Quick & Easy Lasagna

My dad makes an awesome lasagna that takes an entire day to cook because he makes it almost completely from scratch. He cooks down tomatoes, uses ground beef, beef cubes, and sausage, and ricotta and cottage cheese. I really need to watch him make it one day so I can write down a recipe, but for the time being, I'll stick with what I can find online.

Since we are currently enduring Snowmageddon 2010 (there is 2 foot or more of snow outside my window), I decided lasagna was a nice, warm and filling thing to make for dinner. Since I didn't make the chicken ratatouille from last week and still had the eggplant and zucchini left over, I decided to add them into the lasagna to get them out of the fridge and save them from going bad. 

Of course, since I haven't blogged about dinner in a while, I completely forgot to take a picture of the lasagna prior to everyone digging in. And here I was thinking that I could freeze the rest of it and have leftovers for dinner one night, but apparently  I'd need to make more than a 9x13 dish.

Quick & Easy Lasagna
Adapted from:  www.allrecipes.com
Servings: 6-8 people (unless they're really hungry)

Ingredients:
6 lasagna noodles
1 lb. ground beef (or your meat of choice)
2 cups & 2 tbs cottage cheese
1 zucchini, diced (optional)
1/4 eggplant, diced (optional)
2 eggs
1 tbs minced garlic
1tbs parsley
1 hefty shake crushed red pepper flakes
1 can tomato paste
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
3 handfuls mozzarella cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the lasagna noodles and cook al dente according to the directions on the box; usually 6-8 minutes.
2. Brown the ground beef and drain the fat. Preheat the oven to 375.
3. In a medium sized bowl, mix together the zucchini, eggplant, cottage cheese, eggs, garlic, parsley, and red pepper flakes. In another bowl, mix together the tomato paste and sauce.
4. In a 9x13 baking dish, layer 3 noodles on the bottom. Then add ground beef, tomato mixture and then cheese mixture. Repeat. The dish will hold two layers.
5. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and add the mozzarella cheese. Switch the oven to broil and cook for another 10 minutes or until the cheese is browned.