quick and easy meals for 1 or 2

Lasagna

This is sorta special

Lasagna is such a great Sunday, everybody get together meal,,,, well,,,,, serve it with some salad and fresh Italian bread,,, it’s special!!

Lasagna is made up of 4 parts ,,, pasta ( big lasagna noodles) good sauce, meat and cheese. Sounds simple don’t it,, but it’s how you put it together and what else you do with it that makes the difference.

Noodles,, you can use any lasagna noodles that need to be cooked. Put them in boiling water until about halfway done. (firm but not quite ready). Drain and drizzle with a little olive oil. Gently stir or toss so that all the pasta is coated with oil to keep them from sticking together or you can buy lasagna noodles that will cook and get soft for serving in the casserole dish without boiling. I can’t tell the difference when they both are done.

Sauce,,, if you saved some of the poppop’s spaghetti and meatballs from a couple of Sundays ago you can use that and it will solve your sauce and meat problem. If you didn’t you can use marinara sauce off the shelf.

Meat,,,, you can do 1 or both of the following,,, cook up some Italian sausage in a frying pan until it doesn’t leak any more. Let it cool and slice it thin. Meatballs,,,, Mix up 1 lb of ground beef, about 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese and 1 egg with your hands. Put it in a frying pan and cook it as you break it up as it cooks with a turner thing.

Cheese,,,,, you will want to have at least 3 kinds of cheese,,, mozzarella, provolone and ricotta.

Now I’m going to come off the wall a little bit and slice, real thin, a small eggplant and a couple of zucchinis.

Put a little of the sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish big enough to handle all the ingredients.

Start with a layer of the pasta,,,then all the rest of the stuff in layers until the dish is full. You have to have enough liquid (sauce) to fill the dish to the top of all the ingredients and to have some to spoon on the portions for serving. Drizzle it with olive oil, top with parmesan cheese. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 for about ½ hour. Uncover and cook for another 10-15 minutes more.

I know I’ve been a little vague about amounts of this and that, but it’s hard to screw up this dish.
The difference comes out in the thoughts you put into it while you are putting all the stuff together. It’s a Sunday, family thing.

Maybe a salad and good crusty bread and Chianti!!