New Adventure--Homemade Lasagna

I'm excited to be participating for the first time in Alicia's Homemaking Try New Adventures Thursday link-up. I tried something new last weekend (New Years Day to be specific)--homemade lasagna! In case you didn't know, I hate to cook, I mean really hate, like washing-the-dishes hate. {Don't even get me started on the irony of me ending up as a housewife.} But I do it anyway, so I'm mostly drawn to quick and easy non-recipes. Therefore, it was a big step to make lasagna by myself.

Back in the day, we would eat Stouffer's frozen lasagna. Easy and yummy. But then they changed it or something and it became less yummy, plus we'd eaten it too often and we were just DONE. And we never really replaced it with anything. I have a baked penne recipe I like to make and I've made manicotti a few times, but it's been a long time since we had lasagna.

Meanwhile, my BFF has made homemade lasagna for a long time, but she also makes her spaghetti sauce from scratch, so clearly she's way ahead of me. But I was talking to her recently and she was saying how easy it is. So I asked for her recipe and she says she does it the way it says on the box of noodles (plus she doesn't even make her own sauce for it!).

I was thinking of taking the plunge, but of course L can't eat wheat. So do I make lasagna with gluten-free noodles?! First, we had to check the store (we shop at Sunflower, it's like Whole Foods but better). Hubby did the shopping and came home with what he found: no boil rice pasta lasagna noodles. But the recipe on its box was for Southwestern something lasagna--not helpful. So I found this recipe off the Barilla website, and got to work!

Basically it was super easy--I don't know what I was afraid of. I browned ground beef {I used ground beef instead of sausage in hopes the kids would like it} and added it to a jar of marinara sauce and then used extra sauce to coat the bottom of my pan, then layered noodles, cheese mixture, meat mixture and so on. It didn't take long because I didn't have to boil the noodles (I timed it, it took me 35 minutes to get it ready for the oven). That is not a picture of my creation. I took a picture, but couldn't wait to upload it, cuz that might take a while. This photo is from Barilla.

The bad news is the rice pasta was gross. Nasty! I couldn't eat it (I just ate the beef and cheese, but not the pasta) and the kids didn't like it. Hubby was a trooper and said it was good and ate it up. We decided next time to just use regular wheat noodles (and par-boil them) since L didn't like it anyway. (Also next time: sausage, yum.) I also thought it was heavy on the cheese so I might tone that down next time. But there will be a next time--really it was easier than the baked penne and manicotti I usually make.

So that was my lasagna-making adventure. Sorry there's no picture--I took one but if I waited till I uploaded it, well it might be June. For more adventures, go here.