This recipe for lasagna is written by my mother. I love that she used red pen for some reason. In my house growing up, we “never had onions or garlic” in anything, because my dad doesn’t like them. Well, he finally has admitted that he knows she was using onion and garlic powder all along, and he just eats it. I think if it had been really obvious onion chunks, he would not have been happy.
Something else I noticed is that many old recipes refer to a specific brand of oil, here it is Wesson oil. Any particular reason?
Lasagna
2 T Wesson Oil
1 minced clove garlic
1 chopped onion
1 lb hamburg
2 t salt
1/4 t pepper
2 6 oz cans tomato paste
3 c hot water
1/2 t rosemary leaves
1/2 lb lasagna noodles, cooked & drained
1/2 lb ricotta or cottage cheese
1/2 lb mozzarella
In hot oil in heavy pan, fry garlic & onions til soft. Add hamburg. Cook & stir til crumbly. Mix in salt, pepper & tomato paste blended with hot water & rosemary. Simmer uncovered 30 minutes. In shallow baking dish put a thin layer of sauce, half of the lasagna, the cottage cheese & then slices of mozzarella. Repeat with half the remaining sauce, lasagna & last of the sauce & mozzarella. Bake in moderate oven 350, 30 min. Leave out of oven 15 min. Cut in squares, makes 6 to 8.
NOTE: I put the above recipe in a 9×13 cake pan, use 9 noodles and make 3 layers. It served 4 Nunns with 1 piece left over. Half the recipe would take 4 noodles. I use pepperoni instead of garlic and onion. Leftovers can be frozen but noodles soften. PS Recipe comes from Hunts tomato paste ads.
Gram's Recipe Box 
I’m wondering if the mention of a specific oil is because the recipe originally came from the back of a can/jar/package that was made by a company that also owned the cooking oil company. Either that or it meant vegetable oil and the brand was listed so the maker would know that “oil” didn’t mean olive/sesame/grape seed. I’m guessing that people copied down the recipe faithfully and then it just propagated.
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Are Hunts and Wesson part of the same company? And when that recipe was published I don’t know that some of those other oils existed – but it is corn oil, as opposed to olive oil. That was a long time ago. Now the best Lasagna recipe is Stoffers – open box, microwave for minutes mentioned on box. Cut and enjoy. Serve Parmissan or Romano cheese on side. (Pardon the spelling)
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I absolutely LOVE this idea of using your grandmother’s recipes and scanning them in with her handwriting. I was so intrigued, I called my father and asked him if grandma wrote any recipes down. “Yeah, she had a whole drawer full.” I asked if he knew where they were and he said yes! So I asked him if I could have them. I always thought her recipes (which were true southern gold) were lost to the universe because she did everything in her head.
I cannot thank you enough for doing this, for putting up this blog and placing the idea in my head to ask my dad. I cannot wait to get my hands on them and make them. EVERY ONE loved her cooking. Granted, I probably can’t scan them in like you’re doing, because mine is a crock pot blog and I’m pretty sure she never got quite that high tech. Maybe I’ll start a whole other blog on southern recipes and about my CRAZY southern family.
You are an ABSOLUTE genius!! Thank you so much for sharing this!
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I am just tickled pink about this! Please let us know when you start posting them because like you I love old recipes and Southern cooking! :-) I’d love to see what your gram cooked.
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I will! Thank you again. I am just so excited about it!!
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