We came upon this lasagna recipe nearly 10 years ago and we loved it so much that it quickly became our only lasagna recipe! We like using turkey instead of beef and we also like that it’s not very cheesy, yet you don’t miss it – the flavor is wonderful! This is a standard meal when we have guests for dinner and everyone seems to love it too.

I will say now that we use organic ingredients, so I don’t have to repeat myself over and over when I list them below! (In the near future, I will write a post about the importance of eating organic food.)

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. ground turkey breast
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 – 26oz. jars low fat marinara/pasta sauce
• 1 – 16 oz. carton cottage cheese
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup (1-oz.) pre-shredded fresh Parmesan cheese
• 1 T dried parsley flakes
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper
• 1 – 10 oz. package frozen, chopped spinach, thawed and drained
• 8 cooked lasagna noodles
• 2 cups (8 oz.) shredded mozzarella cheese

Notes About Ingredients:

It was originally touted as a low fat lasagna recipe, but since we know that a completely fat free diet is not healthy (we need some healthy fats) we modified some of the ingredients to what you see above. (For example, the original recipe called for egg substitute but we use 1 egg instead; eggs are good for you!) It also called for fat free cheese, which I don’t even think is a real food – HA!

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Add turkey and garlic to skillet and cook until meat is browned.
3. Add 5 3/4 cups marinara sauce, cook 5 minutes stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.
4. Combine cottage cheese, egg, Parmesan cheese, parsley, pepper, and spinach. Stir well.
5. Spread remaining marinara sauce in bottom of 9×13 inch baking dish.
6. Arrange four noodles over marinara, top with cottage cheese mixture, and half the mozzarella.
7. Spoon half of the turkey mixture over the mozzarella.
8. Arrange remaining noodles over turkey mixture.
9. Top with remaining turkey mixture and mozzarella.
10. Bake at 350° for 50 minutes, or until cheese melts and sauce is bubbly.
11. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

Serves: 9

Final Thoughts:

I have also made it for my friend who has celiac disease and is, therefore, on a gluten-free diet. For a gluten-free lasagna, I buy lasagna noodles made from brown rice (they are gluten free). I also double-check the ingredients on any of the other items on the list and make sure they are gluten free. (The photo of the ingredients was taken the day I made it for my friend with celiac so you can see the Tinkyada pasta I used.)

If you try it, let me know what you think!

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Wendy – ParentingTips365.com

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I found this recipe in a Whole Foods flier and thought it sounded like another good idea for a vegetarian meal. So I tried it and I think we were all surprised at how good it was, especially with such simple ingredients. My almost-three-year-old son even liked it!

Ingredients:

• 2 organic carrots, shredded
• 2 bunches organic dark leafy greens (kale, collard greens, or Swiss chard), tough stems removed, leaves very thinly sliced
• Salt & ground black pepper to taste
• 1/2 lb Feta cheese, crumbled
• cooked organic brown rice (I cooked 2 cups dried rice)

Notes About Ingredients

I deviated from Whole Foods’ recipe in the following ways:

• I did not use onion, like the recipe called for (1/2 red onion, finely chopped)
• I used 1/2 lb (8-oz) Feta cheese because we like it (the recipe calls for 1/4 lb)
• I cooked 2 cups dry organic brown rice ahead of time; I guessed at the amount needed. (the recipe calls for a 20-oz package of Whole Foods’ brand frozen organic brown rice – I do not agree with using pre-packaged foods like that, although I’m sure some people like it to save time)

Directions:

• Put carrots, greens, onions, 1/4 cup water, salt, and pepper into a large, deep skillet and toss well.
• Cover and cook over medium heat, tossing once or twice, until greens are wilted and tender, 10-15 minutes.
• Toss with Feta cheese and spoon over brown rice.

(Sorry about my less-than-stellar photos. Go to the Whole Foods website to see a better photo of this meal. It truly was great!)

Final Thoughts

This meal was really easy to make, even when I cooked the rice myself. And it was very tasty; maybe surprisingly so, given the few ingredients. Yes, the extra Feta cheese we added might be part of the reason. And I was pleasantly surprised that our son ate it all up, especially given his recent “dislike” of most things green. I would definitely make this meal again, and make it exactly the way I did here. I may cut back on the 2 cups dried rice, but I really don’t  mind having some extra; I just put it in the freezer for easy use at another meal.

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Wendy – ParentingTips365.com

Read all the posts in the Healthy Living series by clicking on the icon on the left.

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March is National Nutrition Month® and, if you didn’t know by now, good nutrition is very important to me and my family. We are very passionate about natural health and wellness and I thought this would be a great time to share our nutrition journey. (We didn’t always eat as well as we do today).

Also, throughout the month of March I will be sharing our favorite healthy recipes. As you know, the Healthy Living series I started earlier this year is well under way and future articles will share even more information about living a healthy lifestyle, including more information about why we made these changes – and how you can too.

10 Years Ago

Ten years ago we didn’t eat as healthy as we eat now, but of course we thought what we ate was fine. (Don’t most people think they eat healthy when asked?) I am trying to remember what we ate then, and here is what I came up with:

• Breakfast: Cold (boxed) cereal with milk
• Lunch: Deli meat sandwich
• Dinner: Various things, but vegetables played a minor role on our plate

I specifically remember a time when we ordered pizza almost every week and I drank Mountain Dew with it. And I remember going to fast food restaurants and not thinking anything of it. We used our microwave a lot, too, even for cooking frozen vegetables (which seems so odd to me now). I am pretty sure I sometimes ate cookies for breakfast, too, because I was an adult and COULD do it – HA!

I also remember that being a time when I had my percentage body fat measured and was surprised to find it rather high. I also got sick a lot (colds) and went immediately to the doctor where I was given some useless drug, which I happily took.

Slow Changes

I don’t remember exactly how we got started with our healthy eating overhaul; perhaps it was the conversations my husband had with our chiropractor that gave us the spark. The information he gave us was interesting, and we followed it up with some research. Slowly, we decided to change the way we ate.

While we were doing our initial change, I remember eating some interesting things, for breakfast especially. We were following a cookbook called Back to the House of Health and eating the “Zippy Breakfast”, which was a bowl of brown rice with lemon juice, olive oil, liquid aminos, avocado, and tomato. Or alternately we would make a big salad (yes, green salad for breakfast)! We would pile it with various greens including sprouts and top it with our homemade salad dressing.

We started shopping at Whole Foods Market, a natural and organic grocery store. We looked for new recipes and kept with it.

We increased our veggie portions on our plate and added more fresh vegetables. We started eating hot rice cereal for breakfast, as well as eggs. We increased our healthy fats by including olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds, and coconut oil into our diets. We switched to deli meats from Whole Foods (without nitrites and other preservatives) and then eventually switched to cooking regular chicken breasts and cutting them up for sandwiches.

We did feel completely tired as our body started cleansing, and this was good. Out with the toxins and in with the real food and nutrition.

What We Do Now

I won’t go through all the changes we made, because there were many and it covered the span of YEARS. My biggest advice if you want to really make a lifestyle change is to make health a hobby. Put time into research. Ask questions. Try new recipes. Change one thing at a time. Always yearn to grow and change and learn more.

Trying to compare and contrast what we do now compared to how we used to eat, here are just a few snippets:

• Breakfast: We eat oatmeal with ground flax seed, coconut oil, and fruit. We also sprinkle cinnamon on top; my husband adds turmeric, too. We eat eggs almost every morning, too.
• Lunch: I cook a bunch of organic chicken (usually thighs, but sometime breasts) in a glass pan, with plenty of organic seasonings. I cut into serving portions (which are smaller than they used to be) and freeze all in a big container. Each day for lunch, I pull out some chicken and warm it up in a saucepan on the stove top. We put it on a sprouted grain wrap with various veggies.
• Dinner: Various meals but with organic and better ingredients. Vegetables now take up half or more of our plate.

Here are a few other things we do now:

• Eat real foods
• Eat organic (fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, butter, etc.)
• Low dairy (no more milk)
• Eat 75% vegetarian
• The meat we do eat is mainly chicken, turkey, bison, or whatever game my dad gives us. We eat very little beef; we do not eat any pork at all.
• Low processed foods/snacks and what we do buy is natural or organic
• Absolutely none of these ingredients in food: hydrogenated oils, MSG (in any name/form), food colorings, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, artificial preservatives, hormones
• Low/no sugar
• We only drink filtered water; no juice, soda, etc. (we installed a reverse osmosis unit under our sink, which makes it SO easy)
• Absolutely no fast food, and reduced our restaurant visits to those that have better ingredients (we love Jason’s Deli)
• We do not use our microwave at all; food is cooked or reheated on the stove top or in the oven.
• We only cook with stainless steel or glass; no aluminum or plastic. Same with food storage.

Resources

Here are a few places we learned about nutrition:

• We talked to our chiropractor, who also was a clinical nutritionist. You can search out healthy professionals in your own life. Information can be varied and contradicting, though, so listen smartly.
• Mercola.com
• Dr. Mercola’s Total Health Cookbook & Program
• NaturalNews.com
• Weston A. Price

What Can You Do?

When you decide to eat healthier, all the information can be overwhelming. My advice is to make changes slowly; change one thing at a time. Incorporate that change into your life until it becomes a habit. Then change something else – and keep going. Like anything, if you try to do everything at once, it may be too hard to maintain, and  you end up not changing anything!

A good start is to follow my blog, or other health blogs, to learn about healthy options. Find the people who are the most vibrant and see what they do.

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You may be wondering why we made the changes we did; why certain things are ‘bad’ and certain things are ‘good’. I will go into detail in future articles about the ‘why’ for most of those things so that you can decide for yourself if you want to embrace that change, too. For now, keep reading and learning – and enjoy this month of healthy recipes!

Wendy – ParentingTips365.com

Read all the posts in the Healthy Living series by clicking on the icon on the left.

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