Drama, drama, drama!!!

So here's the thing.  I was playing last night and talking with an Italian friend of mine.  She was telling me of a cooking class she taught in an area that is definitely not known for its ethnic cooking (or ethnicity of any kind).  She said it went fine until they started asking her if they could substitute some of the ingredients for others.  Now, I enjoy cooking although some of my methods could be called into question, not to mention some of my combinations (taco spaghetti, my easy bake chicken parm).  I've been making a lasagna recipe for 17 years that I got out of a Good Housekeeping recipe book that I consider my most refined culinary tome.  I happened to mention it called for cottage cheese instead of ricotta.  There were 7 people in the party and every one of them (well 6 of them, I like it) said cottage cheese was a mortal sin in lasagna.  This went on for about 5 minutes then I mentioned I put black olives in it too.  OMG, you'd have thought I said I shit in it to give it flavor.  No this isn't a Southern thing, if it was it would have chitlins' or pork rinds in it.  I can discount 5 of the other people, one's a Lithuanian used car salesman, one's married to the Italian, one moves all over the place, he's confused, and nobody knows about the last one.  I'm not even 100% certain about the Italian, who ever heard of a red headed Italian?

My question is, who else puts cottage cheese in lasagna?  I bet the percentage is about 50%.  Plus, I can't wait until somebody wants to fry some chicken, boil some okra, fry some squash, or cook some collard greens, then I can make fun of them.