Baked Ziti with Ground Turkey

Sundays are for pasta. It is a nice filling dinner and just perfect for starting your diet off on the WRONG foot. I tried to trim down my ziti a little, with ground turkey, 2% milk Mozzarella, and low fat sour cream.

Ingredients:
cooked penne pasta (about 4 cups)
1 large can chopped tomato with basil and oregano
1/2 large can of tomato sauce
2 frozen cubes of Trader Joes basil
1 bay leaf
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium onion chopped, (used in two spots)
1lb ground turkey
1 cup shredded mozzarella
3 heaping large spoonfuls of sour cream
1/2 cup shredded "other" cheese (I used extra sharp white cheddar)
handfuls of grated parm
salt to taste (sauce and ground turkey)
olive oil (for cooking onion)

Directions (in order of how I cooked things)
1. heat olive oil, saute onion (about 3/4 of what you chopped) and garlic
2. I add some pepper flakes (totally optional) and then added the sauce and chopped tomatoes. Drop in the basil and bay leaf, stirring to thaw and mix into sauce. Heat until bubbles start popping, then turn down to simmer.
3. Put water for pasta on the burner. Preheat oven to 375.
4. Once water starts to boil (drop pasta in), heat a small amt. of oil for remaining onion. Saute and then add in ground turkey. Cook and then strain.
5. After pasta is cooked, transfer to casserole dish or large bowl. Mix in sour cream. Mix in cooked meat/onion. Spoon about 3 ladles of tomato sauce into pasta mixture.
6. In large rectangular baking dish, spoon tomato sauce on bottom. Dump pasta mixture on top. Layer shredded cheese (I did just the cheddar here) on top of pasta.
7. Spoon more tomato sauce on top. Then mozzarella, then parmesan.
8. Bake covered about 20 minutes. And then uncovered about 10 minutes.

And now...the pictures!
Before Baking:

Ready for eating: (see that forkfull right there? That was the BEST bite!

Finally, this is what my kitchen looks like when I cook. Is everyone as messy as me? The gnomes that clean up after I cook think I am extra-specially-messy. Am I?? What I love about baking things for dinner...you have that 40 minutes of clean up time, so that AFTER you eat there is little to do.

UPDATE: I clicked on this picture (you can too) and it totally zooms in so you can see EVERYTHING. Including, through the peep-through over my sink, where you can see the outline of the gnome that cleans the kitchen. Okay, actually he is a gnome wearing an Ohio State shirt. Go Bucks!

Chicken Parmesan with Creamy Orzo

Chicken Parmesan
Pounded Chicken breast, for even cooking
1 cup italian bread crumbs
1/2 cup egg beaters
1/2 cup flour
vegetable oil to cover bottom of saute pan (size of pan varies this)

1 cup tomato sauce (recipe to follow)
shredded mozzarella
grated parmesan

After chicken is pounded thin, dredge in flour, then dip in egg beaters, then in bread crumbs. Heat oil. And also turn on broiler in oven. I unsafely drop a little water in the pan to see if it is ready for the chicken. If the oil spatters and burns me, we're good to go. Drop chicken into pan, turning once after the first side is brown. If the chicken is thin enough, 3-4 minutes on each side should be sufficient. After cooked, place in oven safe pan (I use a pie dish), top with a spoonful of tomato sauce, and then top with the desired amount of cheese. Place under broiler to melt the cheese.

Creamy Orzo
1 cup uncooked orzo
1 T butter
3 minced garlic cloves
3 cups chicken broth (I make my own)
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1 tree of broccoli, chopped
1 T cream cheese (I use 1/3 the fat cream cheese)
Melt butter in a sauce pan, and cook garlic about halfway. Then add the orzo to coat with butter. Add broth and bring to a boil. Add chopped brocolli. Boil until orzo is done. Sometimes a need for straining is necessary, sometimes it isn't. If you strain, leave a little liquid to keep creamy once you add the parmesan. Mix in parmesan, then drop in cream cheese, mixing until it melts.


Last Minute Tomato Sauce
1 small onion, chopped small
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 t oregano
2 t fresh basil
salt
crushed red pepper
1/2 cup red wine
1 large can of crushed tomatos
1 bay leaf

I always make my own tomato sauce. I keep cans of Tomato Sauce, Crushed Tomato, Chopped Tomato, and Whole Tomatoes in my pantry at all times. I really liked the CRUSHED for this sauce, and will probably keep more crushed tomato than just tomato sauce in the future.

The order that I cooked this in:
Tomato Sauce
Cooked the orzo to a boil
Started chicken on the stove
Put chicken in the oven
Added cheeses to the orzo

Ravioli Lasagna

Ravioli Lasagna
serves 4...cook in a LOAF PAN
1 package Trader Joes Cheese Ravioli (cooked per package directions)
1 cup-ish mushroom cream sauce (recipe follows)
2 cups marinara sauce (recipe follows)
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
frozen spinach (1/2 a package)
2/3 lb ground beef, browned with 1/4 onion chopped

Mushroom Cream Sauce:
Brown 1 cup sliced baby bella mushrooms and one large minced garlic clove in 1 t olive oil. Remove from the pan. Place 1 T butter and melt, then add 1/4 cup flour and make a roux. Slowly whisk in 1 cup of skim milk. Salt and pepper to taste, adding some parmesan cheese. Stir BACK in mushroom. Remove from heat. This makes more than you'll need.

Marinara Sauce:
(this is adapted from a Cooking Light magazine recipe...I had to change it a little)
1/4 chopped onion
1 large minced garlic clove
In 1 T olive oil, cook onion with garlic. After softened, add:
1/2 t dry: basil, oregano, salt, and crushed red pepper.
After herbs are combined with the onion, pour in:
1 14 ounce can of chopped tomato (mine was with balsalmic and garlic)
1/2 cup chicken broth
1T balsalmic vinegar
Let simmer so that it thickens, about an hour. I then added about 1 cup tomato sauce, because the recipe was very chunky and it wasn't reducing much. It tasted great! And it went along well with the lasagna.

The assembly of this lasagna went, from bottom up,
Marinara
3 cooked ravioli
cream sauce
spinach
mozzarella
parmesan
3 cooked ravioli
beef
mozzarella
tomato sauce
ravioli
cream sauce
parmesan
strip of tomato down the center of the cream sauce
parmesan

Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes. Let set about 15 minutes, so it hopefully sets up a little.

Oh how I wish I had a camera. It was pretty, but then when served, that first piece looked crazy. I need little individual baking dishes, so that I don't have to use a spatula to get it out!

Note for the dieting: These raviolis from Trader Joes claim to be enough for TWO. So I stretched these raviolis into 4 servings. Also, the beef, 2/3 lb, for 4 people is a smaller sized portion too. I used Skim Milk Mozzarella, skim milk in my cream sauce, and smaller amounts of olive oil, since I have lovely Calphalon cookware. I don't feel too bad about this dish, diet wise.