Dished Up: Chicken and Spinach Lasagne

With food prices going up and up, I'm always looking for tasty but cheap sandwich fillings for the husband's pack lunches. One thing I do quite often is roast a chicken at the beginning of the week. Half a chicken is enough to feed us as a family so I use half for a meal then shred the other half and use for lunches. One of the meals I make with the chicken is this tasty lasagne. To keep the cost of this meal down I have used dried lasagne but this requires precooking for this recipe. If your budget stretches to it then use fresh lasagne. If your time stretches to it then make your own!

I think this recipe could feed four adults if you serve it with some garlic bread or something like that. We had it with a tomato salad dressed with some yummy Blonde Balsamic Dressing which was a really nice contrast to the creamy lasagne. If you think you'd still be hungry then the recipe is easily doubled.

Prep Time: If your chicken and lasagne are already cooked then the prep should only take you 10-15 minutes
Cooking and Rest time: 40 minutes

What you need:
Half a cooked chicken, shredded
380g tin of spinach
Reserved juices from the chicken, fat skimmed off
300ml reduced fat crème fraiche
1/4 nutmeg, freshly grated
Salt and pepper
Approx 250g lasagne, cooked
50g freshly grated parmesan

What to do:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Drain the spinach really well and squeeze out all the excess water. Put this in a large bowl with the shredded chicken and mix well.
3. Mix the chicken juices with the creme fraiche. Add the grated nutmeg and season well.
4. Spread a couple of spoons of this over the bottom of an oven dish and add a layer of cooked lasagne. Reserve a couple more spoons of the cream for the top.
5. Mix the rest of the cream in with the chicken and spinach and spread half of the mixture over the lasagne.
6. Add another layer of the cooked pasta, if you're feeding hungry people then double up the pasta to fill them up.
7. Spread the rest of the chicken mix over this and top again with cooked lasagne.
8. Spread the cream you reserved earlier over the top and sprinkle the grated parmesan over the whole thing.
9. Pop it in the oven for 35 minutes. When the time is up take the lasagne out and let it stand for 5-10 minutes. This will help the layers to stick together and make the lasagne easier to serve.

Enjoy with a salad and if you want some garlic or crusty bread. Cassie xx

You can find this post and many other over at Snippets Of Inspiration here.

Make a Dress Up Dolly: The Dolly

For Christmas this year I made two of my nieces and my daughter their own dress up dolly. It was fun to make and fun to play with. I especially enjoyed making the dollies their own super hero suit! I had seen a version before (no superhero suit though) that I think was called 'flats' but I cannot find the link any where so I have decided to write my own tutorial for those of you who would like to make one for the little girls in your life. It is broken down into 2 parts: the dolly and the clothes. I have made 3 dollies so some of the photos show all three but obviously you can just make one or two if you want to.

You Will Need:
Flesh coloured felt
Hair coloured felt (I used brown and orange to coordinate with their hair but you might need yellow or black)
Iron-on fusible bondaweb
Backing fabric
Velcro (just the prickly side)
Hot Glue

Method:
First of all make yourself a template, feel free to print out one of my pictures as a guide or just fold a piece of paper in half and draw half a person and then cut it out. Next iron some fusible bondaweb onto your backing fabric and then draw around your template onto the paper side. Cut these pieces out and then remove the paper. Put the side to stick face down onto your flesh coloured felt, cover over with a tea towel or some other fabric and iron the person to the felt. The felt won't survive under the heat of the iron without the tea-towel. When it has fused cut out the person again. You should now have your felt person fused to your backing fabric.

Now you need to make the 'underwear'. Using your template, measure some velcro to cut out knickers and a vest. You will probably have the vest in two pieces. Then use your glue gun to stick them on. I stitched a line around the neck line, vest hem and waist band using my sewing machine to make them extra secure but this is not totally necessary.

Next cut out your hair pieces using your template as a guide from the right colour felt and again glue these on. Your dolly is complete! Hold on to your template as you will need this next week to make the clothes. Zoe xx

You can find this post and many other on Snippets Of Inspiration here.

Photo Friday Challenge

Have you ever seen the Instagram weekend hashtag project? If you're on Instagram try following the 'Instagram' account where they set a weekend challenge to take a particular photo or video. I always want to join in but to be honest I never get round to it so I have been thinking about setting a similar challenge for myself. Then this Christmas I was given the 'A Beautiful Mess Photo Idea' book written by my favourite bloggers at A Beautiful Mess. It has lots of ideas for photos I would like to try but it could easily be something I read once and never actually do so I'm going to set myself one photo challenge per week this year.  This is going to take the form of the 'Photo Friday Challenge'. This is a self imposed challenge I am going to set each week.  Some of the ideas will be inspired by the book, others from the weekend hashtag project and others will be more focused on learning new camera functions or techniques in Photoshop.

Each Friday I'll share with you my photo that I took for the previous weeks challenge and let you know what I learnt from that challenge. Then I will set the challenge for the following week with the rules. (All self imposed so its possible I'll bend them from time to time!)

If you want to join in please do! Every challenge will be suitable for a beginner.  For most of the challenges all you'll need is a basic camera and some imagination. Occasionally you might need a DSLR or some editing software. You don't have to do every single challenge along with me but if you try out one or two let me know by commenting and leaving a link to your photo. Or you can share your photo with me via Instagram or Twitter (@zoeblofeld) or on Google+ (+Zoeblofeld).

General rules:

1. In general only minimal editing allowed. The idea is to practise taking photos that optimise what I have at hand so the post production can be kept to a minimum. So think about the light, the framing (minimal editing includes minimal cropping) and the background as well as your subject. If the challenge is to learn a new way to edit then obviously this rule won't apply.

2. Any camera can work unless that challenge says otherwise. It's not about having a fancy camera necessarily but about pushing myself (or yourself) to take better photos with what's available. 

3. Try to make each photo imaginative. 

4. Take a new photo for each challenge and not use an old photo that is stored on my computer. 

So those rules apply every week (unless stated otherwise in the challenge) and the following rules apply to just the first weeks challenge. 

Challenge 1: Simple Selfie (Experiment with light)

Camera: suitable for any camera

Software: none needed

Other equipment: a tripod, self timer or camera remote could be handy but not essential. 

Rules:

1.Take a photo of yourself. You must be the taker of the photo and you must appear in the photo. 
2. Try out different lighting, full sun, partial sun, shade, evening sun, inside lighting etc. 

If lighting is the most important aspect of any photograph then we should get this nailed first. So its just a simple one to get us started. Let me know if you'll be joining me. Zoe x