Try It Tuesday- Cheesy Baked Ziti

It's always a little scary to try new recipes on guests in your home, but I took the plunge and tried this one last night. I will definitely be making this again... and the fact that its super easy doesn't hurt either.

Cheesy Baked Ziti

Ingredients:

• 1 lb pound dried ziti... any noodle will work, I actually used rotini.
  
• 30 ounces ricotta cheese-part skim (I didn't use near that much)
  
• 6 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

• 6 cups spaghetti sauce (or more depending on if you like a lot of sauce)
  
• 1 cup Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and add the ziti. Cook until tender, about 8 minutes, drain the pasta.

2. Place the ziti in a large bowl. Mix with the ricotta and half of the mozzarella. Grease a 9 x 13-inch casserole dish. Spread half of the spaghetti sauce on the bottom of the pan. Add the ziti mixture and cover with the remaining sauce. Sprinkle with Parmesan and the remaining mozzarella.

3. Bake uncovered, for 20 to 30 minutes, until the casserole bubbles on the edges.

Enjoy!

Amber and Winna

One of the highlights of our weekend was attending a couples shower for one of my dearest friends. I've known Amber I guess since middle school. We don't get to spend near enough time together, but we were so excited to celebrate with them this weekend in preparation for their wedding later this month.

She spent several years doing missions in South Africa where she met her now fiance. He's here now working at Highpoint. His accent is awesome. I am normally not a fan of accents but I could listen to him talk all day.

So thankful for this friendship, but also for all the others we got to hang out with as well.

Fat Friday

For New Year's some of our friends got together and one particular pregnant friend requested this brownie pizza. I normally think of it as a summer dessert, but there's no reason you can't have it year round so of course I made it. I forgot how much I enjoy the combination of chocolate and fruit.

Banana Split Brownie Pizza

Ingredients:

• 1 (20-ounce) box fudge brownie mix (recommended: Duncan Hines Chewy Fudge Brownie Mix)
• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (8-ounce) can crushed pineapple, drained, juice reserved
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 bananas, sliced and tossed in lemon juice to prevent browning
• 1 cup fresh strawberries, sliced
• 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
  
• Chocolate ice cream topping or chocolate syrup, for drizzling

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 15-inch pizza pan. Prepare the brownie mix according to box directions. Pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 20 minutes, or until done. Remove from the oven and cool. Beat the cream cheese, pineapple, and sugar together in a bowl. Use any reserved pineapple juice at this time, if needed, to soften the mixture to a good spreading consistency. Otherwise dispose of or save the juice for another use. Spread the mixture over the cooled brownie crust. Arrange the banana and strawberry slices over the cream cheese mixture. Sprinkle with the chopped nuts and drizzle with chocolate ice cream topping. Refrigerate. To serve, slice as you would a pizza, and enjoy!

Ambition

I don't really want to make resolutions for this new year because no one really keeps them. I do however want to be a little ambitious.

Dictionary.com defines ambition as....

am·bi·tion[am-bish-uhn] noun

1.an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction

How?... you might ask. I'm thinking in the form of a half marathon.

I haven't run in 4 weeks and its killing me. But then again it was killing me more when I was running with a stress fracture on the top of my foot. Thankfully the big, black walking boot did the trick and was able to come off last Thursday.

Cross training began this week. Let me tell you...the elliptical is not running... no where close... but for now it will have to do. I can begin slowly running in the next week or so. And boy am I ready. I'm ready for my "running" legs... which have turned fluffy these past 4 weeks. I couldn't have picked a worse time to not be able to run! I needed my running 10 miles to burn off all the Christmas goodies I was consuming.

Thankfully I now have no excuse. It's time to get back to it and begin training... slowly...with my vitamin D. The doctor recommended all runners take a vitamin d supplement especially in the winter months because we are cooped up inside majority of the time and aren't getting enough natural vitamin d on our own... which can lead to fragile bones... leading to stress fractures. Point taken.

With that being said... which half should I do? I want to do one this spring. There's one in Oxford, Germantown, and Nashville that are in the front running... but there are others around too. Ok running friends I need your advice.... my first half... which would be best?

Christmas Catch Up

Our Christmas break was wonderful, but of course went by way too quickly. Here are some highlights:

December ?: bought new decorations for mantle... and I'm in love.

December 22: 3rd Annual Burbee/Jerkins/Foreman/Wilbur Christmas party... including my dad's amazing french toast, a ball game, and an ornament exchange. I'll let you guess who was involved in the game watching and who did the ornament exchange.

December 23: First official day of Christmas vacation. It included sleeping late, wrapping presents, sitting by the fire, catching up on dvr-ed shows, and laundry.... but it was awesome because I didn't have to go to work. In fact I'm pretty sure I was in my pajamas all day.

December 24: Christmas eve... baking, organizing gifts by the locations we were going, afternoon at Grandmomma's and Grandaddy's and then an evening at Granny's. The best part was probably Grandmomma reading the Christmas story not from her normal, worn, King James bible, but by iphone. Something I never expected to see.

December 25: Christmas morning... breakfast at The big Jerkins and our nieces opened their gifts (but only for about an hour and half because we had church), church service, afternoon with my family, and then the night back at the big Jerkins to open all of our gifts.

No love on Christmas

December 26: Breakfast at Jody's Donuts, picked up rental vans for winter camp, and did last minute things for that, lunch with my immediate family and then everyone came back to our house to open presents. Then later that night we went to Daniel's aunt and unlce's house and did our Christmas with them.

December 27: 3:30a.m. the alarm clock went off. It was time for winter camp... 2 hours later we were on our way to Blowing Rock, North Carolina. We were there from Tuesday-Friday. It was a great trip. Beauitiful scenery, great escape from our every day lives, great worship and teaching... maybe one of my favorite trips.

Group picture

Sugar Mountain


Proof I skied

Impromptu volleyball

Exhausted

Awesome worship leaders: Jeff and Rachel Maxwell

Loved the view. This guy isn't too bad either.

Today brought me back to the real world... well partly. School resumes on Monday but today-Friday we offer daycare for our campus... aka play days. So its a nice ease back into the real world.