You Pinspire Me
I love lasagna – I love the layers of meat sauce, the copious amounts of cheese in various forms, and the noodles. What I don’t love is how long it takes me to prepare it. I know, it’s not nearly as finicky as things like cannelloni, but you can’t deny that it takes time.
Yesterday, since I was leaving in the late afternoon to attend Delta Faucet‘s #HappiMess event in Toronto with designer Tiffany Pratt, I very kindly put dinner together for my family before I left. I had 45 minutes, meat in the freezer, sauce in the cupboards, & cottage cheese in the fridge – so I thought, Hey, let’s do lasagna! But not real lasagna. Lazy Lasagna. I didn’t have time for messing around with repeating layers and breaking noodles to the right length.
I threw some (Catelli Gluten Free) spaghetti in a boiling pot of water, cooked some meat, added onions, garlic, & spaghetti sauce, and, while that was cooking, blended some cottage cheese, spinach, and cream cheese together in The Harley Pasternak Blender, and then threw it all into the pie plate, one ingredient after another, and topped with shredded mozza. I instructed my husband to throw it in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, and presto – a healthy, hearty, easy dinner! If you have time for such things as sides, you can serve with a salad & garlic bread, but this dish did our family just fine – and everyone loved it!
I blended the spinach into the cheese because while my kids aren’t a huge fan of spinach, I’ve been dosing them daily with it in their smoothies and they haven’t been any the wiser – so, I figured that I might as well try it out with the lazy lasagna, too!
- 1/2 pack (about 170g) of spaghetti
- 1 lb ground meat
- 1/2 onion, chopped
- 2 Tbsp garlic
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 2 cups spaghetti sauce
- 2 cups cottage cheese
- 4 oz cream cheese
- 150 g spinach
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp butter
- 3/4 cup mozzarella, shredded
- Preheat oven to 350, grease a 9" pie plate.
- Cook spaghetti according to instructions on the box; rinse and set aside.
- Brown meat in a skillet with onions, garlic, & 1/8 tsp salt. Add in spaghetti sauce & simmer.
- Blend together cottage cheese, cream cheese, spinach, & 1/8 tsp salt.
- Layer the different components in the pie plate - a bit of meat sauce, some spinach/cheese, all of the spaghetti, put the 2Tbsp of butter on the spaghetti in chunks, then top with remaining spinach/cheese & meat sauce. Sprinkle Mozzarella over the whole thing.
- Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until sauce is bubbling and cheese is golden.
- Like lasagna, this dish can be adapted to your favourite foods! Be creative, add what you've got in the fridge!
Busing making a #HappiMess with Vicky from Mom Who Runs while my family was busy downing my Lazy Lasagna.
Jenn vanOosten
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Looks like a great recipe. I’m going to have to try it out soon.