyway? If you want to see some REALLY creepy Nightmares, head over to Haunted Design House and check out the fab stuff by my Sinister Sisters, the Macabre Minions have in store for you. I've got nightmares just thinking about it!

BBTB2 Give Thanks Challenge

Honestly, aren't I just the worst!? Here the BBTB2 challenge this week is hosted by ME and I'm late getting this up on my own blog. Guess I'm still recovering from a fabulous holiday kickoff part at my our BFF's on Saturday night so I'm running behind on EVERYTHING. Sorry! I chose "Give Thanks" from the new Thanksgiving cartridge, not only because of the season, but because I don't think I say thank you nearly enough to all of the people who touch my life on a regular basis. My family, friends, and loved ones make me truly happy to wake up each morning and I THANK YOU sooo much from the bottom of my heart!

My project is actually a wall hanging because I cut it BIG! Besides the obvious Thanksgiving Cart sentiment, I used my new Paper Lace cartridge to make the background. To tell you the truth, I wasn't sure how well the intricate pattern would work so I cut Lace 1 and it's shadow from page 23 at 8". Then I thought how pretty it would look if some of those leaves and swirls were colored in different colors so I hid the contours of the various elements (using Design Studio, each on a separate page, with different colors) and previewed them to see how they would look. The final medallion ended up being 5 layers thick, not counting the shadow or the scalloped dealies (which is the Lace 2 Shadow on page 29). I have no idea what size they are since I just manipulated those layers in DS until I though they were okay but the final piece is 10 inches. Gluing it together was a real bite since all of the card stock had a matte metallic or iridescent finish and I was using my Zig 2 way glue so I had to work FAST. It also used up 8 pieces of card stock, not counting the 3 layers for the "Give Thanks" sentiment. Don't think I'll be trying this again soon. LOL

It killed me not to pop anything, but if I tried, I think I still would be working on it! As it is, you can see the full 8 layers make it pretty thick. At least I managed to throw in some adhesive gems for a finishing touch. My fabulous Design Team Sisters have done gorgeous projects this week so please visit BBTB2 and take a look. Those who didn't have the Thanksgiving cartridge were welcome to use "Thanks" from any cart and you, of course are too. Hope to see some participation because I've never gotten to pick the POW winner before. Impress me! LOL Aww heck, you always do! xx

Come to Dinner with The Cuttlebug Spot

First of all I want to thank everyone for the huge response to the Dia de los Muertos Blog Hop. I'm truly overwhelmed by the warm comments I received. A huge THANK YOU to Abby and Gaby for including me in this very special celebration (and Agnes for putting in a good word for me). We're still celebrating today, so please scroll down to view that post and visit the other fabulous participants.

This week on The Cuttlebug Spot we were asked to do dinner invitations; for Thanksgiving if you celebrate it, any other kind if you're one of our International participants. Please note that The Cuttlebug Spot will now be posting on Tuesdays so be sure to change your calendars. I chose to do a very formal invitation ('cause I'm such a formal kind of gal, quit laughing Margie!) By now you all know I'm IN LOVE with the Cuttlebug Embossing Plus folders and have used Brocade Window yet again. I love how these are one step and you can ink them before you even take them out of the folder by pulling up the top flap. I used my gold leafing pen for the swirls around the opening here and Tim Holtz Distress Ink (applied with a sponge) to the rest of the embossing. the invitation part is computer generated and the little embossed leaves are from the Cuttlebug Disney Halloween combo. Who new that they could look so elegant in matte gold?

I matted the frame in matte gold as well and popped it for dimension. Alternating leaves were popped as well to give a sort of swirling effect. A few adhesive beads and that was it. I think a similar design would be gorgeous for a wedding invitation, don't you? Now go have a look at the lovely offerings by my super talented DT Sisters and we'd love to see what you can come up with.