“What’s Surprise Recipe Swap,” you ask?

Jutta, of Hungry Little Girl, has a great program for meeting new blogs and bloggers.  It’s also fun to expand your horizons and try new recipes from other bloggers.

This is my first time participating and I was paired up with one of my FAVE bloggers, Jackie Kocurek of Rediscovering Lost Arts From Our Mothers.  She has a great blog full of delicious recipes!  But, when I saw who I was paired with, I KNEW what I was going to make.  You see, I’ve been looking to make a good Italian meat sauce for a few weeks now.

When I was growing up, we had these neighbors up the street who were authentic New York Italians!  She would make this meat that was TO.DIE.FOR!  I just had a hankering for just such a meat sauce!

You see, she would just throw whatever meat she had on hand into a pot with some tomato sauce and just let it simmer….for days.  It was kind of like a sourdough starter?  You know, the kind where you feed it monthly?  Only she fed it daily and weekly.  Whenever she need sauce, she’d just add more meat and more sauce.

So, now you know how bad I was craving some authentic family Meat Sauce.  And this recipe did not disappoint!

Brown the beef and sausage.  I used Shady Brook Farms Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage Links.  We are trying to watch our fat intake.  The ground beef was 88/12, too.

Add the onions and garlic.  Sauté together for 5 minutes or so.

Add the two cans of crushed tomatoes, wine, cheese, basil, parsley, oregano, salt, pepper and sugar.

Then I set it on the back of the stove and stirred it when I thought about it.  S came home from work and was all, “What’s for dinner?  Smells good!”  Heh.  It’s actually for dinner tonight.  It was SUPPOSED to be for dinner yesterday, but he worked second shift.  Today is first shift.  Yeah.  A nice long nap before work is always good.  4 hours IS NOT enough for a person to function on, but he’s gonna do his best today.  🙁

How yummy does THAT look??  It was difficult NOT to dip a whole loaf of bread into that pot and just devour it.

BUT I had to wait, because I was taking this delicious sauce and making lasagna with it!

I simmered 2 cups of sauce with 1 pound of ground beef.  I got lazy yesterday and didn’t take as many pics as I usually do.  Cook 9 lasagna noodles, drain and cool slightly.  Combine 1 cup of fat free cottage cheese, 1 cup of fat free ricotta, 1/4 cup Parmesan, and 1 egg white.

Pour 1/2 cup of sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish and spread to coat.  Lay 3 noodles on top of the sauce.  Top noodles with meat mixture.  Place 3 noodles then top with cheese mixture.  Top with the remaining noodles and 1 cup of sauce.  Sprinkle fat free mozzarella cheese on top (I usually spray the cheese with some cooking spray so that it melts normal) and bake at 350 for an hour.  Allow to cool at least 20 minutes before slicing.  This is where I always FAIL.

I don’t know about you, but I have a SERIOUSLY difficult time waiting for the lasagna to cool before devouring the whole pan cutting a slice to eat.  So, it never looks pretty like it’s supposed to.  LOL

If you want in on this fun opportunity to try new recipes (Don’t we all??) and meet some GREAT bloggers with similar interests, click on the pic below and sign up!  Then you, too can say…

Meat Sauce

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 3 hours

Total Time: 3 hours 10 minutes

Recipe by [Rediscovering Lost Arts From Our Mothers|https://rediscovermom.blogspot.com/2012/07/meat-sauce.html]

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Ingredients

• 1 pound ground round
• 1/2 pound ground salsicha
• 56 ounces tomato sauce
• 28 ounces crushed tomatoes
• 1 whole onion, diced
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 cup red wine
• 1/2 cup sugar
• To taste: parsley, basil, oregano, salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Brown the beef and sausage.
2. Add the onions and garlic. Saute together for 5 minutes or so.
3. Add the two cans of crushed tomatoes, wine, cheese, basil, parsley, oregano, salt, pepper and sugar.
4. Let that simmer for 30 minutes or so.
5. Add the rest of the sauce and cook it all day. The longer it cooks, the better it is.