When it has to be Italian!

Yes, you can buy frozen lasagna when you are craving Italian food but it can be cheaper and much tastier to make it yourself. If you don't want to spring for the slightly more expensive lasagna noodles, you can use regular pasta, too. It just changes it's name from lasagna to pasta casserole! Same taste.

Lasagna noodles
1/2 pound ground beef
1 chopped onion
16 ounces mozzarella cheese (the generic store brands work just fine)
1 jar spaghetti sauce (usually around 1 pound some ounces.)
1 15 ounce can tomato sauce - in case!
Teaspoon of oregano, if you have it.

Brown and crumble the ground beef with the onion until the meat is no longer pink and the onions are tender. Stir in the sauce and oregano and simmer on low a few minutes. If the mixture is too dry, you might want to add some of the standby tomato sauce. The noodles go into the dish uncooked so you need to have some moisture to cook them in the oven.

Meanwhile, use vegetable spray on a large baking dish. Grate the mozzarella cheese. No grater, you can cut it into thin slices. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Remove the sauce mixture from the heat. Ladle in a spoonful of the sauce into the bottom of the baking dish and spread it around. Place one layer of the lasagna noodles on the sauce. Ladle some more sauce and some of the cheese on top of the noodles. Continue these layers and end with a sauce/cheese layer on top. Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes until it is cooked through and bubbly.

If you are using regular pasta like elbows, etc., layer your dish like this:

Put down half your sauce mixture into the bottom of the baking dish. Layer some of the cheese. Layer about 12-16 ounces of uncooked noodles on top of the sauce. Pour on the remaining sauce and top with cheese. Bake as indicated above. This works well if you don't have a long baking dish for the lasagna noodles.