Lasagna with a secret ingredient

Lasagna is one of our favorite large dishes. The two of us can eat this for an entire week and never get sick of it! It takes about an hour to cook but its a simple enough recipe. I am going to reveal two amazing tricks that my mother taught me about making lasagna. 

You will need...

• Lasagna noodles 
• 1 large jar of tomato sauce (I often get a second jar just in case... no one likes to run out again to get more because you got sauce happy) 
• 16oz ball of mozzarella cheese (shredded cheese just doesn't cut it!)
• Ricotta cheese 
• Tofu (???????????!?!) you'll see...

Tip #1 Do not cook the noodles! Often, when you cook the noodles before using them in your lasagna the whole thing gets really soggy and mushy. Instead use extra sauce! Allow the water in the sauce to cook the noodles for a firmer and tastier lasagna. 

Anyway, 

• preheat the oven to 400F
• pour some sauce at the bottom of your dish (glass, aluminum or ceramic)
• place your uncooked noodles on the sauce
• add more sauce
• add a layer of mozzarella cheese
• add a few blobs or ricotta cheese and spread it around a little

Tip #2 Ricotta can be both expensive and fattening so what I do is mix one small container of full fat ricotta cheese with one firm brick of tofu in a blender with a little bit of garlic. The consistency is exactly the same as straight ricotta but with less fat and it introduces a complete protein! Tofu on its own is relatively tasteless and takes on the taste of whatever it is being cooked with so when you use tofu in your lasagna it absorbs all the yummy sauce and cheese and you can't even tell something is different!

• okay so you added the sauce, noodles, sauce, and first layer of cheese
• next you add another layer of sauce
• another layer of noodles
• sauce
• cheese
• sauce
• noodles
• sauce
• cheese
• sauce... do you see a pattern? just make sure each noodles has a layer of sauce on either side of it
• make the top layer cheese
• bake for 40-50 minutes until the cheese on top is starting to bubble and brown
• let sit and cool for 15 minutes and enjoy!