Lasagne at Midnight dessert before dinner makes for one unforgettable feast

One little can from the cupboard can inspire a five hour feast.

The Original Sauce Arturo Gourmet Sauce with mushrooms greets everyone within eyesight with as much exuberance as a Maitre D’ from a fine Italian eatery. Peel the label back to reveal the “Arturo Lasagne” ingredient list. Then, improvise for an impeccable meal.

The recipe on the inside calls for an entire list of ingredients many of us just don’t have the palates for; namely, they are sausage, cottage cheese and ground up hamburger. Just use the recipe for a cue and create a dish you can own. To get this Italian partito going light a fire out in your backyard, aerate two bottles of red wine and create an anti pasto platter.

You can find an array of inviting dishes at Pier 1, like this carved fish serving platter, to make your old-world appetizers ultra-appealing. While guests make their way in, assemble the lasagne as you chat them up and they fill their glasses with vino.

Buy the ready to bake Kroger lasagne noodles, and a trio of cheeses as pictured below. We removed the sausage and ground up hamburger. This move makes assembly of this Italian classic as easy to pull off as opening the Sauce Arturo can. Use a lasagne pan or as in this case, a 9″ x5″ x 3″ loaf pan like this one we used for deep dish decadence.

Crack the ends of the noodles off with your hands to make the noodles fit in a shorter and deeper loaf pan, as we did. Three noodles make up each layer. Pour The Original Sauce Arturo Gourmet Sauce with Mushrooms on top, add frozen spinach and then top with your three-cheese mixture forked together with an egg. Eyeball the mixture and add more Ricotta, Mozzarella and Parmesan to fit your taste. Keep going until the concoction reaches the brim.

Then, grab a Swiss Army knife, a bag of marshmallows, vino and go enjoy the company and your fire. We like the Victorinox Swiss Army Camper Knife. This stainless steel contraption retails for about thirty dollars and besides a corkscrew, has a 3.6″ knife perfect for carving a marshmallow stick. After 28 years, as old as the friendships are around the fire, the blade still worked to whittle down the wood with precision.

While you and your guests feast on the bubbled confectioners sugar, flavored with firewood, remember you’ll need about 75 minutes to bake dinner. Preheat the oven before the clock strikes ten pm. At eleven-fifteen, remove the foil, sprinkle more Mozzarella on top and bake for another five minutes.

Pop open a bottle of San Pellegrino, grab a plate and godere!

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Power Yoga Packs plenty of Potency Pigeons, Birds of Paradise and inversions make up this fitness flurry

“When I first came to It’s Yoga I was like, ‘Ummm no. I really don’t want to go upside down.’ Through coming and watching other people I was like, ‘Maybe I can do them.'” Michelle Zydorczyk puts out there –  what pulls her to Power Yoga.

The ninety-minute session on the mats at It’s Yoga on Toledo’s Central Avenue is where Zydorczyk zones in on her zen. She’s a substance abuse counselor at the Zepf Center. She uses the practice as a tool to pry her pupils off of harmful “medication”. Medication they can get chemical free on a mat.

Zydorczyk, who accented her black and red hot yoga gear with gold hoop earrings nods her head, “It’s mind over matter. It’s not your body that won’t go upside down, it’s your mind.”

“Look up at your thumb even if you don’t normally. Just take a look, breathe and don’t worry about falling,” instructs It’s Yoga manager and fitness model, Sydney Parker.

“This class makes you get lost in the flow, and it’s like moving meditation,” David Schmenk, a Toledo website designer sweats the class out with a headband around his spiked hair.

Schmenk strips off his tank ten minutes into the flow to reveal a string of Chinese symbols tattooed down the top of his spine.

“I honestly don’t know what they mean. I got them when I was 16-years old,” he admits honestly. “This class to me is just about being present and focusing in and applying the same thing in life. Like stuck in traffic. Instead of freaking out and getting mad, I just take a couple deep breaths, focus in, try to be present, try not be caught up in everything going on.”

Schmenk is one of four men making this date with the mat. Mustering up all the muscle and mind power they can to power through the sixteenth Chatarunga.

“This is a lot of Chatarungas,” Sydney coaches “we want strong shoulders!”

“The class is dude-friendly,” her boyfriend Scotty Williamson from Michigan points out. “It’s definitely a lot harder than I thought it was but I love it. I realize the transformation from where I was before. This Power Yoga class gets you stretched out and heated if you keep pushin’ through, and breathin’.”

A Glass City girl from birth, Parker points out the class concept. Power Yoga is designed to empower from within. Yogis are encouraged to find inner-strength and bust any limiting beliefs through the breath.

This powerful practice eventually showcases a dream dance, the arm-balancing split, translated in Sanskrit to Eka Pada Koudinyasana, and Parker is demonstrative that breath can take a person to new dimensions. She teaches Restorative Yoga at this location three days a week and Power Yoga two times. Though the sequence has everyone in a sweat she surprisingly urges beginners to come in regardless of Ahamkara, otherwise known as the ego.

“I would myth bust that this is for advanced only. My friend Michelle just unveiled to me this was her first time ever coming to a yoga class, and she just did amazing with her hair down. I would say that anyone could do yoga even if you’ve never tried it.

Parker hits the Paradise feed with her Bird of Paradise. She began her practice with meditation during her formative years of high school and earned her yoga certification just six months ago. She's bounced around the nation and believes an energetic pull keeps bringing her back to Toledo.
Parker hits the Paradise feed with her Bird of Paradise. She began her practice with meditation during her formative years of high school and earned her yoga certification just six months ago. She’s bounced around the nation and believes an energetic pull keeps bringing her back to Toledo.

Yoga at home is nothing compared to a studio. You have a room full of people, there’s an energy here and you never know what to expect. When you’re being pushed and challenged a little bit you don’t know where you can go,” Parker points out.

Donning fuchsia leggings, an Om tattoo on the nape of her neck and a white tank printed with, Live Your Practice, Parker says simply set your mind to the mantra, “Everything we do on the mat is how we’re showing up off the mat, too. Stay in inquiry and stay in your breath. Anyone can start to have natural realizations.”

Zydorczyk tilts her head, covered in bobbed, high-lighted brown hair, and reflects on her inversions, “I haven’t mastered them. I still very much need the wall.”

In time, patience, persistency and self-compassion partnered with breath will bring her to the precise place she needs to be. It’s Yoga Toledo is located at 4324 West Central Avenue. Check the schedule for Power Yoga and other class times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Paradise josie koler est. 1977

This is the first and the last post about muah. Me, me, me. Today’s my birthday and I did not conduct an interview for this latest news report. I spent the day, on day three, traveling across the country from the Florida Keys to Ohio’s North Coast.

Today on my birthday, Josie in Paradise was born. An interactive information site about the fabulous lifestyle from Cleveland and the North Coast, where the water is unsalted. Then, to Key West and the Florida Keys where the salt life rages.  My plan is about to unfold.

The company bears my name but, after this, the site won’t be about me. I’m just your host.

The stories will either be about you, or effect you.

Two systems of islands. Two bodies of water. Two cultures and two lifestyles. One 90 miles to Cuba, the other 30 miles to Canada.

I could, at any point, settle down on either location. Or, I can keep growing and expanding. There is one more location I do have in mind.

When time is of the essence we all need information that improves quality of life. Words that enlighten, inform, and entertain. Stories about your friends, your family and people you do business with; plus, photographs that inspire and tag lines that light a fire where the energy flow has become static. Video and social media posts to bring every aspect together.

This is where business meets broadcasting, broadcasting meets the beach and entrepreneurialism takes a twist.

Most of us are seeking the same information: how to see any place and situation with the perspective of Paradise, and overcome all of the obstacles we didn’t plan. There certainly have been some wild and fast ones I did not see coming.

I’ll be exercising some patience as I figure out how to work my way around my OWN NEW SITE! Business is person to person. In 2016 be ready to showcase some talents.

Remember…be humble; and at the same time also, use your gifts to shine like the tropical sun!

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