Happy Hump Day! While you are reading this, I am out at Post 390 having dinner with a friend. I have had some major writer’s block this week. I spent much of last night working on my entry for Stonyfield’s Na-Moo-Ste Giveaway and my new Thankful for Thirty series, which I planned on posting tonight, but I just kept hitting dead ends. So tonight I am sharing a quick, easy, and delicious recipe adapted from an idea on Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Meals 2. (http://rachaelrayblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-keeper-ravioli-lasagna.html#) As usual, I took this recipe and made it my own. After a perfect 3 mile run on a warm, golden fall evening, I took to the kitchen to make a delicious dinner. My ingredients: 1 package Trader Joe’s jumbo 4 cheese ravioli 2 Trader Joe’s pesto parmesan turkey burgers, thawed 1 can peeled plum tomatoes 1/4 white onion, roughly chopped 3 cloves garlic a shake of crushed red pepper 
I started out by whipping up a homemade tomato/meat sauce for the lasagna. I mixed the onion with some olive oil and cooked until translucent, then added in the garlic. What an incredible smell! 
Then I poured in the tomatoes, liquid and all. Because the ravioli are going to cook in the sauce, having a bit of extra liquid helps to make sure they cook through.
I used a fork and wooden spoon to break up the whole tomatoes, and the result was a nice, chunky sauce. I then placed the turkey burgers in the sauce and brought it up to a low boil, stirring and breaking them up so that the sauce became a nice meat sauce.
While that was simmering I laid the first layer of ravioli in a glass baking dish. 
Then I ladled half of the sauce over the ravioli, added another layer, and repeated with the rest of the sauce. I actually ended up omitting the mascarpone cheese pictured above in the cooking because the raviolis already contained cheese. I took the whole dish and popped it in the oven at 375 for 12 minutes, waiting until the sauce was bubbling and the raviolis were tender. At the last second, we added a small scoop of mascarpone to the top of our bowls of “lasagna”. It added a rich creaminess to the dish at the very end. And I had another teaspoon all by itself. Mascarpone cheese is delicious. I don’t have a photo of the final product because I was so eager to eat. Bad food blogger! 😉 Hope you guys have a great night! Don’t forget to enter my Healthy Halloween giveaway, and I will be back tomorrow, hopefully with something inspiring!
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I started my freshman year at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the fall of 1998 as a vegetarian with some picky eating habits and quickly developed a major aversion to the food served at Berkshire Dining Hall, the closest on campus food facility to my dorm. Unlike the young whippersnappers of today who seem to have some pretty tasty on campus eats, we had cereal and a salad bar plus a variety of atrocious options heated, reheated, and then heated some more, served to us and called food. If you ate meat, you had chicken finger night to make up for the rest of the week; if you didn’t eat chicken, things were pretty bleak. Sure, make-it-yourself waffles with sugary fruit toppings and fake whipped cream or a make your own sundae bar were nice, but as someone who had already begun a journey to eating both well and balanced, these things grew old fast. The thought right now makes my teeth hurt. Clearly, I had to find something within my meager budget that would satisfy my desire for healthy and quality food. Enter Bueno y Sano. Located off of the lovely Amherst common, Bueno y Sano is a tiny restaurant that serves excellent, healthy tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and salads for dirt cheap. As students, it appealed to us because the food was cheap, filling, delicious, and healthy. For those very same reasons, I crave Bueno today. The quality cooking, as you can read on Bueno’s website, comes from an El Salvadoran family who definitely put a lot of love, tradition, and great ingredients into the food. Over the years I have tried many of Bueno’s burritos like grilled tomato and garlic, veggie chili, and sautéed spinach, all delicious and healthy in their own different ways. But I always go back to simple, bean soft tacos with crisp lettuce, chopped tomatoes, black beans, hot sauce, a slightly sharp white cheese, and yogurt. I love that Bueno was one of the first places that offered yogurt in lieu of sour cream. 
I think I am actually getting worse at photography. What sets Bueno apart from all other taco and burrito shops for me, however, is their homemade hot sauce. For years I have wanted to crack the mystery of this addictive, spicy goodness, and I have not been able to. In college, life was good. I spent $1.25 on a taco, then helped myself to 4 cups of sauce, one which I would consume with the taco, the other would be brought home and eaten with anything I could find, chips, crackers, bread, and sometimes with a spoon. This hot sauce is that good. When I get to Amherst, I stock up, but it is so fresh it must be eaten within a couple of days. I am quite lucky to have good friends who are in Amherst fairly often; they always bring Bueno out East to me. It is hard to believe, but Bueno opened a Boston location years back, and it failed. They now have restaurants in Northampton, MA, Springfield, MA, and Burlington, VT. If they came back to Boston I would love them forever. Well, I already do. Bueno was a huge part of my college life as we ate there at least a couple of times a week. And, not like I ever did ;), but if you happened to “overindulge” at a party or local watering hole, Bueno provided the best cure for headaches and other ailments the day after. If you are in any of these towns, and I can definitely recommend visits to Northampton, Amherst, and Burlington, check out Bueno y Sano. It may not be the burrito place you are used to, but I can almost guarantee you will find something that you love whether you are a vegan or want a burrito chock full of steak. Do you have any favorite budget food memories? Are they still foods that you like or miss?
I am not sure why I always wait until it is cold out to bring out the old crock pot. It doesn’t heat up the kitchen, so it is ideal for summer cooking. I guess it just calls for heavier types of meals that we don’t eat in the summertime. Over the next few months you will be seeing a lot of this crock pot. From chili to stew to macaroni and cheese to coq au vin, the crock pot is where its at if you want a hot meal made for you when you get home from work. My crock pot and most modern day crock pots have a removable pot for easier cleaning, but this also allows you to prep everything the night before, leave the pot in the fridge, and pop it in to start cooking before you leave for the day. Earlier this week, I made crock pot chicken burritos. I actually wasn’t cooking huge cuts of meat or anything like that, so I was able to put the crock pot on when I arrived home and to eat an hour later. So easy! 
Please excuse the ugly raw chicken photo above! Trader Joe’s salsa verde makes a really excellent base for a bunch of things, including burrito filling. For this recipe I took 2 large chicken breasts and placed them in the crock pot with about 3/4 jar of salsa verde. Then I set it to cook. That’s it. You could easily throw in a few cups of black beans and corn instead of chicken and slow cook that for awhile to get a perfect blend of flavors. One thing that I love about my cooking is that pretty much everything I make can be easily adapted to a meatless diet. While the chicken was cooking, I made a quick guacamole with 3 avocados, 3 cloves of garlic, some chopped white onion, and crushed red pepper. 
And a tasty salsa with a can of organic tomatoes, white onion, garlic, and a big fat habanero.
Excuse the foaminess of the salsa. . . it tasted really good. I don’t know why it looks like that. . . Once the chicken was cooked, I used a couple of forks to shred it and then put it back in the salsa to cook on low for a bit longer. Haha then I decided I didn’t want chicken, and scrambled up some eggs instead. 
My egg burrito topped with some Oikos plain yogurt. Hubs ate the chicken, and he said it was good 😉 This “recipe” is great with a whole chicken and a whole jar of salsa, cooked low and slow for a whole day. Oh the possibilities of the crock pot! I can’t wait to share all of my favorites with you. Do you have any easy crock pot recipes? My mom got me a great cookbook for crock pots last year. It is PACKED with great recipes and some that are super old school and very funny to read!
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