Guest Post with Author Amanda Usen and Giveaway

Today I would like to welcome author Amanda Usen to RFTC. Amanda is celebrating the recent release of her book Into the Fire and has stopped by to chat. Please give Amanda a warm welcome.

Amanda Usen knows two things for certain: chocolate cheesecake is good for breakfast, and a hot chef can steal your heart. Her husband stole hers the first day of class at the Culinary Institute of America. She married him after graduation in a lovely French Quarter restaurant in New Orleans, and they spent a few years enjoying the food and the fun in the Big Easy. Now they live in Western New York with their three children, one hamster, two guinea pigs, a tortoise, and a new-to-them beagle. Amanda spends her days teaching pastry arts classes and her nights writing romance. If she isn’t baking or writing, she can usually be found chasing the kids around the yard with her very own hot chef husband.

Want chimichurri, chocolate cake or Chicken Alighieri? Visit Amanda at http://www.amandausen.com, where you can find recipes for many of the yummy dishes in her books.

Places to find Amanda: 

| Site | Facebook | Twitter | 

Some folks might think I'm nuts for turning on the oven during the summer, but I love lasagna. Oooey, gooey, cheesy lasagna! After assembly, it requires very little supervision during cooking, so I can be outside doing summery things. If the house gets hot from the oven, we eat on the back porch. Sometimes we have happy hour with friends while the lasagna is baking and THEN eat on the porch?that's how we roll during the summertime!

I discovered this recipe while working as a nanny in Nashville, TN, in 1994, and I've been using it ever since. I was entering my vegetarian phase (cut short by a quail hunt in Georgia, my college graduation present), and I'd never had anything so good that didn't contain meat. It was a revelation of rich, smooshy deliciousness, hopped up by garlic and herbs! Fabulous! Some people might call me a cheater, since I use jar sauce, but I'm at peace with that since my husband, Farmer Ben, grows the carrots, zucchini, and squash in his garden. That makes it a push, right? I grate the veggies, cook them down, and mix them with mozzarella, ricotta, and parmesan until it becomes a cheesy mass of splendor. Then I layer it with sauce and noodles and bake it until it bubbles. We serve the lasagna with greens from the garden, my favorite balsamic vinaigrette (recipe here: http://amandausen.wordpress.com/balsamic-vinaigrette/), and bread (because we do love our carbs). To have the most fun with this recipe, use a food processor, fitted with a grater attachment, to grate the veggies. Now THAT is summer bliss!

Garden Lasagna

Baking temperature: 350

Baking time: About an hour and 15 minutes

Servings: 12

12 Lasagna Noodles
2 teaspoons olive oil
Grated vegetables to equal 7 cups. I used 2 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, and 5 carrots.
2 medium onions, small diced, about 1 generous cup
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil (fresh is nice, too!)
3 eggs
15 ounces ricotta cheese?or 2 pounds if you love cheese!
4 cups shredded mozzarella (or 2 cups mozzarella and the equivalent of 2 cups provolone for the top)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 jar of tomato sauce

1. Cook lasagna noodles. Yes, you can use no boil noodles, but I'm partial to the old school ones.
2. Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 13 X 9 pan with non-stick spray. Make sure you get the sides!
3. Sweat the carrots, squashes, onions, garlic, and salt in the olive oil over low heat until they are nice and soft and the liquid evaporates.
4. Reserve veggies in a mixing bowl. Add the oregano, basil, ricotta, the Parmesan and 2 cups of mozzarella. Then add the eggs.
5. Layer the sauce, noodles and ricotta mixture in the pan. Start by putting one cup of sauce in the bottom. Then add an overlapping layer of noodles and 1/3-1/2 of the ricotta mixture, depending on how tall your pan is and how many layers you want to make. Continue the layers until the ricotta mixture is gone.
6. For the top layer, use lasagna noodles, all of the remaining sauce (I usually swish about 1 cup of water around in the jar and pour that in, too) and the remaining 2 cups of mozzarella.
7. Bake, covered, until bubbly, about an hour. Uncover and cook until cheese is melted, about 15 minutes.

Mmmmm! Thank you for stopping by to visit today. Do you have a favorite summer dish? Do tell! Farmer Ben and I are always looking for things to celebrate during the summertime!

Jackson Calabrese has a lot of nerve. He beat Lila Grant in the Culinary Academy competition using her recipes. Now, he’s opening a restaurant and wants her help? Fine, she'll fix his menu, but it's going to cost him.

Heir to the Calabrese restaurant empire, Jackson can buy anything he wants, except creativity, so he buys Lila's instead. He can craft perfect paella, but to take New York by storm he needs her innovative spark.

Skillets aren't the only things hot in the kitchen, and an uneasy truce ignites into passion. They’re great in bed, but Jackson doesn't trust her, and Lila is contemplating revenge. The restaurant opening approaches, the menu is completed, and the tables are set for one final act of betrayal. How can love bloom in the midst of such a hot mess?

Purchase: | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iTunes |

Check out what's up for grabs.

Up For Grabs For Entire Tour:

• 1 lucky person will win the following:
• $25 Gift Card (Amazon, Barnes & Noble or The Book Depository)
• Get to name the hero in Book 3 + give him a personality trait
• 1 lucky person will win the following:
• $15 Gift Card (Amazon, Barnes & Noble or The Book Depository)
• A chance to pick a dish to be featured in Book 3
• 5 lucky people will win Amanda's favorite kitchen tool: a mini offset spatula

To Enter: 

• Please answer the question: Do you have a favorite summer dish?
• Please fill out the Rafflecopter form.

Good Luck! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway