Mushroom Stroganoff

Yet another recipe found on Pinterest. Originally from The Svelte Gourmet.

1 T butter

1 large onion, diced

32 ounces mushrooms of your choice

1/4 C white wine

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. black pepper

2 tsp. Dijon mustard

2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp. flour

1 C light sour cream

12 oz. whole wheat egg noodles

1/2 tsp. dill weed

Heat salted water and cook noodles until al dente. In the meantime, melt butter in a medium saucepan. Cook onions until slightly soft, then add mushrooms. Cook, stirring occasionally, until mushrooms release some of their water. Add flour, stirring well to combine, then add white wine, salt, pepper, mustard and Worcestershire. Cook on medium until liquid reduces and begins to thicken and mushrooms are tender. Remove from heat and stir in sour cream and dill. Add hot, cooked noodles and stir gently so sauce coats noodles.

Lemon Spinach and Bacon Tortellini Bake

I have an addiction lately. It's not the best addiction in the world to have....I'm addicted to buying the frozen tortellini at Costco. You get two big containers for $9.00 and THEN it usually goes on sale for around $7.50! How can you pass that up? So, when I was browsing one of my FAVORITE blog sites http://www.ourbestbites.com/, and I saw this recipe for a tortellini bake in a lemon cream sauce I was excited for several reasons: 1. It uses my tortellini. 2. I already had all the ingredients. 3. It uses up that spinach I also have a problem with buying. I made a few slight modifications to her recipe (and I doubled it because I live with a hungry hungry hippo and the doubled recipe is below) but her recipe has pictures. I suggest combining recipes for the best of both worlds :)

Ingredients:
1 48 oz. pack of 7 cheese tortellini from Costco (or about 4-6 cups of any tortellini)
8 pieces of bacon (I used turkey bacon)
4 cups of fresh spinach
3 tbsp. butter
3-4 tbsp. flour
4 cups of milk (skim is fine - I used half skim, half 2%)
1 tsp. of basil
1 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional but it adds a nice kick)
Salt and pepper to taste
4 tbsp. lemon juice
1 1/2 cups each of mozarella and parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350.
Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil for your tortellini. Add tortellini and cook according to package directions, drain and set aside (if you don't know how to boil pasta by now, you are in trouble.)
While pasta is cooking, in a big skillet cook your bacon until slightly crisp. If you are using real bacon, reserve about 3 or so tbsp of the grease to make your roux. If you are using turkey bacon, it doesn't have as much grease so scrape your pan of any burnt grease and add 3 tbsp butter instead.
Melt your butter and put about 6 minced cloves of garlic in the butter and let cook for a bit, 30 seconds or so. Add the flour and stir around a bit until a paste forms. Slowly add milk and whisk until smooth. Something the other recipe does NOT say, it will be thin! It thickens when you take it off the heat. If you want, you can add a little more flour just to be sure it makes a nice thick sauce. At this point, add basil, the red pepper flakes, salt and pepper, and lemon juice. I rarely have fresh lemons on hand so I used the kind in the bottle. It worked out just fine. Once you stir it all together, taste it. Add a little more lemon if you like it more lemony or red pepper if you like spicy. Remove from heat and allow to sit and thicken a bit.
Now crumble the bacon and run a knife through the spinch a few times. Don't worry about cutting it up too small. It will wilt in the oven so just cut it up a little so you don't have huge leaves.
Add the bacon, spinach and about half of each of the cheeses to the pasta and mix it all together. Then pour the sauce in and mix it all up and pour the whole shebang into a 9x13" casserole dish. cover and bake for 20 minutes then remove the tinfoil and bake for another 5-10 minutes until the cheese is bubbly.