Fast and inexpensive...the way a meal should be
I had a craving for lasagna the other day, but I had neither the lasagna noodles nor the desire to go to the store to buy any.
That wasn't going to stop me, however.
I dug around in the cabinets and in the fridge and found all that I needed to make a great meal.
Penne pasta, ricotta, mozzarella, some spices and and eggs. With that, we had a half dozen meals.
Like lasagna, this baked pasta dish freezes well, so you don't have to get sick of the meal before you finish the tray. If you're really a vegetarian on a budget, you can't afford to waste any food.
The day I made this was at the end of a long weekend the Steve Barnes campaign, which resulted in some pretty important endorsements for him. Intertwined with that, I had to run back and forth to the Kennedy Space Center to cover launches and landings. As a result, I had gone a couple of days without sleep.
Steve was working downstairs when I went to the kitchen to cook. When I came down with this meal, he was shocked.
"When did you make this?" "Just now." "That quickly?"
That's just it. It's fast. It's cheap. And it's really good. With ten minutes of prep and half an hour of cooking, you'll have a meal on the table.
Penne Lasagna
1 pound of cooked penne pasta
16 ounces of ricotta
1 teaspoon each of parsley, garlic powder, oregano, rosemary and thyme
1/2 onion, chopped finely
1 pound of mozzarella cut into thin strips
16 ounces of spaghetti sauce
2 eggs
- Pour half the sauce into an oiled baking dish.
- Put the pasta into the pan.
- Mix the ricotta, the spices and the onions in a bowl and add in some slices of the mozzarella.
- Stir the cheese mixture with the pasta and pour the remainder of the sauce over the top.
- Top the whole thing with the rest of the mozzarella slices.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
Vegetarian.
