First food post! (Buffalo Chicken Lasagna)

So I found this cool looking recipe on the "20 year olds" message board for Weight Watchers sometime over the summer I think. I always thought this recipe looked good but it wasn't until tonight that I decided to give it a whirl for myself. I've seen various recipes of people's different spins on the recipe, but this one looked the best.

The picture provided below does not look the most appetizing in the world since I forgot to take a picture of the finished product BEFORE cutting into it and serving. However, it was a big hit! I cooked it for my parents and I (I'm home for Thanksgiving weekend). My dad went back for seconds (he rarely does that with dinner) and my mom raved about how good it is! The only thing I'm going to do next time is instead of using a whole (small) bottle of the buffalo sauce, I'm only going to use about 3/4 cup (hence why I put 3/4 cup on the recipe) because buffalo sauce is both incredibly salty and spicy. Of course, that didn't take away from how good it was! One more thing I may not do next time is the ranch dressing. Honestly, it was really good on its own and I'm not sure if it even needed the ranch. I know buffalo and ranch go together like peanut butter and jelly (or peanut butter and banana- YUM!), but I may just do ranch on the side next time in case it tastes better without the ranch.

I served this with grilled asparagus and challah bread (I bought the bread from Central Market- they have the best bakery EVER!). DELICIOUS!

Ingredients

• 1 pound of chicken breast, cubed
• 3 cups marinara sauce of choice (I like to use Central Market's homemade marinara sauce, yumm!)
• 3/4 cup Frank's Buffalo Wing Sauce
• 1.5 cups fat free ricotta cheese (you can use any kind you like, I used fat free to reduce fat and calories)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 12 whole wheat lasagna noodles (I ended up using a little less than that though)
• 9 slices pepperjack cheese
• Blue cheese crumbles (however much you want, but I used it sparingly since it's such an intense flavor- also, I happened to have the blue cheese flavored Laughing Cow cheese on hand, so I used 4 of those little wedges and sprinkled them on the top)
• Fat free ranch dressing (again, I used fat free to reduce fat and calories but feel free to use any kind you want)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350. 
• Cook the chicken in a large nonstick skillet until almost done. 
• Add marinara and buffalo sauces and combine thoroughly with the chicken. 
• In a small bowl, combine eggs, ricotta, and garlic. 
• Working in layers, add half a cup of sauce mixture in the bottom of a greased 9x13 pan, followed by a layer of noodles, cheese, and more sauce. 
• Repeat until noodles, sauce, and cheese are used. 
• Bake covered for 65-70 minutes (depending on how hot your oven gets- mine gets hot really easily). 
• Remove from oven, add pepperjack cheese and blue cheese crumbles to top. 
• Bake uncovered for 10-15 additional minutes (again, depending on how hot your oven gets). 
• Drizzle with ranch dressing. 
• Wait a few minutes to let it cool, then serve.

Like I said, it doesn't look the most appetizing right now, but it would have looked better had I taken a picture of it BEFORE cutting into it. Next time, I'll just drizzle the ranch over into pretty zig-zag lines instead of just spreading it over. The spreading was for functional purposes, not aesthetic (obviously). Bear with me- remember, I'm still new at this blogging thing :)

You should try this recipe soon! You won't regret it at all.

One additional note: this makes 9 servings (huge servings at that!) and totaled up to 9 Weight Watcher points when I put it into the recipe builder.