AWESOME Crock Pot Lasagna!!

Here's the deal.

Wade doesn't love food nearly as much as I do.

He likes food, don't get me wrong. But he isn't enamored with eating and cooking like I am.

That said, when I make a new recipe, he doesn't tend to be overly excited, in general.

When I served this lasagna, he said, "Wow!! This is a home run!!"

........'nuff said.

It was really tasty! Plus I love having more crock pot recipes in my arsenal, especially now that our home school has started up. It is really nice at the end of the day to have most of the dinner prepared. This recipe makes enough for leftovers, which is super nice for me, I love to have leftovers for lunch!

Here's what you need:

• Ingredients

  • 1 pound (16 ounces) ground beef (I used ground turkey)
  • 1/2 cup diced white onion
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 1 (24 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
  • 1/2 cup water (I used a full cup, didn't want the lasagna to be dry)
  • 1 (15 ounce) container ricotta cheese
  • 2 cups mozzarella cheese
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 whole egg
  • 2 Tablespoons fresh parsley or 2 teaspoons dried parsley (I used basil and oregano instead)
  • 6 uncooked lasagna noodles (I used 8- I like lots of noodles)

In a mixing bowl, mix up the ricotta, 1 1/2 cups mozzarella, 2 Tb Parmesan, the egg, and the parsley. (If I were making this again, I would add a tsp of salt. But I like things salty.... so decide for yourself)

The remaining cheese is going to be sprinkled over the top at the end, so I went ahead and grated it and put it in the fridge in a Ziploc so it was ready to go.

What is up with the wrinkles on my hand??!! I have avoided toe thumb photos quite well lately.... now I have to worry about hand wrinkles??!! Sheesh!

Brown the meat and onion until cooked, adding the garlic the last minute or so of cooking. Then add the sauce and water, and mix well.

Now you're going to put 1 cup of the sauce mix in the bottom of the Pam-sprayed crock. Then layer 3 noodles on top. I broke mine up quite a bit to fit, and it turned out great! Then you're going to spread half of the ricotta mixture over the top of the noodles:

Then top with 2 cups of sauce, 3 more noodles, the other half of the ricotta mixture, then the remaining sauce. I pressed 2 additional noodles on top of the sauce, so that they were pretty well covered with the sauce. Then cook on low for 4 hours.

If you work in the morning, or wouldn't have time to do the prep in the morning, you could totally make it to this point the night before and just stick the crock in the fridge and plop it on the crock pot the next day.

Then, about 10 minutes or so before serving, sprinkle the Ziploc bag of cheese over the top. It will get all melty and delicious.

Oh yeah.

I got this recipe from http://www.tablespoon.com/