We love the taste of lasagna but hate the work. Even using dry noodles instead of cooking them doesn't make it easy enough.
so today, before the layoff possibility came to light, Jessie and I decided to try a new method.
We mixed spaghetti sauce she made last night with another can of spaghetti sauce and a can of water (filled the spag sauce can).
We mixed that sauce mixture with 2 pounds of macaroni elbows. Meant to use 1 pound, but it came out faster than we were ready for.
That all was mixed in an oven safe dutch oven. We put it in at 300 degrees and checked it in an hour. It was a little too thick so more sauce/water was added.
Then jessie added cottage cheese to the mixture and stirred it well.
Back to the oven for another 30 minutes and it is WONDERFUL! It would be much better with mozzarella in it, and parmesan, but we are out of both (husband was going to get some at Sam's but he really needed to just come home).
So now we can bake pasta and sauce with-o cooking the noodles first. I hate cooking the noodles first because it waters things down. Mostly , though, I just cannot lift the pan to drain the water out.
That is why this is GENIUS for us crippled people.
I got the idea from a jar of sauce we got that had a bag of "special" pasta packaged with it. You added cheese and meat and 1 or 2 jars of water, then cooked it in the oven or crockpot. It was about $6 or so and that meant after the coupon we were not buying it again.
But the idea nagged at me. So we decided to experiment.
thank you has been absolutely fascinated with cooking. he finally figured out that not everything needs to be written in a recipe and measured precisely. He says it is like Potions class at Hogwarts!
I hope this is handy for those that are crippled like me or just buys busy buys moms. If you use 1 pound of pasta and a smaller amount of both sauce and water it would fit in a crockpot.
so today, before the layoff possibility came to light, Jessie and I decided to try a new method.
We mixed spaghetti sauce she made last night with another can of spaghetti sauce and a can of water (filled the spag sauce can).
We mixed that sauce mixture with 2 pounds of macaroni elbows. Meant to use 1 pound, but it came out faster than we were ready for.
That all was mixed in an oven safe dutch oven. We put it in at 300 degrees and checked it in an hour. It was a little too thick so more sauce/water was added.
Then jessie added cottage cheese to the mixture and stirred it well.
Back to the oven for another 30 minutes and it is WONDERFUL! It would be much better with mozzarella in it, and parmesan, but we are out of both (husband was going to get some at Sam's but he really needed to just come home).
So now we can bake pasta and sauce with-o cooking the noodles first. I hate cooking the noodles first because it waters things down. Mostly , though, I just cannot lift the pan to drain the water out.
That is why this is GENIUS for us crippled people.
I got the idea from a jar of sauce we got that had a bag of "special" pasta packaged with it. You added cheese and meat and 1 or 2 jars of water, then cooked it in the oven or crockpot. It was about $6 or so and that meant after the coupon we were not buying it again.
But the idea nagged at me. So we decided to experiment.
thank you has been absolutely fascinated with cooking. he finally figured out that not everything needs to be written in a recipe and measured precisely. He says it is like Potions class at Hogwarts!
I hope this is handy for those that are crippled like me or just buys busy buys moms. If you use 1 pound of pasta and a smaller amount of both sauce and water it would fit in a crockpot.