Lazy Lasagna

My mother and my grandmother have the greatest lasagna stories from when I was little. Apparently, I LOVED lasagna, but I called in "Anya" so of course my mother was the only person on the planet that knew her toddler wanted lasagna.


There is also a great story my grandmother tells about how I got to spend an afternoon with her all by myself, and for lunch she made lasagna. When she served it, she apparently cut it up for me, and I threw a fit. I thought as a three year old that I could cut it and eat it all by myself. The best part is I apparently tried to tell her I wasn't going to eat it, and she promptly agreed that I didn't have to, but that it was the only thing she was going to serve me for lunch. I believe I lost that round.


So, as I was standing in the grocery store craving too many things to nail down something specific I passed the lasagna noodles and just went for it. I created a pretty basic lasagna, but it sure hit the spot.


Ingredients:
Lasagna noodles - boil or no boil noodles, this recipe is called lazy lasagna because I used no boil noodles!
Part skim Ricotta cheese - about 1 and 1/2 cups
Spinach - half a bag
2 cups of meat sauce - I used the leftovers from this meat sauce that I froze
Prego or whatever jar of marinara sauce you have in the pantry - to taste
Mozzarella cheese - about 2 cups
Cottage cheese - to taste
Olive Oil - about a tsp.
1 clove of garlic


Grease a 9x9 pan, and preheat the oven to 375. Pour a thin layer of prego onto the bottom of the pan to make sure the bottom of your noodles don't burn. Pour about a teaspoon of olive oil into a frying pan, mince the garlic and cook for about a minute. Slowly add handfuls of spinach until it is completely cooked. Mix the spinach and the ricotta in a bowl, and scoop it on top of the noodles. One layer of noodles down, then meat sauce. Scoop the ricotta and spinach mixture onto the next layer of noodles, top with cottage cheese and a little bit of sauce. I ended up with two layers of meat sauce and two layers of the spinach, ricotta and cottage cheese. Top the highest layer with prego and the mozzarella cheese. Bake for about an hour.


*If you use the no boil noodles you need to make sure that each of the noodles are completely covered with sauce. My top layer didn't have enough sauce, so the corners were extra crunchy!

Enjoy!!