Caramelized Onion Lasagna Recipe

Makes: 9 servings
Active Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

Nutrition Profile

Ingredients

Caramelized Onion Lasagna

• 8 ounces lasagna noodles, preferably whole-wheat

Caramelized Onion Filling

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 large sweet onions, thinly sliced (about 10 cups; see Kitchen Tip)
• 4 medium portobello mushroom caps, gills removed (see Kitchen Tip), diced
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Freshly ground pepper, to taste

Spinach & Cheese Filling

• 4 cups baby spinach
• 2 cups nonfat ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

White Sauce & Topping

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups low-fat milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 ounces crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
• 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

Preparation

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook noodles until not quite al dente, about 2 minutes less than the package directions. Drain; return the noodles to the pot and cover with cool water.
2. To prepare onion filling: Meanwhile, heat 3 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and cook, stirring frequently, until golden brown and very soft, about 25 minutes. (If they begin to stick, add water 1/4 cup at a time to release them and prevent burning.) Add mushrooms and cook, stirring, until just beginning to soften, about 3 minutes. Add wine and 1 teaspoon salt and continue cooking until most of the liquid is absorbed, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in pepper.
3. To prepare spinach filling: Place spinach, ricotta, basil and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a food processor and process until smooth.
4. To prepare white sauce: Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add flour and stir until bubbling, about 30 seconds. Gradually whisk in milk and 1/2 teaspoon salt and bring to a boil, whisking constantly. Cook, whisking, until the sauce has the consistency of thick gravy, about 1 minute. Add Gorgonzola and gently whisk until it is melted. Remove from the heat. (The sauce will continue to thicken as it sits.)
5. To assemble lasagna: Preheat oven to 375°F. Coat a 9-by-13-inch baking pan with cooking spray.
6. Drain the noodles and spread out on a kitchen towel. Spread 1/2 cup white sauce in the prepared pan. Place a layer of noodles over the sauce. Spread half of the spinach filling over the noodles and top with one-third of the onion filling. Evenly spread 1/2 cup white sauce over the onions. Repeat with another layer of noodles, the remaining spinach filling, half the remaining onion filling and half the remaining white sauce. To finish, top with a third layer of noodles, spread the remaining onion filling over the noodles and then spread or dollop the remaining white sauce on top. Sprinkle with walnuts and basil.
7. Bake until hot and bubbling, about 30 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Tips & Notes

• Make Ahead Tip: Cover and refrigerate the caramelized onion filling (Step 2) for up to 1 day.

• Kitchen Tip: Onions contain a volatile compound called lachrymator that reacts with the fluid in your eyes and makes them water. To chop them without crying, try wearing goggles, burning a candle nearby or cutting them under cold water. To mellow the bite of a raw onion, soak it for an hour in 1 cup cold water, 1/4 cup vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon salt and then rinse thoroughly.
• Kitchen Tip: The dark gills found on the underside of a portobello mushroom cap are edible, but can turn a dish an unappealing gray/black color. Remove the gills with a spoon, if desired.

Nutrition

Per serving: 345 calories; 14 g fat (3 g sat, 7 g mono); 9 mg cholesterol; 39 g carbohydrates; 16 g protein; 8 g fiber; 680 mg sodium; 514 mg potassium.
Nutrition Bonus: Vitamin C (23% daily value), Calcium (16% dv), Vitamin A (15% dv).
Carbohydrate Servings: 2
Exchanges: 1 1/2 starch, 2 vegetable, 1 medium-fat meat, 2 fat

Daily Quote 3

Daily Quote 2

How To Increase Interest In Our Drawings Through Contrast

Every shade of gray that you use in your drawing is also known as a tone.

The value of a tone refers to how light or dark it is, and put together, those values form a gradation from black to white called a value scale. Here is an example of a value scale.

Notice that the values (or tones) are numbered. This makes it easier to match the value you have against the value you’re working towards on your drawing.

Contrast is developed by having two values juxtaposed next to each other that are at opposite ends of the value scale.

The difference between value 1 and value 2 is not very dramatic, so it would mean low contrast.

The difference between value 1 and value 6, on the other hand, is very high contrast. Those values are at opposite ends of the value scale.

The eye is drawn to areas of high contrast. On the finished drawing below, your eye is probably taken to the highlight on the hair, the fingertips on the hand sticking up into the black background, or the earrings.

That is because those three areas have very high contrast, not only in tone (white against black), but also in line quality. crisp, clear lines have a lot of contrast, versus soft, lost lines such as what you see in face.

In order to make your drawings lively and life-like, incorporate contrasts in tone and in line quality.

Make some lines dark and heavy, others light and thin. Make some intense black tones and keep your highlights bright and white.

But be aware that because the eye is drawn to areas of high contrast, you can easily make “bulls-eyes” on your drawings; spots that grab the eye so strongly that the rest of the picture is ignored. This is detrimental to your composition.

Instead, try to incorporate about three areas of high contrast. This will encourage the eye to move between all three places, and take in the whole picture without being trapped or shot off the page.

You don’t want any “dead” areas on the picture; there should be a gradation, a line quality...just something to take the viewer all the way around the picture plane.

To get those intense blacks, you’re going to need to protect the fine edges and intricate details of your picture beforehand.

When they are protected and the borders are taped, you can use a charcoal pencil to start laying in dark tone across the entire background.

Blend that tone smooth with a large tortillon or stomp, using small, even circle strokes that will disguise the pencil line.

To fill in the tone even more, you can rub your finger over those black tones.

Finally, spray the black tones with a workable fixative to reduce smearing as you develop tones in the hair, face and clothing.

You should also protect the drawing with a piece of clean paper to keep your wrist and arm from smudging your lines and tones as you work.

Want To Learn More...

Learn how to add life to your pencil portraits.

Did you know that a portrait can still look realistic and striking with very little blending by paying attention to shapes and lighting?

Something as simple as that can make a huge difference in your drawings and we can show you plenty of helpful techniques to add life to your pencil portraits.

Click here to learn more

Warm Regards

Chris Elmore
Drawing Made Easy

How To Use Guidelines To Add Life To Your Pencil Portraits

If you’re having difficulty making your drawings look realistic, especially if you always seem to find mistakes in the placement or size of your features, then it’s a safe bet that you need to go back to the drawing board regarding guidelines.

Guidelines are just what you’d guess from the name: a light line that shows you where things go.

That being said, imagine drawing a portrait without them. You would have to focus on where to put the nose, how big to make it, and the shape of that individual nose all at the same time.

It’s a virtual guarantee that you’re going to be erasing lines not just once or twice, but multiple times for every feature you draw.

In no time at all, your drawing paper will be a smudgy mess.

How much easier would it be to know where the nose goes and how big it needs to be before you ever start drawing it?

That is the joy of guidelines. Never, never draw without them again.

To start your drawing, you need to know how big to make the head and shoulders and where to put them on your page.

If you’re working from a reference photo, begin by building a graph around the outside of it on plain white paper.

Make a proportional frame on your drawing paper, then measure the height and width of all four sides and divide them into increments.

It doesn’t matter how many divisions you use, as long as there are the same number from drawing paper to reference photo.

The idea here is that you can use grid points to measure where things fall on the reference photo, then translate them to your drawing paper quickly and easily.

That system can only work, of course, if the grid points are the same on the reference photo and your drawing paper.

Label one set of points alphabetically and the other set numerically so that you can easily find where the external points of the large shapes fall. In the example here, the bottom of the chin is on D,5.

Once you have the large shapes graphed out using that grid, you can use a system of internal guidelines to place the smaller shapes such as the features of the face accurately.

Everything on the face can be measured in terms of the length of one eye, so once you measure that, just jot down the placement for everything else from there.

The eyes fall right on the center of the head horizontally, and the nose is the vertical center.

From there, the eyes are one eye’s length apart, there is an eye length from the bottom of the eyes to the bottom of the nose, another eye’s length down from there is the bottom of the mouth, and about a half eye’s length from the bottom of the mouth is the bottom of the chin.

This startling illustration will help you to see how the features are aligned on the face in terms of eye length.

Note too, that the centers of the eyes line up with the corners of the mouth and the inner corners of the eyes line up with the outside of the nostrils.

Want To Learn More...

Learn how to add life to your pencil portraits.

Did you know that a portrait can still look realistic and striking with very little blending by paying attention to shapes and lighting?

Something as simple as that can make a huge difference in your drawings and we can show you plenty of helpful techniques to add life to your pencil portraits.

Click here to learn more

Warm Regards

Chris Elmore
Drawing Made Easy

Mental Cleanse Call Recordings - Chapter 14

To listen to or
download the recorded audio for the 3 PM  and 8 PM ET calls, go
to:
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Now we move onto
Chapter 15.

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Regards,
The
30-Day Mental Cleanse Team.

Smoked Salmon Lasagna Recipe

Ingredients

• 12 dried lasagna noodles
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 cups fat-free milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese (1 oz.)
• 1/4 cup shredded Swiss cheese (1 oz.)
• 2 tablespoons dry sherry
• 1 1/2 cups finely shredded Pecorino Romano cheese (6 oz.)
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (4 oz.)
• 1 cup shredded Provolone cheese (4 oz.)
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese (2 oz.)
• 3 large roma tomatoes, peeled, seeded, chopped, and drained
• 1 4 ounce jar (drained weight) sliced mushrooms, drained
• 8 ounces smoked salmon, flaked, with skin and bones removed

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Directions

1. 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease a 3-quart rectangular baking dish; set aside. Cook noodles according to package directions; drain. Rinse with cold water; drain again.

For sauce:

1. 

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, heat butter over low heat. Add flour; cook and stir for 4 minutes (be careful not to let flour brown). Gradually whisk in milk, salt, and pepper. Cook and stir until slightly thickened and bubbly. Reduce heat; stir in Parmesan cheese, Swiss cheese, and sherry. Cook and stir until cheeses are melted.

2. 

In a medium bowl, combine Pecorino Romano, mozzarella, provolone, and cheddar cheeses.

3. 

To assemble, spread one-fourth of the sauce in prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with one-fourth of the cheese mixture. Layer with one-third of the noodles, one-fourth of the sauce, half of the tomatoes, half of the mushrooms, half of he salmon, and one-fourth of the cheese mixture. Repeat layering noodles, sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, salmon, and cheese mixture. Top with the remaining noodles, remaining sauce, and remaining cheese mixture.

4. 

Bake, uncovered, for 50 to 55 minutes or until edges are bubbly and top is lightly browned. Let stand for 15 minutes before serving. Makes 12 servings.

nutrition information

Per Serving: cal. (kcal) 352, Fat, total (g) 17, chol. (mg) 52, sat. fat (g) 10, carb. (g) 28, Monounsaturated fat (g) 5, Polyunsaturated fat (g) 1, fiber (g) 1, sugar (g) 6, pro. (g) 22, sodium (mg) 751, Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet

Proscuitto & Broccolini Shrimp Recipe

Ingredients

• 8 ounces uncooked Israeli couscous (1 1/2 cups)
• 1 pound fresh or frozen peeled and deveined large shrimp (24 count), tails intact if desired
• 8 ounces broccolini
• 2 large yellow and/or red sweet peppers, cut into thin bite-size strips
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons butter
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 sprigs fresh oregano
• Crisp-cooked prosciutto
• Crushed red pepper (optional)

Directions

1. 

Cook couscous according to package directions. Thaw shrimp if frozen. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Tear off four 15-inch squares parchment paper. Spoon about 1 cup couscous on one side of each sheet of parchment paper. Layer the broccolini, sweet pepper, and garlic next to the couscous. Top vegetables evenly with shrimp. Drizzle all with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Top each with a piece of butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add a sprig of oregano to each.

2. 

Fold parchment over shrimp and vegetables; fold in the open sides of parchment several times to secure. Divide packets among 2 shallow baking pans.

3. 

Place pans on separate oven racks. Bake about 20 minutes or until shrimp turn opaque. Open carefully to check doneness, as steam will escape. To serve, transfer packets to dinner plates. Top with prosciutto and, if desired, crushed red pepper.

nutrition information

Per Serving: cal. (kcal) 600, Fat, total (g) 23, chol. (mg) 205, sat. fat (g) 7, carb. (g) 64, Monounsaturated fat (g) 13, Polyunsaturated fat (g) 2, Trans fatty acid (g) 0, fiber (g) 6, sugar (g) 13, pro. (g) 34, vit. A (IU) 3034.09, vit. C (mg) 153.79, Thiamin (mg) 0.14, Riboflavin (mg) 0.16, Niacin (mg) 1.96, Pyridoxine (Vit. B6) (mg) 0.45, Folate (µg) 74.77, Cobalamin (Vit. B12) (µg) 0.1, sodium (mg) 621, Potassium (mg) 721, calcium (mg) 133, iron (mg) 3.3, Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet

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Daily Quotes

LeAnn Rimes - The Rose (lyrics)