Lower Carb Lasagna

With summer arriving, you know what else arrives...zucchinis!  If you remember my posts from last year, I had an abundant amount of zucchinis, since I had planted 15 zucchini plants last year...this year, I scaled it back to only 5 :-).  

As I was looking for new ways to use zucchini, it started raining here, which always puts me in the mood for comfort food.  I have a Lasagna recipe that is great, but very time consuming and painstaking.  It's worth the work, but it's not something I would make very often, and is too heavy for summer.  So, in order to lighten up the dish...I'm still trying to lose weight...I thought it would be good to add veggies and make a lower carb version of this dish.  

I'm sure you've seen the recipes that have eggplant in place of the lasagna noodles.  This recipe is a play off that concept, except I use zucchini in place of part of the noodles, but not all of them...I still like a little pasta to tie it all together. 

You will love the flavor of this lasagna, with the home made tomato sauce (ok, I use canned tomatoes, but you can add a few from your garden to add some extra goodness!), the cheese mixture, and the extra veggies will fill out the rest of this dish, so you wouldn't know there was less meat.

Here are the ingredients:

meat sauce:

- 1/2 lb sausage

- 2 cups sliced mushrooms

- 1 small onion, diced

- 1/2 green pepper diced 

- 1 cup spinach

- 2 cans diced tomatoes (I used organic)

- 1 tsp oregano

- 1 tsp black pepper

- 1 tsp salt

- 1/2 tsp paprika 

- 1/2 tsp basil

- 1 garlic clove - minced

- 1 t. sugar (optional...I use this to help my stomach digest the acid better)

Cheese layer:

- 16 oz. light ricotta cheese 

- 1/2 cup light sour cream

- 1/2 cup cottage cheese

- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

- 1 cup shredded Colby jack cheese (can also use mozzarella...I just usually have Colby jack in my fridge.) 

- 1 T. Italian seasoning

- 1/2 t salt 

- 1 tsp freshly cracked black pepper

Noodles:

- 1 zucchini thinly sliced (1/8 to 1/4" slice) - should make 6 - 8 'noodles'

- 4 lasagna noodles (I use the kind you don't have to boil first)

Zucchini noodles

Directions:

Brown the sausage and drain the fat.  In a skillet with sides, add the sausage, onion and pepper and cook until the veggies are soft.  Add the mushrooms and tomato sauce and spices (oregano, pepper, salt, paprika, basil, garlic and sugar), simmer for 5 minutes.  Add the spinach and cook on medium heat for 10 minutes.

While the sauce is cooking, boil water and place the zucchini in the boiling water for 5 minutes, until tender, but not too soft.

Mix the cheese layer while the sauce is cooking and the zucchini is boiling.  Just add all the cheese layer ingredients in a medium size bowl and mix together.  Set aside until ready to put the lasagna together.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Now it's time to build your lasagna!  Be sure to spray your lasagna pan (I use a 9x13) with some oil.  

Start your first layer with a third of the meat sauce spread on the bottom of your pan.  Then place a layer of your zucchini noodles (3 - 4 noodles for the layer) on top of the sauce.  Next layer is another third of the meat sauce, then a third of the cheese mixture (this may be hard to spread evenly, just do the best you can).  Then repeat layers; noodle, cheese, sauce; and use the pasta noodles on your last layer. 

Bake for 35 - 45 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and slightly browned.

The layers don't hold up as well on the plate with the zucchini noodles...hence the ugly looking picture below, but it tastes great, and I don't even miss the extra noodles!