A Case of Spontaneous Crockpot Lasagna

On Sunday, somewhat on the spur of the moment, I decided to make Crockpot Lasagna (p. 54).  I had just finished mixing up Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 123) for March Cookie Madness (more on that later), and started discussing the dinner options with my husband.  We contemplated going out to eat, but then realized that Daylight Savings Time had begun, and I was therefore an hour behind on preparing chocolate chip cookies for the first match.  So, I decided instead to make Stephanie's Crockpot Lasagna. 

Of course, this necessitated a trip to the grocery store, but we did have our regular shopping on the docket, so it didn't seem to be a big loss in time.  I took Cynthia to the grocery store while Phil and Grant went off to catch a hockey game at the University of Delaware.  Cynthia really enjoyed the shopping trip, particularly trying to pick out everything we didn't need, and extras of the things we did!  We rushed home, chopped up peppers and onions like a madwoman, browned them, and mixed the unlikely trio of cream cheese, cottage cheese, and sour cream together.  These ingredients were layered into the crockpot, along with some pasta sauce and uncooked lasagna noodles, which brings me to the question:  Why doesn't anyone make square crockpots?  It's not as though this oval design I'm using is particularly space-saving.  Does it have to do with the heat distribution? 

Setting aside these deeper questions in the quest to understand life, I broke lasagna noodles into the approximate shapes and sizes to fill each layer of this oval lasagna and went on with the layering.  With a little better planning, or maybe just less springing-forward, this would have been a very easy dish to put together.  I plugged it in and went about making Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133) (again, more on that later).  I had time to go for a nice walk with my son and dog (I counted this as exercise because I'm finding hours of cookie-making rather exhausting) before serving up the lasagna.  Here is a photo:

Cynthia, as usual, ate it like Garfield eats a lasagna (two hands and as fast as possible).  Grant complained, but ate most of it.  Phil and I downed ours as quickly as Garfield - only with forks.  I'd say it was an unmitigated success.

I decided not to post about the baking of the chocolate chip cookies until after the tasting/voting because I don't want to prejudice anyone prior to voting.  I'd like to say that friends reading this blog would vote for the easier recipe, but I suspect the vote would swing the other way.  Check in later for a write-up of these two fine cookie recipes, and the results of the first match!