My Mom's Lasagna

I've never done a post like this before, but Brent keeps telling me what a good cook that I am...so I thought that maybe every once in a while I could share some of my recipes with you all! Sometimes I find good ones on blogs that I read, so here goes my first attempt!

My Mom has made a killer lasagna my whole life. And it's mostly homemade from scratch. I put a spin on the one that I made tonight and actually made my own sauce instead of using store-bought, and it was Yummy!

Oh, correction - Brent tells me that I made HIS sauce tonight, not my own sauce...and he's territorial about his spaghetti sauce! He told me that I couldn't share that portion of the recipe with you - what a stinker!

Well, here's the rest of the recipe, and like I said, I've always made it using just normal Prego sauce, so it's good either way. And it's super easy to make, just takes some time and planning.

Mom's Lasagna
Ingredients:

Box of lasagna noodles (oven ready, if possible)
Large jar of sauce (possibly even two jars, depending on how saucy you like your lasagna)
small white onion
fresh garlic, pressed (optional)
3 Tbsp butter
1 lb of ground meat
small curd cottage cheese (small container)
1 egg
1-2 packs of shredded mozzarella (depending on how cheesy you want it) Cut onion, using either half of the onion (if you don't care for onions all that much) or the whole thing. Put in a saucepan, along with the garlic if you opted for it and add the butter.

Saute the onions to your liking. Add hamburger meat and brown. Once browned, turn heat down to a simmer and add spaghetti sauce to the pan. (Depending on the type of meat used, you might need to drain the grease off before adding the sauce.) Let simmer for an hour. While you're waiting, if your little one is still sleeping, you can enjoy some of this to pass the time: At least, that's what I did!!

In small bowl, combine cottage cheese and egg together. Mix well. Set aside. Taking your lasagna pan, cover the entire bottom of the pan with a light layer of sauce. A very thin layer, just enough to put something on the bottom of the pan. Next, add a layer of uncooked noodles, covering the entire surface of the pan. Note: if the noodles don't "fit" into your pan, just break them apart and cover the whole area, overlapping as needed. Add a layer of the cottage cheese/egg mixture. Cover with a layer of sauce, thicker than what you put on the bottom of the pan. Top with cheese, depending on how cheesy you want your lasagna, use a heavy hand or a light one here. Repeat the layers, leaving off the bottom of the pan layer of sauce. So the order of the layers is: noodles, cottage cheese/egg, noodles, sauce, cheese. (At least, that's the order that I used tonight...you can play with the order to your own liking.) Repeat to the top of your pan.

When you get close to the top of the pan, put down one last layer of noodles, then sauce and then cheese. You should now be at the top of the pan. Cover with foil and place in the fridge for 6-8 hours. Note, if you buy the oven-ready noodles the time it needs to sit can be cut in half. You can also prepare this the night before and let sit in the fridge overnight.

When ready to cook, bake on 350 degrees for an hour to an hour and a half. Remove the foil for the last 10-15 minutes. Cut, serve and enjoy! Like I said, this recipe is YUMMY! And easy, as far as homemade lasagna goes...the hardest thing is planning ahead of time to make it. I always seem to decide to want it two hours before I would want to eat it, and that can't happen!

Another note that I'll add: I like to put toothpicks into the lasagna before I cover it with foil so that the foil doesn't touch the cheese. It can/will stick to the cheese as it cooks, taking off the top layer of cheese when you remove the foil! Just a helpful hint from me to you...

Let me know if you try this recipe out and what you think of it...I'd love to hear!