Made my first batch of stovetop lasagne and it is going to become one of my "go to" recipes. Great for using up spare pasta, which I almost always seem to have around, particularly lasagne sheets. Also great for when you feel like eating lasagne but don't feel like fussing with assembly. This is a combo recipe from Tyler Florence and Pillsbury. Skillet Lasagne Before starting the meat you can make a mirpoix of oil, onions, carrots and celery if you want, or some green pepper and mushrooms, whatever you would like in your pasta sauce, but if you use a jarred or canned sauce you don't have to do this, particularly if your sauce already contains onions, etc. So however much you want to flavor it up or not depends on your taste and time. Add garlic towards the end of this step if you want some. 1-2 tsp. is probably enough. I use the lower end of the garlic spectrum. Brown a pound of some type of protein. Most recipes call for ground beef but I used ground turkey and next time I make it I may use a mix of meat and beans, or perhaps some veggie crumbles, and I'll bet you could use part italian sausage for flavor it you're a big meat eater. Salt the meat to your taste as it is browning. If the meat is fatty, drain before proceeding with the dish. Add 1 large jar canned spaghetti sauce or Italian flavored tomato sauce. You need 26-28 fl. ounces of the sauce, so use whatever you have on hand that will equal that amount. I used a 24 oz. jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce and 2 oz. of my own home canned tomato basil sauce. You could also use canned tomatoes and canned tomato sauce, tomato paste, etc. to get the desired amount. Season to your taste with italian seasoning if you like. I tend to do this because I find store bought sauce bland, and if I am making the sauce from just plain tomato sauce, then I want a lot of seasoning. Add 1 1/2 cups water. When mixture is boiling lightly, add 3 cups pasta (you don't want a hard boil because too much of the water might evaporate if you do that, and then the pasta will stick--ask me how I know!). The pasta I used was broken up lasagne noodles and then some campanelii to supplement to 3 cups. You could also use mafalda ribbons. Cook the pasta for about 15 min. Test for pasta being done. Your water should be absorbed and the sauce thickened. Watch out, since this dish actually might get too thick if you're not careful. You can always add more water to it if it starts to get too thick. While the pasta is cooking, make the ricotta topping. The recipe says to use 16 oz. of ricotta, which is a typical container (although mine was 15). For my taste, this is too much, but your mileage may vary. Mix this with about an equal amount of chopped frozen spinach. I had a 16 oz. bag, which I used about half. If I had a 10 oz. package I would use it all. Mix the ricotta and spinach with 1/3 cup grated parmesean, a healthy pinch of basil or oregano or italian seasoning, and 1 TBSLP dried parsley if you have it. If you hate spinach you don't have to add it, just plain ricotta is fine, and if you have some other type of vegetable you would like ti mix in, like kale or shredded zuchinni or something else, by all means do it. When the pasta is done, mix up the casserole to make sure the meat, sauce and pasta are evenly distributed. Spoon the ricotta mixture on top of the casserole and cook 5-7 min. more until the topping is heated through. Then, top the dish with 1 cup of shredded mozzarella or italian style shredded cheese and broil for about 3-4 min. until cheese melts. Here's two pictures of my dish. I was out of shredded mozzarella so I had to use mostly cheddar in my dish.

Amy, DH is....opinionated :). He has remarkably strong feelings about decor, which is sometimes a blessing and somtimes just difficult, lol! He has been very involved in every decision made about our home and I suppose I should be grateful that he's interested, but sometimes I just want to pick things and not have to field the commentary, you know? I wonder also if it's just the chair fabric or the mental image of the room it came from in his grandparents' apartment. It was a gorgeous room (gold, gray and black - professionally decorated, very classic), but I learned recently that he REALLY didn't like the decor. I have a few swatches pulled out of my F&B swatch deck, don't remember if String is one of them, but it was one of my original considerations for this room. Have you used it? Sky - hmm, that's unfortunate that RH doesn't have swatches available of the Lava. I don't have an RH store in my city (closest one is a 5 hour drive away) and I'd be hesitant to order drapes sight unseen.... I've been trying to figure out from the pictures on the website if the lava is a warm gray or a cool gray. It seems to tend almost towards a slate-ish colour in some of the pics, almost blueish? Is that true in person? Linen was another consideration for drapes either here or in the dining room - what is the quality of the RH linen drapes? Thanks!

Urospatha grandis doesn't have any spines, but neither does the Cyrtosperma cuspidispathum. Of the other two Cyrtosperma I have johnstonii is very well armed with spines, and merkusii has only small spines low down on the petiole. But looking at the leaves, the lobes on all my Cyrtosperma species are longer than the leaf blade above the insertion point of the petiole. That's what I've always taken as one indicative character for Cyrtosperma. When I was trekking in Papua New Guinea a few years back I found another Cyrtosperma with the same leaf characteristic. I forget now which species I got it IDed as but it wasn't one of the commonly available ones. There are 2 other aroids I have that have spines on the petioles, but their leaf blades are quite different.

The stones are just gorgeous! i Have had a small pond for years and having much much more shading of the water could help. Also a good filter that has a backwash feature or sponge filters but those would require a lot of maintenance. That would be up to you. Also just drain most of it out and put in clean water Ive done that with my fish pond. Full sun does tend to green up a pond plus bigger pond pumps but those are to maintain also. It must be beautiful there and so temperate ! Enjoy!