Lasagna

Alanna decided that her New Year's resolution would be to help cook dinner.  She's always been quite the little helper in the kitchen, but in the past year has wanted to do more and more.  She even used some of her birthday money to buy the Better Homes and Gardens New Junior Cook Book.  

In light of the resolution, Mommy made a point to pick up the ingredients for several recipes in the cookbook.  Tonight she chose to make lasagna.

Ingredients:

12 ounces ground beef

2 1/2 Cups Spaghetti Sauce

6-8 Lasagna Noodles

1 1/2 Cups Cottage Cheese

1 1/2 Cups Shredded Mozzarella

2 Tablespoons Parmesan Cheese

Brown the hamburger.  Spoon 1 cup spaghetti sauce into the bottom of an 8x8 pan.  Then mix the remainder of the sauce with the hamburger.  Layer noodles, hamburger mixture, cottage cheese and mozzarella, then repeat three times.  Bake covered at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

We modified this slightly to include more mozzarella and used lean beef and fat free cottage cheese.  We also used a bit more parmesan.

Upsides:  Easy recipe and no boiling of the noodles required.  Also pretty filling for the 273 calories per serving (8 servings).

Downside:  Turned out a bit runny.  Next time I think we'll go a little easier on the spaghetti sauce.  Also seemed a little greasy.  I may actually have to rinse the hamburger next time too.  I normally don't like doing that because you lose some of the flavor and typically favor just draining off the grease instead, but it seems like we ended up with a greasy layer left or more baked out of it.

Alanna was so proud of herself after she'd done all of the layering and she declared it would be the best lasagna "in all of Minnesota!"  When it came out of the oven though she looked a little confused and remarked that it didn't look like the picture.  I think that's because it wasn't holding it's nice layered shape that traditionally defines lasagna and reducing some of the liquid next time should help.