Weeknight/Worknight Lasagna

After the forgotten cheese, I was looking forward to lasagna all day.

Seriously, all stinking day I was thinking about noodles layered with cheese, spinach, and sauce. And then my friend asked me to cover her scholastic bowl meet (Nerd Herd, as we call it) and the next thing I knew it was 4:30 and I hadn’t even left my school building yet!

By the time I stopped for the darn cheese, got home, washed the right pan, and actually got to cooking, I WAS RAVENOUS!

Usually, lasagna is a labor of love. Lots of time is spent cooking spinach, pureeing cottage cheese and ricotta together with spices, making my own sauce… but tonight? Tonight, instead of being a long sordid love affair with layered pasta, it was a quickie.

I made this lasagna so fast, I could hardly believe it!

Work Night Lasagna

Ingredients

• 1 box lasagna noodles (no-boil are NOT necessary, any noodles will work)
• 1 jar of your favorite pasta sauce
• 1 bag or frozen chopped spinach (bagged is important, NOT boxed!)
• 1 container reduced fat ricotta cheese (14 oz)
• 1 cup fat free cottage cheese
• 1 package (2 cups-ish) shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 package shredded parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• 1 tsp. Italian seasoning
• 2 eggs
• about 1/2 c. to 1 c. water

Directions

Pre-heat your oven to 350* F. In a mixing bowl, mix together the cheeses, spices, a handful of shredded parmesan cheese, 2 eggs, and the frozen spinach. Bagged frozen spinach is in lovely little clumps. These are important. Mix the cheese/spinach together well (no, you don’t need to defrost the spinach!), and then layer in a 9×13 baking dish in this order: sauce, noodles, cheese mixture, shredded mozzarella, sauce, noodles…etc. End with noodles, then pour the remaining sauce on top of the noodles. Pour 1/2 to 1 c. water into the pan and cover tightly with foil. Bake until bubbly and the noodles are done, about 35-40 minutes. Remove the foil, top with the remaining mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, and bake until browned, another 10 minutes. Allow to cool and slice into 12 slices. Enjoy!

Ahh… that’s better… finally. Lasagna. I feel like Garfield.

I didn’t eat the whole pan though!

More chocolate is on the schedule for tonight, and so is some time with this beautiful face:

Tagged as: Italian, pasta, simple recipe, spinach, vegetables, vegetarian