Mom's Lasagna

This week Bob and I are eating apart most nights.  When I am not home to organize what we will be having for dinner he tends to eat less than healthy foods that come from a can or box.  I decided to make a pot of my mom's pasta sauce and a lasagna so that he could have something healthyish for meals.

Gus got us up at 4:30am... this is in addition to the 11:00am and 1:30am wake up calls!

 ... since we were awake we went grocery shopping as soon as the store opened at 8:30am.   I wanted to go as early as possible so that the sauce could cook for the required 4 hours before the lasagna was made.

Lasagna is labour intensive but I love that the meal will give us a ton of leftovers and perhaps a few freezer portions.

 First boil up a 3/4 box of lasagna noodles... I precook these while I am finishing the sauce.  Cook them just enough that they are pliable... mom says about 5 minutes.  I stagger them in the pot because I find that it helps with sticking.

Mix together 3 containers of ricotta cheese, 2 eggs, some italian spices, and a handful of parmesean cheese.  As a kid I used to love eating this out of the bowl... yum!

Brown a family pack of ground beef (or ground turkey/chicken), with an onion, garlic, salt, pepper and italian seasonings. If there is any meat leftover after the lasagna is built it can be added to the sauce.

Sauce is ready for layering onto the lasagna.

Put a layer of sauce on the bottom of the dish.

Next the noodles are laid out on top of the sauce, overlap these a bit to help keep everything together once it's cooked.

Add a layer of beef.

Ricotta cheese is next.

Mozzarella cheese is last.  Keep layering in this way until your pan is full...

or overfull in my case.  It is always a good idea to put a cookie tray underneath the lasagna pan incase there is any spilling over during cooking.  This lasagna will be covered with tinfoil and placed in the fridge until cooking time on Monday evening.  It will be cooking at 350 degrees for about an hour.  You will know it is ready when you stick a knife in the middle and it is hot when pulled out.

It is now time to get ready for date night!