Low-Carb Heavy-Veg Lasagna

My summer cooking hiatus is drawing to a close. I realized a year or two ago that this is my pattern - cook often and eat well during the cooler months and eat quicker (though still more healthy than not) foods that don't require much preparation during the hotter months. Luckily the hotter months are considerably fewer where I live!

With the weather turning a tad cooler (well... it was pouring rain and cool this morning but sweltering and humid this afternoon so it wasn't exactly the perfect time to return to cooking) my desire to start cooking again hit hard last night... especially after having trail mix and popcorn for dinner. (No photos available of that stellar meal.)

Needing to dramatically up the veggie intake after that well-balanced meal last night, I went to my "Sin-less Temptations" board on Pinterest and looked for something appetizing. Recently I pinned "Zucchini Lasagna" - a recipe that replaces lasagna noodles with thinly sliced, baked zucchini. After two trips to the grocery store (thankfully it's very close) I had everything necessary to make this dish.

Here is my slightly adapted version of the recipe:

5-6 medium zucchinis sliced lengthwise as thin as you can

1.5 lbs ground turkey

2 cups 1% cottage cheese (next time I think I'll use fat free - 1% is a little "loose" for my taste)

2 tbs fresh minced garlic (I use a lot - feel free to cut back)

1 large white onion

2 cups fresh spinach (uncooked)

2 cups fresh broccoli

2 cups fresh mushrooms

2 cups shredded mozzarella

2 tbs parmesan cheese

1 large jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce (or make your own with diced tomatoes and herbs which is what I'd usually do but I was running behind)

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Lay parchment paper on cookie sheet. Spread zucchini slices flat on parchment paper and salt lightly (to help draw out the water in the zucchini). Bake for 5-8 minutes each side. Set aside. Reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees.

While the zucchini is cooking, brown the turkey, add onion, and garlic to the turkey and cook those as well.

Roughly chop the broccoli and spinach but no need to cook it - it will cook in the oven.

Spray a large baking dish to prevent sticking. Layer the meat sauce, veggies, cottage cheese, a little mozzarella cheese, and zucchini until the pan is full. Top with a little mozzarella and parmesan cheeses.

Be careful not to overfill the dish as it does bubble up a bit.

Bake for 50 minutes at 375 degrees.

And the review is....

Two thumbs up! In reality, this ends up as more of a veggie bake than a lasagna. It gets pretty soupy because of all of the vegetables which I guess could be avoided by cooking and draining all of the veggies first but I actually quite liked the soupy-ness of it - The "soup" was quite flavorful!

I think that my mother would have put something like this in front of us as kids and billed it as "Hungarian Goulash"... which in retrospect I think really was just the night she cleaned out all of the leftover veggies from previous dinners and made something darned tasty (but not very pretty) from them.