Merry Christmas

It's been a while since I posted anything, but I assume everyone has been too busy with the holidays to notice.

Gord and I had planned on getting Chinese food from General Tao on Christmas Eve, still being burnt out from all the cooking and baking we did over Thanksgiving. But they're closed til after New Years, so we had to improvise. Since we've been working our way through all 6 seasons of the Sopranos, we have been asking ourselves a lot of questions, the main ones being what the hell is ziti, and why aren't we eating it?

So here's our Christmas Eve Ziti, and as a bonus, it's vegetarian so you aren't even killing anything. A few last brownie points with Santa, maybe.

1 bag of rigatoni noodles (we couldn't find ziti noodles)
1 jar ofTomato and Basil sauce (we should have had 2)
1 bag of spinach
1 cup of Ricotta
1 cup of Parmesan
2 cups shredded Mozzarella
1 Egg
1/2 cup of cream

Cook the noodles for 8 - 10 minutes. We used 1/2 the bag, and had leftovers for 3 meals. Add tomato sauce (save a little sauce) & 1/2 the parmesan to the noodles. Layer 1/2 the noodle mix in a 9x13 casserole dish.
Mix the Ricotta, cream & egg together and layer over the noodles.
Cook the spinach until just wilted with a little garlic & oil, and layer over the ricotta. Top with the rest of the noodles, remaining sauce and cover it all with the mozzarella and remaining parmesan.
Bake in a 350 oven for 45 minutes covered, and 15 uncovered.

You know there are no pictures of this. We ate it all. And I'm not going to take a picture of my ever expanding belly and post that for your amusement. Lets all just assume that noodles and tomato sauce and cheese make a delicious, death free meal.

Besides the food, Christmas was good. We spoke with our families, opened gifts, watched the Muppet Christmas movie and watched the rain come down. It's been warm and rainy the last few days, and now we're under a severe wind warning. The windows are banging and clanging, the wind is howling, and we're tucked up under fuzzy blankets with no greater plans than to make cocoa at some point.

We've got 8 days of freedom left and then it's back to work and school, alarm clocks and timed lunch breaks. Oh my.