Happy Friday!! I can’t believe it’s Friday yet again! Time is flying by and Summer is itching to get here for us. We’ve had a full week of beautiful warm but cool weather, a whole week of rain, a few days of bitter cold and now a few days of HOT HOT HOT baby!! My Featured Friday’s are limited as I plan to take some time off to be with my son once he is born, but don’t fret, I have some great Guest Posts scheduled, some new recipes to throw at you and of course some other interesting articles……….but for now, let’s talk about today’s Co-Host because she has quite the Recipe Index friends!! From Appetizers and Beverages to Sweets and Healthy Recipes.
Meet Coleen, she is the Momma, food blogger, wife and baker behind The Redhead Baker! Thanks so much for Co-Hosting with me this week Coleen! I don’t even remember how I came across your blog, it’s the fun in this little project I call “Featured Friday”. Researching and checking out other blogs is fun. I love how people’s photo’s can reel me in, how the recipes can make me drool and how the styles of writing can be so unique! Coleen is all of this rolled into one blog!
Coleen is a graphic designer by day, a Momma and Wife by night, and in her spare time you will find her in the kitchen cooking, baking and creating!! I love the way that Coleen realized that baking for a living wasn’t for her. She entered the part-time pastry program where she lives in Pennsylvania. She even worked a few years in the food service industry and then realized that baking for her was more of a joy and baking and decorating 25 cakes and 3000 cookies was no longer fun…….and I’m with you Coleen, who wants to see 4am on a daily basis! Hey I give her a big pat on the back for trying it to see if it was for her, I enjoy cooking so much that I’m afraid to try it professionally because no one wants to take the fun away from it! She also has a nice section on her blog called “Munchkin Meals”, she has some great suggestions on some foods for your toddler as they are beginning to experiment and try new things, I for one am doing it different this time around with my son vs. how I did it with my daughter, I didn’t introduce solids young enough with my daughter and it made her a picky eater, she’s much better now, but I’d still like to try it sooner with my son!
So let me mention a few of Coleen’s recipes that I picked out that I’d love to make at some point. Then I’ll get to what I did choose to make from her mouth-watering collection! How about her Peanut Butter Nutella Sandwich Cookies, I bought a container of Nutella awhile back and have yet to try it…..I’m putting these on my list to try this summer for my daughter! How about this One-Pan Lasagna dish that is making my mouth water just looking at!!! What a great way to make Lasagna! Another dish of Coleen’s I’ll be making next week is under her Freezer Friendly section. I have to honestly admit while choosing my dish to share with you today I was thinking about the upcoming weeks and how busy crazy we will be with Summer in full swing and our baby boy’s arrival. So I bought the ingredients already to make her Baked Ziti with Bolognese, one because I’ve always wanted to try a homemade Bolognese Sauce and two because it’s another freezable item in the freezer for the when the babe comes! Anyone that knows me also knows that I have an obsession with anything and everything Pumpkin so I’d like to try her Pumpkin Muffins with Streusel Topping. She’s got lots of recipes for homemade donuts too so if I break down and buy a donut pan someday I’ll know where to go!!
Sooooooooooo onto what I made!!! Yes it’s freezable and yes there is currently one in my fridge freezer right now for those hectic lazy nights we’ll have coming! It’s Coleen’s Baked Ziti w/Summer Vegetables Casserole!!! Very easy to make but challenging for me since I doubled her recipe to make two LOL!! One for dinner that night and one for later, well worth it though, luckily I had a saute pan big enough to do this!! The only thing I changed up was I used 1 28 oz. can of whole, peeled tomatoes and cut them up. I used that for the two casseroles. Other than that I followed the recipe and directions! Oh and I may have cheated and added more pasta than I should have………whoopsy!!!! OMG it was so good!!!!! This one stuck out at me because I love zucchini and squash!
I have to admit, I love how this casserole was categorized under her “Healthy Section” Of course I probably ruined that by adding more pasta but when we actually ate it seems like there were so many vegetables in there so I felt like I was being healthy!! I had to add some Taco cheese on top of this casserole because I ran out of Mozzarella since I used it all inside the actual casserole and because……….well I made two!! I’m glad I did because hubby liked it too!!
Thank you again Coleen for Co-Hosting with me and it’s been great getting to know you and your blog!! Keep up the great work! Make sure you go and visit Coleen over at The Redhead Baker and tell her this Momma sent you!! Oh and don’t forget to congratulate her too, she is currently expecting baby #2!!!!! Yay!!! 🙂
Do you think we enjoyed this or what??
