I. Made. Food.

And this IS truly blog-worthy, because as you may recall, the last time I spent any intense amount of the time in the kitchen was for that glorious stuffed chicken that took forever.  In Sacramento.  Like two years ago.

A cook I am not.

But I was inspired by the lasagna noodle box in the back of the pantry.

Al dente noodles nicely laid out flat on foil.

Ricotta, grated parmesan, eggs, salt, all that good stuff. 

Ground beef (no sausage, because hey, I'll have a meat lasagna, but no treif. My husband can't figure me out) - divided up into the three portions for layering.  This seemed like it should have been easy: I was to add in a whole bunch of basic spices like basil, oregano, etc.  Except. We're moving in three weeks, and I've already been sorting through the kitchen. And a whole bunch of our spices, the basic ones in the huge containers, were all wilted at the bottom... like the oregano, basil, etc.  So I had dumped them.  What was I thinking?!  (oh right, that we rarely cook)

I finally chopped up three cloves of garlic and some "Sicilian spice mix" I found next to the Creole spice in the back. It worked beautifully.

And in the vein of cheating... who needed the real tomatoes the recipe called for?  All hail Classico Tomato and Basil Sauce for the win.  

Layering.  

It was so GOOD.