Lasagna Rolls

3.5 cups Ricotta cheese

2 cups mozzarella cheese

1 egg

2.5 teaspoons italian seasoning

2.5 cups frozen spinach (thawed and drained)

1 box of lasagna noodles (cooked so you don't have any trouble rolling them)

1 large can tomato sauce

1 can diced tomato

1 can tomato paste

seasoning to taste

garlic

Now that you've had a chance to get your ingredients all together, let's start building our rolls.  This is really easy and not super messy so it's a great way to get the kids involved in helping out in the kitchen.  My 10 year old daughter loves to get in the kitchen and help out so I have her measure out ingredients, mix everything and help spread the filling onto the noodles and then the best and most fun part, I love to have her help me roll them.  I'm not only spending good, quality time with her but I'm also teaching her valuable life skills that she'll need when she's older to take care of herself and a family later on.

The first thing I do is get my sauce going on the stove.  Take your can of tomato sauce, diced tomato and tomato paste along with whatever seasoning you like to flavor your pasta sauce.  I generally reach for just good old Italian seasoning and fresh garlic.  I also add a sprinkle of sugar to make it a bit less acidic.  Once that's started, I move on to assembling my filling.

For the filling, you'll take your ricotta, mozzarella, egg, Italian seasoning and if you choose to add spinach you'll add it here as well.  I usually add spinach just because it's a great way to get some greens in without hearing any complaining because you can't hardly taste it!

While you are assembling your filling, now's a good time to boil the noodles so you can roll them without breaking them...you can't really roll a hard lasagna noodle ;)

Take all of your ingredients and combine them into one mixing bowl, make sure everything gets really thoroughly incorporated.  Once you've mixed everything together you just have to spread it out on the noodles, roll them and place them in your casserole dish.

I always put a layer of sauce on the bottom of my casserole dish to help insure the noodles don't stick to the dish.  Then I lay the rolls in the dish, cover with more sauce, sprinkle mozzarella over the top and if you want you can add fresh grated Parmesan cheese on top before you cover it and slide it in the oven.  I cook this for about 45 minutes on 375 and take the foil off at about 35 minutes and let the cheese get nice and golden and bubbly for the last 10 minutes in the oven.