Getting a little Italian...

Whoa, the whole blogger format changed on me and I'm slightly confused...anyway!

After three trips to the grocery store in less than a week I finally gathered all of the ingredients for my recipe this week....slow cooker lasagna!  I didn't even know this was possible (thank you Pinterest), but then again I'm learning all kinds of new things that can be prepared in the crock pot. 

Before I get into the recipe I need to mention a few things.  There are different variations of this recipe, I tried to make mine as healthy as possible (I think all of the cheese I used may have counteracted that however), using ground turkey instead of beef, and whole wheat noodles.  Also, Nick doesn't like cottage/ricotta cheese so I only used mozzarella cheese in my version, but I will post the alternative.

What you need:

1 lb. ground turkey (or ground beef)

24 oz. tomato sauce (I could only find 3 8 oz. cans)

8-13 oz package lasagna noodles (I used whole wheat and they only came in 13 oz, but I didn't use even half of the package)

4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1 onion

1 clove garlic

1 tsp. Italian seasoning

(1 & 1/2 cups cottage or ricotta cheese)

What to do:

1. Spray crock pot with cooking spray.

2. Chop onion and garlic, place in skillet with ground meat.

3. Brown meat.  Drain.

4. Turn off heat and add tomato sauce.

5. Use a quarter of the meat/sauce and spread in bottom of crock pot. 

6. Next add a layer of noodles.  You will need to break up the noodles to fit.  I was able to fit maybe half of one straight across with another, smaller half, next to it.  After that I used pieces to fill in the sides.  It is okay to overlap the noodles slightly. (My crock pot is about 5 quarts, so it's on the smaller side, I didn't use very many noodles.)

7. Spread about 1/4 of the cheese (If using cottage cheese combine both cheeses in a bowl and use 1/3)

8. Repeat layers twice, ending with the remaining meat sauce. 

(I originally topped mine with the remaining mozzarella before cooking, but I would recommend waiting until cooking is almost done to add mozzarella.)

9. Cook on low 4 hours.  Or (what I did), cook on high for the first hour then turn to low for two hours.  15 minutes before serving turn off and remove lid, top with mozzarella and let stand until serving.

Pretty simple, and quite delicious.  Nick and I had the left overs for dinner a couple days later and it still tasted delicious.  I got quite the compliment from him after we ate, which was, "Okay, I'm on board for the crock pot now, you've made two really good things."  He was hesitant when I first mentioned attempting my blog again, apparently he's had bad crock pot experiences.  Sounds like I'm successfully turning that all around.

I'm contemplating a few different things for next week, I'm finding so many good looking recipes it's hard to choose! 

Until next time!