Lasagna

I'm planning to make lasagna this weekend and, if all goes as planned, you can follow along through the steps. I usually go "off-book" (as in recipe book...obvi) when I cook and eyeball the amounts of ingredients that I add, but I'll try my damnedest to keep up with what I add and/or document it all photographically so that we know exactly how to re-make the dish if it's good and so anyone else who accesses this page can try to make it to.

First, the ingredients. Now, this is only what we're planning on putting in it right now but I usually raid the spice cabinet a few times when I'm in the middle of recipes so this is subject to change. Also note that I'm making the sauce from scratch so many of these ingredients are for that.

1 29 oz can tomato puree
1 29 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 6 oz can of tomato paste
4 large hot Italian sausages (it's okay if it's in the casing...we can cut off the part we don't want pretty easily)
1/4-1/2 lb ground beef (we're going with 85/15 because we like the flavor)
medium-large Spanish or yellow onion
1 medium shallot
1 head of garlic (okay, that's a lot...but we haven't decided how much to use or whether or not to roast it first so we're keeping our options open for now)
1 green bell pepper
1 fresh Serrano chili pepper (this is a shot in the dark - we know we want spicy but we don't know peppers well enough to figure out which variety will give us what we want)
1 box no-boil lasagna noodles
1 small container ricotta cheese
1 cup grated mozzerella cheese
1 cup parmesan/romano cheese blend
2 medium-small zucchinis
1 lb frozen spinach
2 fresh tomatoes
~2 tbsp olive oil
salt
pepper

It looks like a lot of ingredients but they're all relatively inexpensive, especially considering the sheer volume of food that it will produce.

So here's what's going to happen. I'm going to pack a bowl and watch some Food Network to get myself revved up and then I'm going to cook the sauce. After the chopping and meat browning is done and the ingredients are assembled I'll let it simmer together for anywhere from 2-4 hours and probably do another minor cooking project which is yet to be determined and may or may not be related to this recipe. Once the sauce is finished I'll make some sort of cheese blend sauce and prep the veggies. When I finish THAT I'll go ahead and assemble the whole thing and then refrigerate it until tomorrow night, at which time the lovely boyfriend and myself will enjoy dinner, wine, and a movie.

Check back later for my progress and possibly some pictures!