my cast iron skillet: a love story. (and my Skillet Lasagna recipe!)

My mom always had a cast iron skillet when I was growing up, and I hated that thing because it wasn't supposed to be washed with soap, but I always forgot and stuck it in the dishwater anyway.  And then I had to deal with the guilty conscience, and then the confessing of it to her today on my blog... (I'm sorry you had to find out this way, Mom.)  It's been a long, complicated relationship with cast iron.

When Todd and I registered for wedding gifts over eleven years ago, I was playing it fast and loose with the scanner gun, and I threw a cast iron skillet of my own on the list.  Even at the time, Todd was skeptical, and I should have been, too, since it was when Emeril Lagasse was a thing, and the bottom of this particular one was stamped "EMERIL!".  Like any realistic cooking was going to get done in that thing.

For a while, it kind of languished around my kitchen.  I tried seasoning it, but it just ended up greasy.  I'd cook in it, but then I was intimidated by having to clean it without dish soap (I was apparently dealing with a complex), so then it'd just loiter around my counter for a week with nasty bits sitting in the bottom.  It was a casual relationship at best.

I'm not sure when I turned the corner and started getting serious about it.  But I've gradually become more and more obsessed with this thing, and now I can't live without it.  For the past three or four years, I've been using it two to three times on the average day, and I never even bother putting it away because that would be an inefficient use of time.  It has a permanent home on my stove top, and I don't foresee that changing any time soon.  In my head, I call it my Kitchen Baby, which might be weird, but I'm beyond caring about that.

Lately, my favorite thing to use it for is Skillet Lasagna, a one-pan meal that (almost) everyone in the family loves.  It's adapted from the Trim Healthy Mama "Lazy Lasagna" recipe, so it's low-carb, THM-S, gluten free, grain free, yadda yadda.  I really can't believe it, but it's stuff like this that has helped me lose the baby weight and balance my hormones.  (If you'd like to know more about that, you should check out my video on this topic here!)

This makes enough for our whole family with ample leftovers (which I love, because it reheats so well for lunch the next day.)  If you have a smaller family, you may want to cut the recipe in half.

Ingredients:

2 lb ground Italian sausage
1.5 (26 oz) jars sugar-free spaghetti sauce
1 (15 oz) carton part-skim ricotta
2 eggs
1/4 c. grated parmesan
fresh spinach, frozen and crushed*
8 oz mozzarella cheese

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In an oven-safe skillet, thoroughly cook sausage over medium heat; drain fat and return meat to pan.  Add spaghetti sauce and simmer over medium heat for 10-12 minutes, until thickened a bit, stirring regularly.

Meanwhile, combine ricotta, eggs, and parmesan in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

Once sauce has reduced, generously sprinkle spinach over the top.  Spread ricotta mixture over the top of the spinach.  At this point, it's going to look gummy and albino and generally pretty gnarly, and you're going to question me.

Just trust me and keep going.  Now top the whole thing with mozzarella.

Move pan to oven and bake until cheese is browned and sauce is bubbling at the sides, usually about 30 minutes (give or take 10 minutes).

*A note on the spinach: My family doesn't like tasting or feeling the spinach in this recipe, so I buy big bags of fresh leaf spinach from the fridge case, and throw them directly into the freezer when I get home.  Once frozen, it's very easy to squeeze the bag to crush the leaves into tiny flakes.  I can be pretty liberal when I sprinkle these on, but I haven't heard any complaints since doing it this way.  It seems to make the spinach relatively inconspicuous.

I love this on its own, which keeps it gluten-free and low-carb, but Todd and the kids like it served over plain pasta.

If you're a really good mom, you'll serve this with salad and a sautéed veggie on the side.  Zucchini would be great with it.

However, if you're only an okay mom, you'll shrug your shoulders, tell yourself you don't feel like doing any further dinner prep, and count the spinach inside the lasagna as the salad and the green veggie.  Bingo bango, dinner is served.  In a bowl, to boot, because you're only an okay mom, and all your plates are dirty this late in the day.
And just because I love you and want what's best for you, here's a recipe for individual-sized Lazy Lasagna made in mini loaf pans.  I made and froze a million of these before Callista was born, and lived on them in the newborn days.  They were so easy heat up and so filling, and they kept my milk supply up while keeping my hormones balanced and my weight down.  That's what I call a win-win-win-win-win.