Dinner for Two: Fabulous Lasagna

The great thing about lasagna is that once you’ve gone through the trouble of putting it together, there are tons of leftovers for the next few meals.

The bad part of lasagna is that once you’re sick of eating lasagna every night, the rest sits in the fridge uneaten. It takes two people a long time to eat a full pan of it! But that problem is eliminated with this method!

Now, I’ve got an amazing lasagna recipe that I swear by, but this was just an easier, simpler, less time-consuming version.

Cook up some ground beef…

And boil some lasagna noodles.

When the beef is browned, drain out the grease and add jarred sauce. I used Wegman’s Italian Classics, one jar of Roasted Garlic and one jar of Grandpa’s Sauce.

Next, prepare your cheese. Some ricotta,

an egg,

and some basil, thyme, garlic powder, and oregano.

All mixed up!

Drain your noodles, let them cool, and then begin assembling.

Start with a little sauce in the bottom of some disposable foil loaf pans.

Then add a noodle to each (I had to cut about 2 inches off the end of each with a pair of kitchen shears).

Ooops, just remembered to add mozzarella to the cheese!

Stir that in, then spread a bit on each noodle.

More sauce…

Lather, rinse, repeat. I think I had 4 noodles in each pan at the end.

Top with some more shredded mozzarella, and you’re good to go!

I covered each with foil. Two were set aside to freeze, and the other two went into the oven.

After about 25 minutes in the oven, this is what one looked like!

Very yummy. A little more time intensive than I’d like for a weeknight, but I guess it’s worth it since it’ll save me the work on another night.

Ravioli Lasagna

My Dad emailed my brother and I to say that he was going to be in town one night for dinner. We agreed that we would all meet at my place, since it was a weeknight and our arrival times would be staggered because of work. Sounded good to me.

Not sure what to make, I googled “What should I make for dinner?”

Up popped a multiple choice quiz, like the kind I used to fill out in Seventeen magazine except that instead of answering questions about boys and makeup, I answered questions about how many people would be over, how many of them would be kids, how long I wanted to spend cleaning up, how well-stocked my kitchen is, and how picky my guests would be.

After all that, the top recommended dish was Ravioli Lasagna. That seemed to be exactly what I was looking for – easy to pre-make, fancy yet easy, having both protein and carbs, and Italian. I didn’t know from the outset what I was looking for, but once I saw it, I knew this was it.

Start off with teeny tiny zucchini. Seems wrong to buy these when a decent garden would produce 10,000 of these. But I don’t have a garden, so I bought them.

Slice them up.

Put them in a skillet with some oil and sauté them. I seasoned them with salt and pepper. Odd that the recipe didn’t say to do that, but they did need some flavor.

Next, take some thawed frozen meatballs and slice them up. I used Wegman’s turkey meatballs to be a little healthier.

Lots of them!

Then I thawed some of my own homemade meatballs that I had in the freezer and sliced those, too. See, I’m so used to cooking for two people that the idea of cooking for five made me think I needed to double the recipe that I was using.

Pour some spaghetti sauce in the bottom of a big casserole dish. This was Wegman’s Grandpa’s Sauce, which hubby is a huge fan of. It has Italian sausage and roasted red pepper and wine and a bit of fairy dust, as well.

Spread some of the meatballs in the pan. I think I was intending to do three layers at this point, though the recipe technically only suggests two.

Then I put zucchini on top of the meatballs.

Followed by frozen cheese ravioli. Didn’t bother to thaw them, didn’t see the point. Just frozen bricks at this point.

Then grated mozzarella cheese. And that’s the first layer!

More sauce…

More meatballs…

More ravioli and zucchini

And more sauce and cheese.

Then the pan was pretty full, so I stopped there.

I covered it with foil and stuck it in the fridge to be cooked later. See, I had had a really rough day. Long story short, I was pulled over because my emissions had expired in MD and I hadn’t put my brand new NY plates on the car yet. Rather than writing me a ticket and letting me go to my job interview, the cop impounded my car and left me stranded at a gas station. Lovely day. It all worked out in the end, since I had all the valid paperwork I needed, but it was a rough day. So I was happy to be done with dinner super early and free to drink wine with my dad when he got here. Wine never tasted so good.

About an hour before I wanted to serve food, I put the ravioli lasagna in the oven (still covered with foil) and baked it for about 40 minutes. Then I removed the foil and let it cook for a while longer. Then it was done. Cheesy, bubbly, and warm.

Just what the doctor ordered.

My niece really liked it.

And my camera.

And posing for the camera.

My eyes were bigger than my stomach. It looked so good that I really loaded up my plate.

It may have been more complicated than it needed to be. I probably could have just dumped the whole meatballs in a casserole dish, covered with the ravioli, mixed them up, smothered them in sauce and cheese, and called it a day. But I have to say that I liked the layered effect, and sometimes I think that putting in a little extra effort makes it taste better. Anyway, it was a lot easier than my normal lasagna, which involves making the meat sauce from scratch and boiling noodles and using three kinds of cheese and making a huge mess.

Easy, yummy, and good reheated: that’s a winner in my book.

Artichoke Spinach Lasagna and Garlic Cheddar Biscuits

My in-laws came all the way from Louisiana to New York to visit us last weekend. They hadn’t been this far north before, so I know they had been looking forward to it for a while.

 

The evening they arrived, hubby and I picked them up from the airport. I put dinner in the oven, and we passed the next hour or so sitting on the balcony in the cool air, watching the sun set, drinking wine, listening to jazz, and eating some bruschetta to take the edge off our hunger while we caught up with each other and the puppies stared longingly at the ducks that live on the little pond in our backyard.

It was nice to participate in that without spending too much time in the kitchen. Hubby’s parents are vegetarians, so I had picked out a recipe for artichoke spinach lasagna that I’d found back when I was doing dinner parties for friends back in Pennsylvania.

That was my living room at the time. Grad students living on a stipend don’t have fancy furniture, but they make it their own.

.

My dining room was especially awesome.

Okay, moving on. When I found out that hubby’s parents were coming, I though instantly of this recipe. It had been years since I’d made it, but I remembered how yummy it was.

First step, I heated water to boil lasagna noodles.

Then I set about getting everything ready to assemble. First, I took a medium-sized sweet onion and diced it.

Next, I got out some fresh rosemary.

But didn’t take a picture of it after I diced it, because that would have been smart.

So, here’s my onion in a skillet, along with some garlic, softening up.

While that happened, I started chopping up some artichoke hearts. Tried really hard not to snack on them, because that’s a weird snack. But they’re so yummy.

Back to the stove. I added some vegetable broth and that chopped rosemary.

(I almost typed “chicken broth” out of habit. That would have been bad if my in-laws saw that. Definitely used vegetable broth, not chicken!)

Next, I thawed a box of frozen spinach and squeezed out the water.

Ooh! The water’s finally boiling! Add some salt and drop in the noodles.

The broth is boiling, too.

Add the spinach and chopped artichokes.

Then I put the lid back on and let the mixture simmer for a bit.

Here’s my secret ingredient: a jar of Wegman’s spaghetti sauce.

Once it’s all mixed in, this is what it looks like.

And then it’s time to assemble! Just start layering sauce…

…and noodles…

…and mozzarella cheese…

… and more sauce…

… and so on…

… and so forth…

And the last special ingredient: a sprinkling of tomato and basil feta cheese.

And then cover with foil and put it in the oven.

While it was cooking, I decided to try out a Pinterest recipe for Red Lobster garlic cheddar biscuits!

I used pancake mix that has been abandoned in our pantry since hubby doesn’t like pancake mixes that only call for water to be added (he prefers the ones that call for eggs and milk).

Some of that…

And some grated cheddar cheese…

And some garlic powder.

And then milk.

Pretty goopy. I was concerned. So I added more mix before shaping into biscuits and putting the blobs on the tray that fits into the toaster oven.

Mix up some melted butter, oregano, and more garlic powder.

Cook the biscuits…

Then brush with the melted butter/ garlic/ oregano mixture.

Fin!

Okay, so it’s been a while since the lasagna went in, and it’s about time to take it out.

Let it sit for a few minutes, then cut and serve.

Delicious!

Rosemary. Mozzarella. Artichoke. Tomato sauce. Spinach. So many strong, wonderful flavors.

Oh yeah, and garlic!

Everything went over very well. Definitely recommend all of it. The lasagna was much less cheesy than my meat lasagna is, but it worked well. Like I said, there were a lot of strong flavors that worked really well with each other. Warm and delicious.

Now, the biscuits? Somewhat disappointing. I think I did something wrong. They weren’t bad, just not as spectacular as Pinterest would have you believe. I think I’ll try again, though.