Lazy Man Lasagna

Ah, Good morning! Should you choose to read this blog regularly, you will find I am not one to be fussy about what I eat for breakfast. Food is food and is not relegated to a certain time of day. This morning I had leftovers from dinner last night…which, in part, were left over from another meal. Waste not, want not mentality is alive and well in this house!

The leftover dish was a Food Tweaked recipe (my name for recipes I tweak a bit) from a cooking show on frugal meals. I’m all for frugal meals when and as often as you can but it has to be healthy and meet my other criteria…colorful, tasty and appealing to all the senses. Some people see food as simply fuel for the body but I am not one of those. Perhaps I could regain my girlhood figure if so, but alas, it is not to be. I am a mother of many, a grandmother of many more and the wife of a man whose love language is food! These add up to yummy things from the kitchen in our home; we see it as a good thing to be relished.

In our family cookbook we have two rules for submission of recipes. First, if you submit it, you get to name and claim it as your own. Second, you have to submit tidbits for the ‘Things We Learned the Hard Way’ section; stories on yourself basically.

The recipe below has yet to be named officially so let’s call it Lazy Man’s Lasagna. It’s quick to prepare, cheap, very tasty and makes great leftovers. I’ll use brand names from time to time, sharing the approximate cost where I can, try to use fairly accurate measurements and amounts. Much to Daughter #1’s chagrin, I rarely follow a recipe; I just dump ingredients and cook till it’s done! Not helpful to those needing to follow a written recipe but I will try to make it a repeatable recipe, I promise.

Lazy Man’s Lasagna

1 box of Wal-Mart brand pasta, not spaghetti or angel hair or noodle - $1.00

1 can Hunt’s traditional spaghetti sauce - $0.92

1 large container of Ricotta cheese – less than $2.00

1 bag shredded Mozzarella – less than $2.00

1 bag of shredded Parmesan – less than $2.00

Cook pasta in boiling salted water till almost done. Drain. Place pasta in large mixing bowl and pour can spaghetti sauce over and stir gently to coat all pasta. Next add in whole container of Ricotta cheese and about 1/3 of the Mozzarella cheese, stir in to mix with pasta. Spread out in 9 X 13 baking dish or two smaller casserole dishes. Cover top of pasta mixture with Mozzarella. Sprinkle 1/3 bag of Parmesan cheese over that. Bake at 425* until heated thru and cheese is bubbly and starting to brown.

I gave one half of the pasta dish to a friend up the street but I could have frozen it for another time. We had dinner that night, dinner last night and my breakfast this morning from the half I kept! It cost $8.00 to make and made five large servings from just one half! Do the math…that’s at least 10 servings for $8.00, more if you don’t have big eaters…we do! I served it with salad and garlic bread the first night. Last night I steamed some Swiss Chard from my garden with garlic and red pepper flakes and put simple carrot sticks on the small plate to round out the meal. Sweet tea for Honey and water for me. It had it all; healthy, colorful, tasty, texture and low cost. It’s going in the cookbook!

The most time consuming part of the whole meal was waiting for the water to boil. Let me know if this works for you.