Recipe Of The Month From Author Kathy L. Wheeler ~ Lasagna

I don't know about you, but anything with any kind of pasta in it 

is an instant hit.  Read on. 

Kathy’s Homemade Lasagna

The recipe and why you love making it:

Way back in 1978, I made this lasagna from a Betty Crocker cookbook my mother gave me. When I met my husband in 1992, I use to make spaghetti with a pouch mix. After a year of dating, he finally fessed up and told me he hated it. So I modified this recipe, which is completely natural, over the years for both spaghetti and lasagna, and occasionally as a marinara sauce.

I cook tomatoes in the instant pot for about 7 to 10 minutes with olive oil and salt, then drain off and blend in the blender for tomato sauce.

Part I

1 pound ground beef

1 cup of diced purple onion

1 cup of sliced mushrooms

Fresh garlic 2 or 3 cloves

1 ts salt

1 tbs sugar

1 or 2 tbs oregano

3 tbs parsley or chopped fresh

Butter

Olive oil

I use an iron skillet. With a dash of olive oil, I saute the mushrooms, garlic and onion. It works best to remove them from the skillet once they are cooked to your liking.

Next, with another dash of olive oil, I brown the ground beef (93%/7% fat). I then add the oregano, the salt, some pepper, the sugar, the parsley. Then I add a tbs of butter and brown it a tad, before adding the sauted mushrooms, garlic and onion back in. Pour in about 2 cups of your cooked tomatoes and simmer, 20 minutes or so. Add water, or more tomatoes, if need be.

The last package of noodles I used were wide fresh pasta from Smith Brothers. Drop in boiling water for 1 to 3 minutes, then rinse.

Part II

16 oz Ricotta or Cottage cheese

Oregano

Salt

Pepper

Parmesan Cheese

In a mixing bowl, add the Ricotta Cheese, add more oregano, salt, pepper, and parmesan (about a cup)

Part III

Mozzarella Cheese – just regular, no prep…😊

Part IV

Now we put it all together. Layer a baking dish with wide noodles. Spread your ricotta cheese over the noodles (this doesn’t need to be perfect, and it you can drop balls of it, it will melt down. There will be three layers so make sure you don’t use all this mixture on the lowest layer.

Next, layer the mozzarella over the ricotta mixture.

Next, layer the meat sauce.

Do this 3 times. It will take 4 layers of noodles.

After you lay the 4^th layer of noodle(s), you will use the last bit of the sauce on top. Then sprinkle more parmesan on the very top.

Bake

Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 60 minutes.

Voilá, you have a fabulous lasagna!

Mail Order Bride: The Counterfeit 

After a disastrous first marriage, Will Jeffers hasn’t the stomach for another emotionally entailed union. All he needs is a wife to cook, nurse his mother, and look after the homestead. But good women are few and far between in Colorado mining country. A mail order bride is the perfect solution.

Amelia Johannasen is running for her life. Her mother has decided it’s time her daughter joined the family business, shattering Amy’s dreams of marrying for love. Imagine her surprise when she is mistaken for Will Jeffers mail order bride. She’ll take it

With a head for numbers and talent for spinning tall-tales but no notion of how to cook or nurse a manipulative old woman how can she reach the heart of a man once burned so badly, he’s sworn off love?

Buy:
Amazon

Mail Order Bride: The Breakaway

Tragedy sent Sherman Elias McHuay west twelve years ago. But his troubled past barrels in like a runaway train or—more appropriately—smacks him over the head in the form of a violet-eyed miss without a lick of common sense to her name. If one could actually determine her name.

Amaris Johnston’s carefully laid plans to head west as a mail order bride ratchet up when an announcement for her impending nuptials to the son of a prominent US Senator are set to go public. Not that she’d agreed to marry in the first place. A forced engagement and her family—a conniving slew of ambitious and power-hungry tyrants—send her running for the Colorado hills.

Can a slow talking sheriff and a headstrong girl bent on recklessness outwit her powerful family?

Buy: 

Amazon

Bio: 

Kathy L Wheeler (a.k.a. Kae Elle Wheeler for her Cinderella Series) has a BA in Management Information Systems from the University of Central Oklahoma that includes over forty credit hours of vocal music. 

She was a computer programmer for the Hertz Corporation for over fifteen years and utilizes karaoke for her vocal music talents. Other passions include the NFL, the NBA, travel, musical theatre, painting, reading, and writing.

She is a member of several Romance Writers of America chapters: Greater Seattle, Olympia, and Eastside chapters, The Beau Monde and Hearts Through History.

Her main sources of inspiration come from a mostly an over-active imagination. She currently resides in the Seattle area with her musically talented husband, Al, and their bossy cat, Carly, and sweet dog, Angel.

Find Kathy: 

Website| Facebook | Bookbub | Amazon