So it’s Saturday night, and I’m feeling alright. But I’m bored, and I’ve been kind of coped up too long in the house. Then came the critical question “What should we have for dinner?”. I hate that question, because it’s generally at the point where I’m hungry and ready to just call it and go somewhere for food that makes me and the family ill or that we could make for a whole lot cheaper (yes, I’m pretty addicted to going out to eat, even with all it’s pit falls and side effects).
My wife suggested Lasagna – and I do love it, but it takes so long and I didn’t think we had all the ingredients for a yummy batch, but really when has having the right ingredients ever stopped me? So here we go, the relatively quick and easy lasagna…
I started with what I had for noodles, turns out we had a box of over ready noodles – that means no boiling. I used 9 noodles for 3 layers and started by laying down 3 on the bottom of a 13×9. This brings up an issue (and it goes right along with hot dogs and buns – you know, too many hotdogs, not enough buns so you end up buying more buns when you don’t need them, Why can’t they make a normalized noodle size? Too short for a 13×9 but too big for a 9×9, what gives!!!)
Over Ready Noodles
The next section deals with all the insides and really only took like 20 minutes all together to get ready.
For the meat sauce, I used a pound of ground turkey – I refuse to eat hamburger any more, it’s gross and it’s iffy on quality… So I started it in a pan, got it browned up a bit and then added mushrooms and onions. Once I had gotten it cooked the way I like I added sauce to it. You can use any sauce, I had some el cheapo sauce from the Walmarts.
The next piece is the cheese mixture. I knew we didn’t have any parmasan or ricotta cheese but my wife said we had cottage cheese that needed to be used, and it just so happened that we had some cheese spread (we bought the other night as a “manager’s special”) that I thought might be good in it.
Cheap Cottage Cheese
Cheap Cheese Spread
It’s a mozzarella garlic spread which I figured would kill two birds with one stone, right – you see what I’m thinking here.
Now be warned, you need to add a cup of water to your sauce mixture for the noodles to cook…
So I layered it all up, and I thought it looked real good and yummy – I’m sitting here typing this smelling it’s awesomeness too.
Layered Lasagna
Cheesed Lasagna
Then I popped it into the over for 60 minutes, which of course was my downfall. Sometimes I don’t really think about what I’m cooking – and really it’s just because I don’t cook lasagna very often, but I forgot that the top layer of cheese wouldn’t fare so well for an hour – so note to self, either cover with tin foil or wate to put cheese on till there is only like 15 minutes left.
The end result? Well it looks worse then it really is, and the top layer of cheese actually tasted pretty good – but presentation is a lot of what people respond too – especially kids. Which of course the objections flew as soon as they saw it. But after peeling off the top they did finally eat.
The finished Product
So was it worth it? Of course, it tasted good, it smelled good and it was super tasty, I just need to work on the execution a little more. So for an easy 20 minute prep and hour of cooking it’s super easy, relatively quick – not to mention I could make it with what I had around the house.