Drinking lots of water = good. Lots of bathroom breaks = not so good.

Ok, so this whole posting two days in a row is new to me, but I HAD to share with you one of my greatest purchases ever.

Saturday when Jen and I were on our very long, food binging walk, we wandered into Uncle Dan's on Southport where I picked up the GREATEST water bottle ever. I had been wanting to get a SIGG ever since hearing that my beloved Nalgenes could possibly cause cancer. However, seeing as though I own 6, yes, 6 Nalgene's, I wasn't jumping at the chance to spend $25+ on a water bottle. Although, now that I have, I will never go back. I love the beautiful purple metallic and the smaller mouth opening of my SIGG. So much so that I had countless liters of water yesterday and believe I have already consumed about 3 liters today as well. Which leads me to the second part of this post. I am so excited to drink out of my pretty water bottle that I have already gone to the bathroom over 4 times today! That is just not normal. I think I may have to layoff the water or just train my body so I'm not spending the better part of my work day in the bathroom :)

Oh, and another bonus of the SIGG versus a Nalgene, even when the 1 liter bottle (what I bought) is completely full, it is still LIGHTER than my Nalgene. Ahh, now I actually won't mind lugging my water bottle around with me. That and it's pretty.

Stay hydrated!

Newly Revamped Blog and a New Post to go Along with It

I'm so excited to start posting about all things I love and not just food and cooking. Although, I have to admit that this first posting does involve food. But nothing I've made, only consumed :)

I woke up yesterday SUPER excited for my Hot Doug's date with Jen. I had been dreaming about those duck fat fries and what hot dog I would have since Thursday when we made our plans. After I FINALLY got ready, I hopped in the car to pick up Jen. Well, that was all great until I was driving down Belmont and all of a sudden heard a huge *CRUNCH*. Yeah, that's right, I got in a car accident - something I don't love :( After swapping insurance, going to the police station to file the report and then contacting my insurance company it was almost 4pm, so we decided to go somewhere a little closer to the house that we could walk to :)

As disappointed as I was for not being able to indulge in those duck fat fries, I am very glad we decided to take a walk to Rockstar Dogs instead. Besides them being out of The Yardbird, which is a turkey dog, the food was DELICIOUS! After stuffing our faces and FINALLY having food in our stomachs, Jen and I were happy campers. Although be careful because the girl working when we went wasn't the peachiest, but that didn't affect the taste of our food.


As happy as we were after Rockstar Dogs, we were even happier when we came upon Swirlz Cupcakes on our walk home. After reading about Swirlz in a Daily Candy email when it first opened, it has been on my list of places to try. Now that I have finally made it there, I can't believe I waited that long, but it was definitely worth it! I had a hard time deciding between the vanilla and the carrot cake cupcakes, but am so glad I ended up choosing the carrot cake. The cake was soooooo moist and the frosting, which is an Italian buttercream cream cheese was so light and fluffy with the perfect amount of cream cheese flavor. O-M-G! Just reliving that experience has me pining for more. However, I think I have to give the vanilla a try next time, which will come a lot sooner than my first visit. These cupcakes were perfect after a day like yesterday, but I can see myself just making excuses as to why I need a Swirlz Cupcake.


So although my day didn't start out the way I had planned, it ended up fantastic, having added two places onto my list of those that I need to visit again. Frequently :)

STUFFED.

Ok, so the last time I posted I thought my next entry would be much closer to the last. HOWEVER, as usual, life got in the way and I hadn't really cooked anything worth talking about until tonight. I've had the recipe and the ingredients in my fridge for about two weeks now, so it was about time that I made these LASAGNA ROLL-UPS. All I have to say is YUM!!!! Oh, and STUFFED. I ate two of these roll-ups and I feel like I will be good for days. :) Now, for even better news......I GOT A NEW CAMERA!!!! My posts will never go picture-less again! Yea!!!! Well, without further ado, here is the recipe, complete with pictures!

Spicy Italian Sausage Lasagna Roll-Ups
(original recipe: Shrimp Lasagna Roll-Ups, Annie's Eats)



Ingredients:
6 lasagna noodles
1/2 package Johnsonville HOT Italian Sausage
salt and pepper
15 oz. ricotta cheese
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
1 egg, lightly beaten
2-3 tbsp. chopped fresh basil
pinch of nutmeg
1 3/5 cups marinara sauce, divided
shredded mozzarella for topping

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat. Add the lasagna noodles and cook until al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain and set aside.

White the water is boiling/noodles are cooking, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the Italian Sausage to the pan and brown. At this point, I did add some garlic because I love it, but the sausage is plenty flavorful on it's own to leave it out. Once the sausage has been browned, remove it from the heat and let cool. Mix the cooled sausage into a bowl with 1 cup of ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup parmesan, the egg, basil, salt, pepper and nutmeg.

In another bowl, combine 1 1/2 ups of marinara sauce with the remaining ricotta, to taste - stirring until smooth. I accidentally used ALL of the leftover ricotta and it was surprisingly good! However, the next time around, I think I will add less so it is more marinara, less ricotta. However, with my little mess up, I ended up with a lot of left over sauce/ricotta mixture that will go great later in the week with my leftover sausage and some pasta!

In a baking dish, spread the remaining 1/4 cup of marinara sauce so the bottom is covered. Lay the noodles flat on a cutting board and spread the sausage/ricotta mixture evenly over the length of each noodle. Once the mixture has been divided evenly over each noodle, roll them up and place seam-side down in the baking dish. Top the roll-ups with the sauce/ricotta mixture and shredded mozzarella.

Bake the roll-ups until they are heated through and the sauce begins to brown, about 25 minutes. I'm not sure if my oven temperature is off or not, but I had to cook the roll-ups longer then 25 minutes even though my oven was more than pre-heated. I think they baked for about 35 minutes in all.

Wait a few minutes to cool and then dig in! Each recipe makes about 3 servings, but if you're serving sides, you can probably get even more servings. I actually think 1 1/2 roll-ups per person would be the perfect serving size. Too bad they get messy when you start cooking into them.... Although, if you're not worried about presentation, you could probably get 4 servings out of one batch, but that all depends on who you're feeding ;)