Monday, December 26, 2011

Veggie and Turkey Lasagna

Another gift idea realized.  I was wondering what I could do for my parents this year.  I realized that dinner might be a nice thing to provide and I sought out good freezer meals.  While I searched around I decided that I should probably go with something that I know personally works for this time.

I make lasagne somewhat regularly.  I usually use sauce in a jar, no-boil lasagna noodles and ground turkey.  I thought it would be nice to add some vegetables in order to make the meal more nutritious on its own.  After spending some time looking around, most recipes I saw cooked veggies along with spices and crushed tomatoes and created sauce.  I wasn't sure I wanted to do that and I have a sauce I like.

Carrots, Squash, mushrooms, and spinach were what I decided to add.  When reading through the recipes, I learned that cooking the veggies a bit before baking them into the lasagna would allow most of the excess liquid to be cooked off.  I took one of my jars of sauce and slowly added the different veggies.  I started with mushrooms, then as they began to change, I added shredded squash, and then carrots.  I added fresh spinach towards the end as I figured it wouldn't need as much time to cook.  The sauce did take some time to make.  I prepared everything else for the lasagna while the sauce was bubbling away.

I decided to use the veggie sauce on top of each meat layer and then see what I had left.  For the beginning sauce, I just used the jar sauce.  I also used the jar only sauce in one other layer.  It all went together very well and fit in my dish.

I baked the lasagna according to the directions on the noodle box, I let it cool and then refrigerated overnight.  The next day I cut the lasagna into eighths and individually wrapped each portion.  They went right into the freezer and will get transferred to my parents freezer today!

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