Happy Valentines Day & Best Lasagna Recipe & Funny Daddies

Taking a morning nap to catch up on sleep from our "sick week"

ready for a walk~

Well, it has been a week of suffering and recovering from cold's in our home! It all started with Miss Aubrey, so there were a few long nights of lying awake (okay only me) listening to her cough and make sure that she didn't choke on the mucous....this week we learned that babies throw up the mucous that they can't get out.

So, our first Valentines day as mommy and daddy! Baby in bed by 6pm. Awesome!! Ben got the groceries and I made - what we both agree is THE BEST lasagna we have ever had. After our romantic dinner, we crashed on couch watching the movie "UP". At about 7:30pm, Ben went to check on our sleeping beauty. She was sound asleep. Whew. Looked like we were going to have ourselves a nice, quiet, valentines evening :) But about 10 minutes later, I just had this feeling we should check on her again. Ben crept in and felt the covers...intuition i guess. They were wet. We picked her up and she had thrown up a lot. Poor dear needed a bath. We're not sure why she threw up, she didn't sound too congested that night, but she may have been just getting the rest out. As i held her and comforted her she started moaning and threw up again. So for the next while we held and comforted our exhausted baby who did not feel like a bath...but needed one. Bless her sweet heart!!

Once sounds asleep again, with fresh blankets and jammies, we crashed on the couch and fell asleep to our movie.

Not too exciting, nothing "hanky panky" about our Valentines day except maybe the brand of my underwear! haha! But we loved it, just being a family :)

Here is the recipe we used for our Lasagna with my alterations :

Valentines Day Lasagna Recipe


Start with the following in a pot:

1 pound (450 g) of ground beef (I used ground Bison meat)
1/2 cup (120 mL) of chopped onions
4 cloves of garlic chopped

Brown the ground beef, onions and garlic in a pot until they start to cook. It takes about 6 to 9 minutes to brown the meat. Drain the meat if you want.

Then add
1 teaspoon (5 mL) fennel seed.
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Italian Seasoning (Or dried oregano and basil)

Stir frequently for about 2 min, [adding spices before the liquids allows all of their flavours to be released.]

Add the following:

1 (28 ounce) (784 g) can of crushed tomatoes
2 (8 ounce) (230 g) cans of tomato sauce
1 (6 ounce) (168 g) can of tomato paste


Gently stir this into the cooking meat.
Add the following:

2 tablespoons (30 mL) white sugar
2 teaspoons (10 mL) fresh Basil leaves chopped
1/2 cup (30 mL) fresh Italian parsley chopped
1 teaspoon (5 mL) salt
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 mL) ground pepper
1 cup sliced mushrooms

Gently stir these seasoning into the sauce.

Cover the pot and let the meat sauce simmer. Simmer on low heat for 1 hour and 30 minutes This is the ideal simmer time but not mandatory. If you don’t have time it will still be great after one hour of simmering. (I simmered for only 20-30 minutes).

I will sometimes make this sauce and refrigerate it after it finishes simmering. I will use the meat sauce the next day to put the rest of this recipe together. For some reason Italian meat sauce taste even better the next day. But that’s up to you.

Soak 12 lasagna noodles.

The lasagna noodles need to be soaked in hot tap water for 15 minutes.

While the noodles are soaking you can make the cheese filling.
Put the following in a mixing bowl:

23 ounces (644 g) of ricotta cheese. (I used about 1.5 Cups)
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 mL) fresh grated nutmeg

Grate fresh nutmeg over the Ricotta cheese.
Add the following:

1 egg
1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley chopped
1 cup frozen spinach thawed and drained.

Mix these ingredients together with a spoon

Now you are ready to layer!! Sauce, noodles, ricotta & mozzarella , noodles, sauce, noodles, sauce and freshly grated parmesan and mozzarella.

Cover with foil, bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Take off foil and bake another 25-30 minutes until edges are brown and bubbly!

You won't be disappointed!

Now for the funny Daddies Story. While us mommies write long, detailed, emails about the choices we are making for raising our babies, the daddies are actually doing the same. Only in their own special way. The other night I happened to glance over Ben's shoulder while he was checking his emails....and I caught a glimpse of something I think you will all enjoy reading :

And I quote :

ROSS : When should I start to be scared that the little one likes being naked? She will be crying and super pissed - undress her to change diaper and BOOM, I am a happy little girl...

I don't raise stripper babies. How do you best suggest I fix this problem?

MATT : I think we've got at least another couple months to straighten this behavior out. Oddly enough, Joella acts the same way.....great, they can encourage each other in their behavior...

BEN : Must be natural instinct for babies to want to be naked cause Aubrey enjoys it as well. The good thing I've noticed is that when you go to put lotion on her legs she'll try to close them up. While I may not be able to stop the nakedness at least I have a chance at training the legs to be closed.

I do have a plan for the nakedness though and it involves a pole... The north or south pole, an igloo, and some very cold weather. That should do the trick.