Hang Out Happened
The dude Rza and Yoko Ono. Wonder whose winning Lol. Rza is the man, can't wait to see his directorial debut The Man With The Iron Fist starring Russell Crowe.
Snapped:Sade
Ever gorgeous and illusive, the talented and mysterious Sade Adu is a heavenly creature.
Lasagna-Inspired Double-Stuffed Manicotti
- The recipe uses hand-rolled pasta from scratch. Don’t be put off; it’s actually pretty easy. (I also used a wood rolling pin on a wood cutting board to roll the dough, which gives the finished pasta a slightly rougher texture than you'd get using a pasta machine; that roughness really holds the sauce.) Many people use store-bought manicotti shells, store-bought lasagna strips, or crepes made from a thinner pasta batter for their manicotti. Because this recipe has the pasta being rolled over twice, store-bought manicotti shells just won’t work. Either of the other two ways should be fine if you decide not to make your own pasta dough.
- The meat filling is an easy home-made turkey sausage made from plain ground turkey and a spice combination from a wonderful Italian Sausage recipe published by Michelle Gambel on allrecipes.com. (If you'd like to check it out – and I recommend you do - here’s the link: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/homemade-sweet-italian-sausage-mild-or-hot/)
- For the sauce, you can either use a good store-bought one or make your own, using your favorite recipe or, if you like, the easy no-cook sauce featured here a while back (http://kisskissings.blogspot.com/2011/02/easy-no-cook-tomato-sauce.html).
- On a well-floured surface, roll on piece a rectangle about 1/16” and as close to 6”x 9” as you can manage. (The dimensions won’t be exact and it won’t be a perfect rectangle; it’s ok.)
- About 2” from one of the short edges, put about ¼ cup of the cheese mixture.
- Fold the 2” piece over the cheese, and roll slightly to enclose it completely, leaving a little more than half of the pasta piece still unrolled.
- Put some of the meat mixture (1/3 – ½ cup) on the unrolled portion of the pasta, enough to cover it while leaving some uncovered pasta at the far end.
- Carefully roll the cheese-filled portion over it until it is enclosed by the meat-filled portion.
- Repeat the above steps for all the pasta pieces, placing each in the baking pan as they are finished.
I recently received an e-mail from loyal reader Judy asking if I had a good recipe for manicotti. Having no manicotti recipe, good or otherwise, got me thinking it was time to put one together.For some reason, this also started me thinking about lasagna, and thus evolved this week’s recipe: Lasagna-Inspired Double-Stuffed Manicotti. The idea is simple: prepare manicotti pasta that’s a bit longer than normal. After you place your cheese filling and roll the pasta around it, spread seasoned meat filling over the remaining portion of the pasta, and continue to roll that around the cheese filled part. This creates a double-rolled manicotti with cheese in the inner roll and seasoned meat in the outer roll. Top it with sauce and some mozzarella, bake, and the result is simply delizioso!
Some Cook’s Notes before we begin.
This recipe makes 8 large manicotti. That translates to 8 normal human portions, or 4 big-eater portions.
First, let’s make the pasta:
In a large bowl combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, ½ teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon dried parsley.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Put 1 teaspoon of olive oil and 3 egg-substitute eggs into the well and whisk the wet ingredients together.
After the wet ingredients are mixed, gradually stir in the flour mixture until a dough forms.
Knead for about five minutes until dough is smooth and elastic.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and let rest while you prepare the remaining items, but not less than 20 minutes.
To roast the red peppers:
Place the peppers directly on the stove burner. Give them as much flame as you can without having the flame touch the pepper. As each side blackens, use tongs to turn the pepper till all sides are blackened. When the peppers have blackened on all sides, wrap them in foil and let them steam themselves until cool enough to handle, about 20 – 30 minutes.
Once the peppers are cool enough to handle, use your fingers to remove the blackened outside skins. Dice the peppers and set aside.
To make the meat filling:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.In a bowl, combine 1-1/2 pounds of ground turkey and the following: 1-1/2 tablespoon red wine vinegar; ½ tablespoon salt; ½ tablespoon fresh ground black pepper; 2 teaspoons dried parsley; ½ tablespoon garlic powder; ½ tablespoon onion powder; ½ tablespoon dried basil; 1 teaspoon paprika; 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (for medium-hot sausage; more or less to taste); 1/4 teaspoon ground fennel seed; a pinch of brown sugar; a pinch of dried oregano; and a pinch of dried thyme.
Put 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet. Add two cloves of chopped garlic and 1 medium diced onion. Cook until the onion is translucent. Add the turkey mixture and cook until it is browned.
Add 6 ounces of tomato paste and roasted red peppers for about the last minute of cooking.
To make the cheese filling:
In a bowl, add 2 cups of ricotta cheese and 2 egg-substitute eggs, and mix till combined. Add 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1 teaspoon dried basil, and 1-1/2 cups of grated parmesan.
To prepare the manicotti:
Lightly brush a 13” x 9” baking dish with olive oil, and spread just enough marinara sauce inside to cover the bottom, about ½ cup.
Cut the pasta dough into eight pieces. Repeat the steps below for each of the pieces. (Keep unused dough wrapped in the plastic to prevent drying out.)
When all the rolled pasta pieces are in the baking dish, cover with 2 cups of marinara sauce and 8 ounces of grated mozzarella cheese.
Bake until bubbly, about 30 minutes.Remove the manicotti from the oven, sprinkle the top with dried parsley, and let it rest for 5-10 minutes before serving.
Add a nice dry Italian red wine and you’ve got yourself a fresh-made meal that everyone will love. Buon appétito!
For a cookbook-style copy of the recipe in .pdf format, just click here!
Please visit again next week for another home-made recipe! Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)
Cool Video
This video is very cool. I found it at Bad Astronomy. The video comes from Norway, which looks like a pretty cool place to visit. Just watch it and do not judge me for enjoying stuff.
Ancient Aliens Ridiculousness
The last two episodes of Ancient Aliens have been even more idiotic than usual. I love that they use the same six locations/incidents as proof and they just try to reanalyze it each episode. One of these episodes focused on Pumapunku, which is a pre-Incan site in Bolivia. You may recognize it as the place with these giant H-blocks.
Needless to say, Ancient Alien Theorists believe this place was built by aliens. The place was built with immense precision and David Chidress shows us this precision by taking a square and showing how the cuts are exactly 90 degrees. Except, if you watch him, he puts the square against the block and you can see that the square is not even close to being exact. I am not taking anything away from the ancient engineers, but if you are claiming an advanced race made these blocks and they are not 100% exact, I am not buying it.
Speaking of David Childress...who is this guy? He comes off as some expert in archaeology, but unfortunately, he actually has no real credentials. He spent one year at a university. He writes books about this crap and people consider him an expert. Makes me laugh.
Another thing the AAT kept pointing to was the fact that inside these granite blocks, there are holes drilled into them. They claim that these holes must have been cut with some kind of drill from the future. Maybe a hypersonic drill. Do you know why they claim this? When they had an expert look at the cuts, he said there was no evidence of any kind of mechanical tool used, that the markings were typical of some kind of hand tool. Granted, the guy said that he did not think they were made with the known tools of that society at that time.
Naturally, the AAT people came to the conclusion that they must have used something that we do not have yet. Instead of trying to find a reasonable explanation, they went out and said "oh, it must be a hypersonic laser drill from Space Home Depot."
One of the theories regarding how the ancient folks moved these blocks the 10 KM up into the mountains says that the people used trees as rollers. The AAT people say that this is impossible because there are no trees up that high. Umm, this is true, but there are trees near the actual quarry site. It would seem to make more sense to lay the rollers as you go, not backwards. Or you can claim that they were levitated there by aliens. Yep, that makes more sense.
The AAT also claim that the granite is flat, which is proof that it was worked by aliens. I am not a geologist, but I could have sworn that I heard in some science class once that granite can be naturally flat. I have no clue whether or not the quarry where the large stones came from actually is one of those sites that produces relatively flat blocks. However, that would probably be what I would look into.
My favorite part of the episode involved a reconstruction of what the site must have looked like. They theorize that these blocks must have interconnected to either become a landing pad or a launch ramp. Allow me to explain this for a second.
These aliens travel millions of light-years, they have a technology that allows them to basically bend the laws of physics. They either have to create wormholes, which would take an enormous amount of energy, or maybe the discovered something that travels faster than light. Even though these things sound super improbable, stay with me.
They get to Earth and the first thing they do is build a landing port made out of granite. They do not have some kind of material or portable landing pad? Why would they need a launch ramp? If they made it here, would they really need to build a granite launch pad? They would not come prepared?
Another idea is that they used Pumapunku as a base camp. Again, I ask why build such a massive structure? When our military went to Iraq, they did not start building a ziggurat to house the troops. Nor did they start making tents out of animal hides like the Bedouin use. No, they brought their own portable camps with them. You mean to tell me that aliens would not have tents? Or some awesome pop up building?
The reason the H-blocks are no longer in place is because it appears that an earthquake may have hit the area at some point. Or, if you are an AAT: aliens destroyed the site with lasers (or a meteor) before they left. Yet, I would think if they fired some super energy weapon at their own base camp that we would see some evidence. Right? Heat marks on the blocks? What if they used a meteor? I would hope there would be some evidence.
Or maybe there was a cosmic battle and another alien group came and destroyed the base. After they destroyed the base though, they flew back there and picked up all the dead aliens and dropped weapons. The wreckage was cleaned up thoroughly and to this day there is no proof of this epic battle.
The last episode focused on Bigfoot. Yep, Bigfoot. The AAT claim that there is a connection between UFO sightings and Bigfoot. There probably is a connection. Crazy people who think they see Bigfoot, whenever they see a bear, probably identify a plane as an UFO as well.
I was actually somewhat excited about this episode since I actually like watching Bigfoot shows. They are so ridiculous, but they try so hard to be scientific. I will actually give them points for that one. They at least try. The AAT do not even try. They just make shit up.
For example, they claim that Enkido from The Epic of Gilgamesh must have been a Bigfoot. Because he was described as a hairy wild man. Without getting into too much of an analysis of that story, let me just say that Enkido represents the uncivilized aspect of the world around Sumer during that time. Gilgamesh has to go out and try to defeat the wild, yet cannot. Instead he gives Enkido a girl and that tames the wild man.
I honestly did not find too much to really care about the episode. They were grasping at straws. The only really far out theory was that the aliens built the Oregon caves in order to hide Bigfoot. Seems reasonable to me.
The other day when I was at Barnes and Noble I decided to pick up Philip Coppens book, The Ancient Alien Question. I was intrigued as I read the first couple chapters. He basically goes about disproving many of the theories. Then I skipped ahead to his conclusion and he still believes in ancient aliens because of the proof in his book, which like the other "proof" is just misinterpretation.
Needless to say, Ancient Alien Theorists believe this place was built by aliens. The place was built with immense precision and David Chidress shows us this precision by taking a square and showing how the cuts are exactly 90 degrees. Except, if you watch him, he puts the square against the block and you can see that the square is not even close to being exact. I am not taking anything away from the ancient engineers, but if you are claiming an advanced race made these blocks and they are not 100% exact, I am not buying it.Speaking of David Childress...who is this guy? He comes off as some expert in archaeology, but unfortunately, he actually has no real credentials. He spent one year at a university. He writes books about this crap and people consider him an expert. Makes me laugh.
Another thing the AAT kept pointing to was the fact that inside these granite blocks, there are holes drilled into them. They claim that these holes must have been cut with some kind of drill from the future. Maybe a hypersonic drill. Do you know why they claim this? When they had an expert look at the cuts, he said there was no evidence of any kind of mechanical tool used, that the markings were typical of some kind of hand tool. Granted, the guy said that he did not think they were made with the known tools of that society at that time.
Naturally, the AAT people came to the conclusion that they must have used something that we do not have yet. Instead of trying to find a reasonable explanation, they went out and said "oh, it must be a hypersonic laser drill from Space Home Depot."
One of the theories regarding how the ancient folks moved these blocks the 10 KM up into the mountains says that the people used trees as rollers. The AAT people say that this is impossible because there are no trees up that high. Umm, this is true, but there are trees near the actual quarry site. It would seem to make more sense to lay the rollers as you go, not backwards. Or you can claim that they were levitated there by aliens. Yep, that makes more sense.
The AAT also claim that the granite is flat, which is proof that it was worked by aliens. I am not a geologist, but I could have sworn that I heard in some science class once that granite can be naturally flat. I have no clue whether or not the quarry where the large stones came from actually is one of those sites that produces relatively flat blocks. However, that would probably be what I would look into.
My favorite part of the episode involved a reconstruction of what the site must have looked like. They theorize that these blocks must have interconnected to either become a landing pad or a launch ramp. Allow me to explain this for a second.
These aliens travel millions of light-years, they have a technology that allows them to basically bend the laws of physics. They either have to create wormholes, which would take an enormous amount of energy, or maybe the discovered something that travels faster than light. Even though these things sound super improbable, stay with me.
They get to Earth and the first thing they do is build a landing port made out of granite. They do not have some kind of material or portable landing pad? Why would they need a launch ramp? If they made it here, would they really need to build a granite launch pad? They would not come prepared?
Another idea is that they used Pumapunku as a base camp. Again, I ask why build such a massive structure? When our military went to Iraq, they did not start building a ziggurat to house the troops. Nor did they start making tents out of animal hides like the Bedouin use. No, they brought their own portable camps with them. You mean to tell me that aliens would not have tents? Or some awesome pop up building?
The reason the H-blocks are no longer in place is because it appears that an earthquake may have hit the area at some point. Or, if you are an AAT: aliens destroyed the site with lasers (or a meteor) before they left. Yet, I would think if they fired some super energy weapon at their own base camp that we would see some evidence. Right? Heat marks on the blocks? What if they used a meteor? I would hope there would be some evidence.
Or maybe there was a cosmic battle and another alien group came and destroyed the base. After they destroyed the base though, they flew back there and picked up all the dead aliens and dropped weapons. The wreckage was cleaned up thoroughly and to this day there is no proof of this epic battle.
The last episode focused on Bigfoot. Yep, Bigfoot. The AAT claim that there is a connection between UFO sightings and Bigfoot. There probably is a connection. Crazy people who think they see Bigfoot, whenever they see a bear, probably identify a plane as an UFO as well.
I was actually somewhat excited about this episode since I actually like watching Bigfoot shows. They are so ridiculous, but they try so hard to be scientific. I will actually give them points for that one. They at least try. The AAT do not even try. They just make shit up.
For example, they claim that Enkido from The Epic of Gilgamesh must have been a Bigfoot. Because he was described as a hairy wild man. Without getting into too much of an analysis of that story, let me just say that Enkido represents the uncivilized aspect of the world around Sumer during that time. Gilgamesh has to go out and try to defeat the wild, yet cannot. Instead he gives Enkido a girl and that tames the wild man.
I honestly did not find too much to really care about the episode. They were grasping at straws. The only really far out theory was that the aliens built the Oregon caves in order to hide Bigfoot. Seems reasonable to me.The other day when I was at Barnes and Noble I decided to pick up Philip Coppens book, The Ancient Alien Question. I was intrigued as I read the first couple chapters. He basically goes about disproving many of the theories. Then I skipped ahead to his conclusion and he still believes in ancient aliens because of the proof in his book, which like the other "proof" is just misinterpretation.
Weigh-In Wednesday VIII
This morning I stepped on the scale and was happy to see that I was down to 178.8. I know, this is exciting news to everyone. People have actually noticed the weight loss at work, which makes me pretty happy.
Speaking of work, I have some news to share with you. I have been transferred from the Altoona location of The Place That Shall Not Be Named to the Indiana location. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I am excited to try something new and the chance to prove myself at a high volume store.
However, I am sad to leave Altoona. The place is not easy to work at, yet I have been there for three years and I have grown to love it there. I enjoy many of the people who work there. Another thing I will is having family members stop there to see me. I highly doubt any of them will just happen to be going near Indiana.
Yesterday was my final day at Altoona, today I start at Indiana. It should be a fun time.
Speaking of work, I have some news to share with you. I have been transferred from the Altoona location of The Place That Shall Not Be Named to the Indiana location. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I am excited to try something new and the chance to prove myself at a high volume store.
However, I am sad to leave Altoona. The place is not easy to work at, yet I have been there for three years and I have grown to love it there. I enjoy many of the people who work there. Another thing I will is having family members stop there to see me. I highly doubt any of them will just happen to be going near Indiana.
Yesterday was my final day at Altoona, today I start at Indiana. It should be a fun time.
Couple Stalking:Michael Fassbender and Nicole Beharie
So it's emerged that Michael Fassbender is dating his beautiful Shame co star Nicole Beharie and I have to say I'm not surprised. They had great chemistry in Shame and I remember thinking they'd make such a lovely real life couple and it's as if they heard me lol. Get ready for more haterade Nicole, unfortunately it will surely come. Some of Michael's nuttier female fans have posted some disgusting, racist things and some hilarious things lol ie What is Michael's obsession with black women?!! Cue spitting the dummy and a ridiculous sense of entitlement. How many times do we see images of high profile black men with white women? Exactly. Personally, I have no problem with it whatsoever, people should date who they like. And considering I've dated different kinds of rainbow beaus, I personally don't give a shit. It's funny how when it's a black woman with a non black man that's the object of desire, some people get their panties in a twist. Double standards and hypocrisy. Some of those crazy fans are so fucking moronic, it's obvious that Fassbender likes women of colour, look who he was dating in the past. And he doesn't strike me as the sort that will hide it. Nicole seems to be his type. They're very cute together.
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