Ravisanga

I was really wanting some lasagna yesterday, but didn't have ricotta cheese in my fridge, so I thought, "Hey! I have cheese ravioli....why can't that work?!"  So I tried it, and it does!! It was even something Bubba could help with, which I always Love (and so does he). Here's it goes:

To make a 9x13 pan

1 1/2 pkg cheese Ravioli

1 1/2 jar Spaghetti sauce

3 links turkey sausage (remove case and cook to a crumble)

Shredded cheese to top

Boil ravioli until they just start to pop to the surface. You don't want to boil them for the full 7-10 mins as directed on pkg otherwise you will end up with mushy raviolis and that makes it hard to layer, and wont make for a very good ravisagna

Layer sauce

Ravioli

the reason some are different colors is because my 1/2 pkg was mushroom ravioli.

Crumbled turkey sausage, more sauce,

One more layer of ravioli and sauce, top with cheese

Bake at 350 for 30 mins.

Let it set for 15 mins before cutting



The nice part about this is, it's easy, fast, very kid friendly, and pretty inexpensive. You can cut it like a regular lasagna or scoop it out, depending on how you put the ravioli down they will be on top of each other for optimal scoopage!  It taste just like Lasagna! Enjoy

Vegetable Soup

I've started a diet (insert *Gasp* here).  It's a soup based diet, and so far it's pretty decent.

Here's the recipe for the soup. It's a pretty good soup and the whole pot is only 1150 calories, and it makes a HUGE pot!!!

1 Bunch of Celery (I like the Celery Hearts)
2 lbs Carrots
3 Large Green Onions (I used 1/2 yellow onion)
2 Green Peppers
-Chop veggies and put into a LARGE Soup Pot and cover with water. Boil for 10 mins.
-Dump in remaining ingredients
1 Large can (1 32oz Box) Beef broth (Low sodium/fat)
2 Cans Cut Green Beans Drained
1 can Stewed Tomatoes (I used Italian Style) I squish them in my hand before dumping them in.
1 pkg Lipton Soup Mix (Chicken Noodle)
-Bring back to boil and simmer until veggies are tender.
May season with Salt and Pepper, curry, parsley, bouillon, hot sauce or Worcestershire sauce.

Because you eat this soup all day long for 7 days I like to season it differently every day to keep it from getting old.  Yesterday I put the hot sauce in it, and today I'm adding Curry. So far so good!

The rest of the diet
Day 1- soup and Fruit (except bananas)
Day 2- Soup and Veggies (except corn, peas and beans)  I'm putting extra veggies (mushrooms, red peepers, zucchini, yellow squash) in the soup to make it extra chunky.
        Have a baked potato with butter for dinner.    (Do NOT eat any fruit today)
Day 3- Soup, fruit and veggies. No baked potato  Today I plan to eat the leftover super veggie filled soup and make fruit smoothies using frozen fruit, milk, and 100% Cranberry juice (I got mine from the natural foods section to make sure it was unsweetened)
Day 4- Soup, Bananas, Skim Milk.  Eat at least 3 bananas and drink as much milk as you can.  I plan on freezing the milk and making banana smoothies (just bananas and milk)  Because I really, highly dislike eating bananas and drinking milk. But I can drink a banana smoothie
Day 5- Beef and tomatoes: you may have 10-20 oz of beef and up to 6 tomatoes. Eat the soup at least once today.  I bought steak and Cherry tomatoes for this. I can pop cherry tomatoes all day where it's hard for me to sit down and eat a whole tomato
Day 6- Beef and Veggies. Eat all the beef and veggies you want today. You can even have 2-3 steaks if you like with green leafy veggies, but NO baked potato. Be sure to eat the soup at least once today. I plan on making the super chunky vegetable version in the crock pot and throwing steak in the soup.....I am very excited about this day!
Day 7- Brown rice, unsweetened juice and veggies until full. (don't forget about your soup)  I plan on putting the rice in the leftover super chunky veggie soup.  also putting veggies in with the rice.

Drink allowed
Unsweetened juices
Tea
Coffee
Cranberry juice
Skim Milk (for those who don't know, because I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't, that's 1% milk)
Lots of water (I've been drinking water non stop. My hubby brought me home a cup that is hard plastic with a straw and I carry it everywhere and fill it up constantly)