vicki's "looks like puke but tastes great, i swear to god, no really it does" lasagna with homemade tomato sauce

ok, i completely failed to take a picture of just the tomato sauce, and was way too hungry to take a good looking pic of the lasagna because even the steam coming off the thing was making me salivate, and i had spent about 5 hours making and putting together the dang thing! so excuse the ugly picture. i dont even think its in focus because my hand was probably already moving to hurry up and cut a square to stuff in my mouth before the shutter closed completely. ha.

but good lord, this was by farrr the best lasagna i've ever had! the homemade tomato sauce really BROUGHT IT. i mean, like East-Compton-Clovers-times-100 kind of brought it. seriously. so much better than the jarred stuff. and i have this man to thank:

Chef Jean-Christophe Novelli, the star of Chef Academy (one of my new fav cooking reality shows on Bravo). lets all first take a moment to admire and soak in his extreme sexiness....

ok? ok.

in one episode, he shared his grandmas recipe for homemade tomato sauce, and because i just bought a spankin new calphalon 8 qt dutch oven in chive green, i decided to try it out.

I followed this recipe from the show with a few modifications listed below.

• i could only find hothouse tomatoes, but made sure they were the ripest ones in stock. because i was dubious of their tomato-iness, i subbed 2 lbs of the tomatoes with one of the big cans of whole peeled roma tomatoes, juice and all. supposed to be canned at their peak of ripeness right? sorry grandma louise, but it is not tomato season in VA right now.
• i also decided spur of the moment to add a container of grape tomatoes, thrown into the sauce whole at the very end so they got gushy on the inside but retained their shape. i love the way they burst like little tomato flavor bombs when you bite into them.
• i added alot more garlic because i like garlic.

The boy needed something filling and tasty reheated because he was busy studying for finals and didnt have the time to cook for himself so i found this lasagna recipe. followed to the T except for the following:

• of course, i subbed their sauce with the sauce i made above. turned out to be the perfect amount of sauce for this lasagna. but i still recommend making more sauce in a batch so that you can pour some on top after you cut it or use it for other dishes. youre always going to wish you had made a bit extra. i sure do.
• i used a mix of mild and spicy ground pork sausage because who the heck wants to peel intestine casings just to get the same result? i dont get it.
• i did the pasta like they said (just put it in the lasagna without preboiling) but i had to bake it alot longer because the noodles didnt cook all the way through in the specified time. so i would recommend at least presoaking the noodles in hot water for 30 min or so, or a quick boil just to soften them a bit before layering it in the pan.

i will be making this alot over the winter. i can tell that already. i cant wait to make the sauce when tomatoes are back in season to see the difference!