Everybody Loves Lasagna

I know what you're thinking... Lasagna's hard! What with the pre-cooking the noodles and all that jazz. Never fear.. the World's easiest Lasagna is here!! I learned this at a church activity a few years ago and it has been one of my favorites ever since.

World's Easiest Lasagna
1 Lb. hamburger
8 oz. noodles
1 cup cottage cheese
32 oz. spaghetti sauce
1 cup water (Somestimes I use more like 1/2 if I make my own sauce)
2 1/2 cup shredded cheese

Brown hamburger. mix together spaghetti sauce, water, cottage cheese, and hamburger. Layer noodles,meat mixture, cheese as many times as desired. Cover with tin foil and bake at 375 for one hour.

If you want to make this as painless as possible, you can buy some Prego or Ragu or whatever kind of pre-made spaghetti sauce your heart desires. If you're feeling a little adventurous.. Make your own sauce! I usually use 2ish cans of tomato sauce (i want to say like 5-8 ounces or something?), a can of diced tomatoes, and some tomato paste. From there, season with Italian seasoning, basil, thyme, oregano, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. If you don't have all those herbs, no worries!! Using onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper do a surprising amount of good. If you don't have any of those, I would HIGHLY recommend getting those and AT LEAST some italian seasoning. They are all really good to have =] Also, here's a little tip. If you feel like you just can't get that tomatoey edge to go away, add a little bit of sugar. But there's tomato sauce in a nut shell! Just try it! I promise it's not too scary. 

On top of that, you can buy a container of Ricotta and put that on top of the noodles before you put the meat sauce mixture on. I'm not a huge Ricotta fan, so I usually just stick to the Cottage Cheese. 

Toss some garlic bread and a green salad or frozen veggies with it, and you have a great meal! One of my favorites. If you've never made garlic bread before, you have to try sometime! It really is delicious.

Garlic Bread

1 loaf french bread (You can usually buy these from a grocery store for like a buck)

3-4 tablespoons butter

Garlic powder or Minced Garlic

Parsley

I buy the garlic that is freshly minced and comes in a little jar you can refrigerate. If you want to go that route, melt the butter in a frying pan with about 1 tsp of the garlic. Once the butter is all melted and starts to turn brown, spoon it onto half of the loaf and mix it around so it is somewhat even. If you'd rather use garlic powder, melt the butter, spoon onto the half, and sprinkle garlic powder on top of all that. Sprinkle parsley evenly on top.

Turn the oven on to broil and put the bread on the middle rack on a flat sheet. This is where it gets tricky... I can't tell you how many times I've burned my garlic bread because it really only takes like 1-2 minutes. I have learned I have to just wait by the oven or else I'll forget to take it out and burn it and spend the next 5 minutes scraping black off while my husband tells me it's still edible...

Voila! Lasagna and Garlic bread. Enjoy!

--Eat well, eat good, good eats!!