Dinner tonight... Last-Minute Lasagna

On Sunday, I made a pan of Real Simple's Last-Minute Lasagna and divided it into six portions. I'm eating it for lunch each day this week (which is good, because work has been so busy that I can barely step away from my desk for the minute-and-a-half it takes to warm it up), and Mr. Fritz had it for dinner tonight (I had dinner out with a friend). This was another one of Real Simple's all-time favorite recipes and I must admit that it was in fact both easy to prepare as well as really tasty.


The recipe has only a few ingredients: refrigerated ravioli (I used tortelloni, because the grocery store was out of rav), frozen chopped spinach (thawed, with the water squeezed out), shredded mozzarella, marinara sauce (I used Trader Joe's Organic Vodka Sauce because I had a jar in the pantry), and shredded Parmesan. What makes it extra easy is that the filled pasta stands in for ricotta cheese and you don't need to pre-boil the pasta, since it's fresh, unlike regular lasagna sheets. You layer sauce, pasta, spinach, cheese, then repeat twice, finishing with sauce. It then bakes for 30 minutes, covered, in a 375 degree oven, followed by 5-10 minutes uncovered. Simple, tasty, good, and lends itself to lots of variations.

Some notes: The recipe calls for one 24-26 ounce jar of marinara sauce, but I think it would have been better with more sauce, maybe even double that amount. Also, OCD girl that I am, I carefully placed the tortelloni in rows. I think that it would probably be fine to be a little less precise, but what can I say? I'm kind of all about the presentation. At least I didn't force myself to alternate between the plain pasta and the spinach pasta -- even I can admit that doing that would have been over the top!