Spinach Lasagna Rolls

Even though I’ve said before I’m not much of a cook, and I still maintain that I’m not, I’ve started to embrace my role as a housewife.  I still shutter a little when I say “housewife.”  It’s not really met with the same kind of understanding as a stay at home mom.  The American spouses here are not allowed to work unless it’s on base, and the majority of jobs on base go to Italians.  Therefore, we’re all housewives or house husbands.  As a spouse our job is to support the mission and support our active duty members.  For me, that means I’m cooking dinner these days.  Which also means I’m pinning a lot of recipes on Pinterest!

I found and pinned this recipe ages ago over at SkinnyTaste, but I never made it.  I had a friend who tried it and had some problems, so I was never eager to give it a whirl.  However, now that I’m getting a little more creative in the kitchen, I finally decided to try it out.  We both LOVE it!  It’s really easy and feeds us for a few days.  I’ve changed it a tiny bit from the original, so here’s my version:

Ingredients:

• 10 lasagna noodles, cooked
• 10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and completely drained
• 15 oz fat free ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 egg
• salt & pepper, to taste
• 1 regular size jar tomato sauce
• 10 Tbsp part skim shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

Boil noodles for approximately 10 minutes being careful not to over cook.  Over cooked noodles will fall apart easily.  Stir noodles continually to keep them from sticking to the pot.

Ladle about 1 cup sauce on the bottom of a 9 x 12 baking dish.

In a medium bowl combine spinach, ricotta, parmesan cheese, egg, and salt & pepper. Dry each noodle and lay them out on a piece of parchment paper. I usually do about 5 noodles at a time. Take 1/3 cup of the ricotta mixture and spread evenly over each noodle. Roll each noodle carefully and place seam side down onto the baking dish.

Cover the noodles with the remaining tomato sauce and top each with 1 Tbsp mozzarella.  Cover the baking dish with foil and for about 40 minutes or until cheese melts.  Remove foil and bake an additional 5 minutes until the cheese begins to brown.

According to SkinnyTaste each roll contains just 225 calories and 5 grams of fat!  This recipe is yumm-o, I promise!  It would be easy to add some browned ground beef or turkey to the ricotta mix for a meaty version as-well.  We try not to eat meat at every meal and love it as is.

As they say in Italy, Buon Appetito!

Weekend in Florence

It only took 5 months, but we were finally able to get away for a weekend excursion.  John’s TDY this fall put a big kink in our travel plans.  Follow that up with Christmas, and that’s why it took us so long to finally travel outside of our local area.

We found a hotel just outside the historical center of Florence, and made the 3 hour trip with dogs in tow.  I’m not going to lie, driving in Florence was a NIGHTMARE, but we survived, Randy didn’t get car sick, and we had a great weekend!

It rained most of the weekend, but thankfully it was never a hard rain and it wasn’t too cold.  It was a great time to go because the crowds were at an absolute minimum.  We stood in line, without a reservation, for the Uffizi for no more than 5 minutes which is unheard of.  That was the only line and the only crowd we experienced the whole weekend.

Our first stop was the Florence Duomo (Santa Maria Della Fiore).  We climbed the 463 stairs to the top of the dome for some fantastic views of the city!

Here you can see the Santa Maria Novella Church & Santa Maria Novella train station in the distance.  When I came to Florence in college I had to give a small presentation to classmates on the SMN train station (it’s designed in the Fascist style of architecture).

 

Here you can see Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery.

The next stop on our trip was the Florence leather market.  Because of the weather (and maybe our shopping) we only have this one photo.   The market was huge with vendors selling coats, bags, wallets, belts, and anything that could be made of leather.  And it was ALL gorgeous!

Our second day in Florence we hit up the Uffizi Gallery and walked around Ponte Vecchio.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the art of course, but the views from inside the galleries were just as beautiful!

I loved this view of Ponte Vecchio and the bridges of Florence. From here you have a great view of Vasario’s corridor which connects Palazzo Vecchio with the Piiti Palace. The corridor allowed Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici to go from his home to the government offices without ever having to go out in public.

Beautiful Santa Maria Della Fiore

Florence has always been one of my favorite places, and now John has been able to experience the magic of it for himself.  It’s definitely a place both of us want to visit again (hopefully when it’s warm and sunny)!

New Years 2013

We decided for our first New Year’s in Italy we needed to do it BIG, and since Venice is only about an hour away, we decided it was the perfect location.  We were right.  It was crowded, it was filled with wine and Venetian masks galore, and it was a BIG party!  We were all sore for the next few days from all the dancing in San Marco square.  I don’t think we could have picked a better location for our first New Year’s here.

 

We found this lovely lady all dressed up for the night.  Group shot was a must!

The girls: Jessica, Katie, & Lauren

Happy 2013!!  Let the dancing begin!

The them of the night was photo bomb.  With our masks on, our goal was to jump in as many photos as possible.  Here’s Jessica bombing a midnight shot of John & I.  Our only regret is we will never see all of our awesome photo bombs from the night. 

Right after the festivities the city of Venice posted a video of the grand party.  I think this is the best summation of our night.  It truly was a blast and has set the bar really high for future New Year’s.  2014 has a lot to live up to!

Pay close attention at the 3:30 mark.  You might see someone you recognize acting a fool!

Casa Bigbie Italia – The Tour

Well, I’m finally getting on the ball and get the house tour posted.  The sad thing is, you’ll notice the pictures were taken when we still had our Christmas decorations up, and I’m just now getting to writing the blog.  We’ve been in our house now for about 3 and a half months and we love our little Italian abode.  Only, it’s not little.  It’s huge.  And wonderful.  So without further adieu allow me to present Casa Bigbie Italia.

We live on a quiet street in a town called Roveredo in Piano.  Our neighbors are mostly older Italian couples, and they have been super nice to us since we moved in.  While I was in the States in November, one neighbor came and raked our yard and pruned all of our trees and bushes for us. 

Say, “Hi!” to Randy.  He’s hoping I’m about to take him on a walk.

Here you can see how we drive down into our basement garage.  It’s really nice having a useful garage here.  The driveway gate is motorized which is a rarity in rental houses.

We have a really nice living room with beautiful windows and French doors.  You can see the neighbor’s house across the street through the window.  Randy gave up on the walk and settled for a nap on the couch.  Our heat in the house is all radiator.  See it under the window?  We were a little scared by this at first, but it’s not too bad.

We LOVE our wood burning fireplace.  We use it nightly,and it makes the room so cozy!  Notice our floors.  We have 3 different types of marble on the main floor.  We have a light brown in the living room, a medium brown in the main hall, and grey in the kitchen.  Oh, and that porch?  Marble floors.  Crazy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our kitchen is very big and modern, especially by Italian standards.  We looked at a lot of houses where the kitchens were so small, the refrigerator had to go in another room.  Here, ours is built into the cabinets.  You can see the handles in the bottom right corner of the picture.  We also love that we have enough room for a breakfast table.  As soon as we moved in, we knew our old table was going to be way too big for the space, so we picked this guy up from Ikea.  It has hidden leaves so we can expand it when we have guests.

Main Hall.  One thing you’ve probably started to notice is the white walls.  Yep, this baby’s all white.  Except the bathroom.

Yes, here we’ve got floor to ceiling blue and white pirate ships with pink fixtures.  It’s pretty amazing.  If you follow John on facebook, you’ve probably already seen the video tour gave of this bathroom, complete with a bidet demonstration.  Honestly, as bizarre as the pirate ships are, we love how unique this bathroom is!

Our bedroom is on the front of the house which is a little weird, but it’s a nice big bedroom.  All the bedrooms on this floor have wood floors.

The 2nd and 3rd bedrooms are used as an office/storage room and closet respectfully.  We hope to eventually have a new bed made for our room, and move our bed into here and turn it into a 2nd guest room (the other is in the basement which you’ll see in a minute).  The 3rd “bedroom” we turned into our closet.  The base provided us with 4 wardrobes, because Italian houses do not have built-in closets.  This room is TINY.  A twin size bed would be tight in here, so it was a no brainer to turn it into our closet. 

Now we head down to basement where all the floors are brown tile.  No marble down here!  The grey door leads to the garage.  The door to the left is our guest room, and the door to the right goes to the living area, laundry, and full bath.  I told you this house was big!

We put our guest room in the basement because there is another full bath down here.  We figured our guests (and we hope we have many!) would appreciate having their own space and not having to share with us. 

  This is the basement family room.  We haven’t done much with this room because, well, we ran out of furniture.  Everything in here our landlord built.  He built the bar, the wine rack, the chairs, and the wine barrel table.  They lived in this house for 30 years and raised their family here, before moving to Milan a few years ago.  We love the charm in this room and can’t wait to make it more functional.  I mean, did you see that fireplace??  This room is also another reason for putting the guest room down in the basement.  At my grandparent’s house all the grandkids used to stay in the basement bedrooms.  We had our own den to play in down there and “escape” from the adults.  We figured guests might enjoy having a place to "escape” to if they needed a break.  Through the closed door is the bathroom and laundry area.

The basement bath is pretty large and is also where we do laundry in our miniature washer and dryer.

And finally we have our garage.  It’s just a one car garage, but we love it.  Notice even the garage floor is tiled!  One of the great things about our garage (which you can barely see in the photo) is the built-in work table and cabinets.  LOVE having extra storage!  Also, our breaker box is in here by the garage door.   We usually have to flip it a few times a week (sometimes a few times a day).  These houses can only support a small electrical load before it trips the breaker.  For example you can not run the washer and the dryer at the same time.  Or the oven and the microwave.  Or the dishwasher and the dryer.  It’s a pain, but it’s all part of the Italian life!

 

And finally, I leave you with a couple photos from our first (and so far only) snow day on December 8.  So when are you coming to visit????

Skinny Chicken Pot Pie Soup

I’m not much of a recipe sharer.  Shoot, I’m not even much of a cook.  But I figured that since I’ve made this soup twice since coming home 3 weeks ago, it’s worth sharing.  John and I really like to make our own version of chicken pot pie, so when I found this recipe on Pinterest, I knew it was worth a try. 

It’s cold and rainy today, plus I’m feeling a bit under the weather, so I decided chicken pot pie soup was just what the doctor ordered.  It’s easy to make, it’s filling, and it’s oh so yummy.  Even though it’s made with skim milk and no heavy cream, this soup is rich and creamy and guilt free!  I made a few changes to the original recipe (found here) to adapt it my taste and use things that I regularly keep in my pantry.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups broth (reserved from boiling chicken)  
• 1/2 cup water
• 4 cups skim milk
• 1/2 chopped onion
• 8 oz sliced mushrooms 
• 1 container Knorr Homestyle chicken stock concentrate or 2 chicken bouillon cubes.
• 10 oz frozen classic mixed vegetables (peas, carrots, green beans, corn)
• 1 large potato cut into bite size pieces 
• 2 large or 3 small chicken breasts, cooked & cut into small pieces (or 1 pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from your grocery store deli)
• salt & pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp cornstarch

Directions:

Boil chicken until cooked through and reserve 2 cups of the broth.  Add broth, milk, and chicken stock to a large pot and bring to a slow boil.  Stir often to prevent milk from scorching.  Add mushrooms, vegetables, onion, and celery to pot and simmer for 20 – 30 minutes until vegetables are cooked.  Add potatoes and cook until soft (about 10 minutes).  Wisk together 1/2 cup water with cornstarch.  Add chicken and cornstarch mixture to soup.  Salt and pepper to taste, and stir until soup thickens.

Serve with a fresh baguette and enjoy!

Oktoberfest!

A couple of years ago, John and I took a trip to Stuttgart and Munich, Germany for their spring beer festivals.  Ever since, we’ve dreamed of going to Oktoberfest.  Now, that dream has become a reality, and what a whirlwind day it was!

Here on base we have something called the Information, Tickets, & Travel office, called ITT for short.  Every year ITT offers express trips to Munich each of the 3 weekends of Oktoberfest.  For a very reasonable fee, they provide buses that take us from Aviano to the fairgrounds in Munich for one very long day trip.

John and I woke up around 1:00 am on Saturday, October 6 to catch the 1:45 bus to Munich.  We might have slightly over prepped a little with plenty of pillows and blankets to get the best sleep possible on the bus.  We drove through the night and stopped around 7 am for breakfast.  I have no idea where we were, somewhere near the Austria/Germany line, but the views we gorgeous!

A couple more hours on the bus, and we were there!  At the entrance to the grounds stands the Bavaria Statue with a large grassy hill on either side.  By the end of the day, this hill would be filled with people trying, some not so successfully, to sleep off the day’s beer.

  We walked through the fairgrounds, passing the beer tents, pretzel venders, and amusement rides.

It was only 9:30 in the morning, but the fairgrounds were filling up FAST!  All 6 of the Munich breweries are represented at Oktoberfest and each brewery has their own tent.  We were determined to hit the Hofbrauhaus tent.

See all those people?!?!  This was still only about 9:30-10:00 in the morning!  By the end of the day, this place was PACKED. 

Once we made it to the Hofbrauhaus tent, we had to get in line.  Little did we know this was going to be a theme for the day Even still, we were pretty excited to be there, hunting down beer at 10 am.  Hey, it’s 5:00 somewhere, right?  Well,at Oktoberfest, it always 5:00.

Unfortunately, wee never made it inside the tent.  After about 30 minutes, one of the security guards came to the head of line and announce that the tent would be closed for the next 3 hours!  Boo.  The crowd was growing by leaps and bounds, and neither of us enjoy being bumped into at every turn, so wee decided to ditch the fairgrounds and head into the center of Munich.  We might not be able to get into the HB tent, but we weren’t going to let that get in our way to fun.  We decided we’d to the actual Hofbrauhaus downtown. 

We took the U-bahn from the fairgrounds to Marienplatz in the heart of the pedestrian area of Munich.  We got there in time to see the puppets in the clocktower of the new town hall.

Maybe we were naive, but we were surprised to see how packed Munich was even outside of the fairgrounds.  It was wonderful.  Oktoberfest is celebrated all over the city.  The building were festively adorned with fall flowers and city flags. 

After walking around and enjoying Munich for a bit, we finally made our way to the Hofbrauhaus downtown.  As soon as we got there, we were immediately glad we made the decision to leave the fairground and head into town.  It was definitely still packed inside, but the wait to get in was only a few minutes long, and since there were only 2 of us, it was easy to find a seat.

We ended up sitting in the upstairs hall which was a real treat for John.  John loves Germany history, especially surrounding the two world wars, and the Hofbrauhaus is chock full of history, especially the large festival hall on the 3rd floor.  Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

In 1919, the Munich Communist government set up headquarters in the famous beer hall, and in 1920 Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists held their first meeting in the Festsaal, the Festival Room, on the third floor.

The hall is beautiful, and festive, and so. much. fun!  By this time, not only were we craving some serious beer, but we were also getting really hungry.  Good thing we were in the right place.  We grabbed a couple of English menus and got to work figuring out what we were having. 

We each ordered our liter of beer.  John had his favorite, the Hofbrau Dunkel, and I decided to try the Hofbrau Oktoberfestbier.

 

We decided to each pick something off the menu for lunch and share the 2 dishes.  John ordered a pork dish with gravy and a potato dumpling, while I ordered the Munich brats and sauerkraut.  Both were very tasty!

And just in case you were wondering what it’s like to put a liter of beer up to your face, well here you go.

After lunch, we decided to pick up some souvenirs and head back to the fairgrounds.   By far, one of my favorite things about Oktoberfest was the clothing!  Young and old, it didn’t matter, everyone was dressed the part.  The men wore their lederhosen and the women their dirndls. 

Remember the Bavarian Statue I mentioned earlier?  Remember the hill?  Well, by mid afternoon, things were looking a bit different.

 

John and I were so tired by this point, so we decided to find us a spot on the hill.  Look at all the people here!

Our bus picked us up around 9:30 and by 4am we were back home, where our bed was calling our names. We have black out shades on our house, so we slept until 11am without even knowing the sun had come up. Delightful.

We had a lot of fun on our day trip to Oktoberfest, and are so glad we went. Because it was so crowded, we think if we have the opportunity to go next year, that we’d like to go during the week and stay a couple of nights in town. We also learned that in order to get in one of the beer tents or beer gardens not only do you need to get there early, but you need to get in line immediately. If you wait until later, you’ll never get it. We were disappointed that we didn’t get into a tent, but that just gives us something to look forward to for the next time. We certainly wouldn’t change how we spent the day.