Classic sausage lasagna with only some cheating

Sorry for the long break. I was busy reading Game of Thrones, which is totally exasperating me, because it is roughly 1,000,000 pages long, I really need to know what happens with all 500,000 characters, I don't seem to be making a dent in it and yet I cannot put it down. But I digress.
Before the move I promised to give you a classic lasagna recipe. It still involves a little cheating. Sorry. If you want a recipe for great marinara you can look at Giada DeLaurentiis' recipe, which is not complicated and very tasty. If you want a recipe using fresh tomatoes, you are on the wrong site and I wish you well with your copious free time.  I use jarred for the most part. Yes, jarred is a little too salty sometimes, but life isn't perfect and the lasagna still tastes great.  The other cheating aspect is that I use so much sauce and cover the pan for a while in the oven, so you don't need to pre-boil the noodles.

You'll need:
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 lb of Italian sweet sausage, casing removed (I LOVE hot in this recipe, but for kids I recommend sweet.)
5 cups marinara sauce (This is about 1 cup more than an average jar. Sorry.)
1 15 oz container ricotta (You can use either part-skim or full fat. I don't know about fat free.)
10 oz package frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed out
1 egg
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
9 uncooked lasagna noodles
3 cups pre-shredded mozzarella or provolone, or a mix (again, part skim mozzarella works fine)
1 cup parmesan cheese

Heat the olive oil in a very large skillet over medium heat. Add the sausage and mash up with a fork to break up the meat, sautéing it until browning, which takes about 7 minutes.  (This can be tricky. Sometimes I brown it a bit and then chop it up fine on a cutting board and then put it back in the pan.) Add the sauce, and simmer a few minutes.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a small bowl, break the egg and whisk it a bit (kids love to do this). Then add the ricotta, spinach, basil and oregano, and 1/2 cup parmesan in the egg and mix well. Now you are going to make 3 levels of lasagna. Layer 1: Take the sauce and put 1 cup over the bottom of a 13x9 glass baking dish. Make a single layer of lasagna noodles over the sauce (should be 3 noodles).
Layer 2: Take another cup of sauce, and spoon it over the noodles. Make sure they are covered with sauce. Now spread 1 cup of the ricotta mixture, and sprinkle one cup mozzarella and about 1/4 cup parmesan over the top. (This will be messy. It's okay if the sauce and cheese gets mixed up a little bit.
Layer 3: Repeat Layer 2.
Top of the lasagna: For the top,  first add one cup of the sauce over the noodles. I always seem to have a little ricotta left, so I just dollop the remaining ricotta on top. It looks like little ricotta islands.  and sprinkle the remaining mozzarella and parmesan. Use remaining sauce to cover all remaining exposed noodles. Cover the whole dish with foil, and put into the hot oven. Bake for about 50 minutes, then take cover off and bake for about 20 more.
You can make this a day before and reheat in a 350 if you cover with foil,but it takes about 40 minutes. You can also just microwave it.
And now as I finish up this post, it is suddenly snowing. WHAT? It's October 29!!!
Enjoy your hot lasagna..... Christina
P.S. If this was all just a little too complicated for you, check out my post called "Lasagna for Cheaters"

Lasagna for Cheaters

It's 8am on a Sunday morning, and your 4 year old is bored, because she's been up since 5.55am. Naturally, the 2 year old is still asleep, because that will guarantee that she will not nap, and that you will be on duty for a full 15 hour day, as contractually required by the Children's Union. On such a day, I decided that maybe we should prep dinner and stick it in the fridge to just pop in the oven later. To my delight, my four year old was able to actually make this very uncomplicated recipe herself, and then ate it for dinner with enthusiasm, even though it had red sauce. (She only eats plain pasta). I can prove this with the photos of her little hands demonstrating the "techniques". VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY!

This is adapted from a Real Simple recipe.

Ingredients:

24 fresh extra large cheese and spinach ravioli (my local store makes delicious ones- if yours doesn't, just use a 30 oz bag of frozen, and you don't even have to thaw it)
1 26 oz jar of marinara sauce- or knock yourself out and make some
1 8 oz bag shredded mozzarella cheese
10 oz bag frozen chopped spinach, thawed and the water squeezed out (this is messy. You can skip but then it's sort of blah).
1/2 cup grated parmesan
a few leaves of fresh basil, chopped (if you have some)

Variations - You can use a meat sauce, or meat ravioli, or spinach ravioli. But not pumpkin ravioli.

Directions
Pre-heat oven at 350° F. Mix the fresh basil into the jarred sauce.Spray a 13-by-9-inch baking dish with cooking spray. Add about 1/3 the sauce to the bottom of the pan. Arrange half of the ravioli over the sauce and sprinkle the spinach over them. Sprinkle 4 oz mozzarella and 1/4 cup parmesan on top. Add another layer of ravioli and the remaining sauce and cheese. Cover with foil and bake 25 minutes. Uncover and bake 5 to 10 minutes more or until bubbly.


(note about the photos- we were making a half recipe. And we didn't put the sauce in the bottom the time I took the photos. That was a refinement developed later. Also, the fresh parsley is merely there for looks. We didn't use it.)

Hooray!