Mushroom Lasagna

I've been trying to take better care of myself lately, head to toe (from using moisturizer on my face to wearing more supportive shoes on my feet). And a big part of this is eating better. To me, that doesn't necessarily imply eating healthier (although I'm trying to do that too)...it means to eat more natural foods with less processing and fewer unnatural ingredients (I'm not a big fan of artificial sweeteners, for example). So I'm trying to cook more. But nothing is more tiresome to me than a fussy recipe with lots of ingredients that I have to drive across town to find. That's why this lasagna is one of my favorite things to make. The most time-consuming part of this recipe is cutting up the mushrooms, but if you like big pieces of mushrooms you can totally skip it and have this whole thing done in 40 minutes (5 minutes for prep, 30 minutes in the oven, and 5 minutes to cool).

Mushroom Lasagna (serves 4-6, although my family of 3 managed to polish off the whole pan)

two 4-oz. (net drained weight) cans of pieces & stems mushrooms
two 10-oz. cans tomato sauce (use already seasoned sauce if you can find it, or add Italian seasoning)
4 oven-ready lasagna noodles
1 cup ricotta
3 cups mozzarella

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Drain mushrooms and chop them into smaller pieces, if desired. In a bowl, stir together mushrooms and tomato sauce (and Italian seasoning, if using). Grease a 9x9 square baking dish. Spread a thin layer of mushroom sauce on the bottom of the pan. Place a layer of uncooked noodles on top of the sauce (for this size pan, this is 2 noodles). Spread approx. 1/4 cup ricotta on each noodle. Sprinkle approx. 1 cup mozzarella over the noodles/ricotta. Spoon half of the remaining mushroom sauce mixture over the cheese, making sure to cover the corners/edges (this helps to prevent the noodles from drying out). Place another layer of uncooked noodles over the sauce, spread with remaining ricotta, and sprinkle with another cup of mozzarella. Spoon remaining mushroom sauce over the cheese, and sprinkle with last cup of mozzarella. Place baking dish on a cookie sheet (in case it bubbles over in the oven) and bake uncovered for 25-30 minutes, or until cheese starts to bubble and turn golden. Let cool for a few minutes. Rejoice at your impending feast.

Notes: The first time I made this lasagna, I mixed 1 can of pieces & stems with 1 can of portabella pieces. I wanted to do that again, because the portabellas give it a little bit of a "beefy" flavor, but I couldn't find them. But the lasagna is still delicious with just pieces & stems. For the noodles, I like to use Archer Farms whole wheat oven-ready lasagna noodles. I like the texture & flavor of whole wheat pasta, although if you know someone who isn't a fan (like kids?), this isn't a bad recipe for trying it out. You really can't tell the difference. Also, if you have regular (not oven-ready) lasagna noodles on hand, go ahead and use them. Cooking them is an extra step, but it doesn't change any of the other steps in this recipe. If you have a pan with rounded corners (like mine), another way to avoid dry corners (and make the noodles fit pretty perfectly) is to just snap the corners off! For the ricotta, I recommend the whole milk kind because ricotta lowfat & part-skim are so flavorless. And if 3 cups of mozzarella sounds like a lot...it is! This lasagna is extremely cheesy. If you prefer your lasagna to be less cheesy, sprinkle less cheese in each layer (although it's important to keep the number & order of layers the same).