Want to know why it's been so long? :) Well, I was in charge of making 120 extra large cupcakes for my sister-in-law's wedding. It was so much fun, and we ate so many cupcakes that by the time the wedding happened, both my research team and I didn't really want one! It was fun, but now...sigh... we really do need extra veggies!
So, here we go! I read an article online called '10 easy ways to be healthier' (or something like that), and this was one of the suggestions: substitute sliced zucchini for lasagna noodles. I'm not sure if the zucchini will be hidden enough to count as a hidden vegetable, but it might. I have to admit, I am very skeptical about how good this is going to be. It's weird because I like zucchini, and I love vegetable lasagna... but for some reason I am doubtful about how this will turn out.
Because I am doubtful, I figure I'll do everything I can to make it delicious... I will use lots of cheese, our delicious homemade tomato sauce, and I'm going to add sausage... something I usually don't put in our lasagna. So I know that even if it doesn't resemble lasagna at all, at least it will taste good!
I sliced 1 1/2 medium zucchini's, and mixed up:
1 egg
1/2 of a 15 oz tub ricotta cheese
1 cup mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
dash of basil and parsley
Then I heated up a large pot of homemade tomato sauce (sorry, I didn't measure it, but I always make way more than any lasagna recipe calls for because one time my lasagna was sort of dry...) and browned 1 lb ground sausage:
I stirred the meat into the sauce.
You know the drill: layer of sauce, layer of zucchini, layer of ricotta mixture, and repeat until you run out of something. :) I usually run out of ricotta mixture, or space in the pan. See my layers?
I KNOW I KNOW!! I never once thought about how to slice the zucchini. I should have sliced it length-wise, but that never occurred to me. It seems so obvious now!
I added about 1 cup of mozzarella to the top:
Online there were several suggestions for baking time. I did 375 for 30 minutes. (The other options took longer...)
So beautiful, and it smelled delicious! See the beautiful layers:
NOT! (sorry about that, I am a child of the 90's) Who am I kidding... there were no layers. This is what my plate looked like:
And this was my research team's plate:
Needless to say, this lasagna did not look like lasagna, and the zucchini was not hidden at all! It tasted like yummy lasagna, but looked more like zucchini and tomato casserole or something.
So as far as the Hidden Vegetable blog is concerned, this was a huge fail! It did taste great, and the zucchini was cooked well. However, not only were the veggies not hidden, but it didn't even look like the meal it was supposed to! Well, I can't win them all...
The Verdict:
"People watch Nascar for the crashes."