In March, eat healthy AND delicious
Petite lasagna
March is National Nutrition Month, so when we aren’t scarfing corned beef and green-frosted cupcakes and quaffing Guinness, we might want to take a little bit of time to think about some of our favorite healthy recipes.
Healthy often feels like it is synonymous with “boring,” but it doesn’t have to be, especially for those of us who love our fruits and vegetables. I have always been glad my mother and father made me try a lot of different fruits and vegetables when I was growing up, because I can’t really think of very many I do not like.
I really feel for my friends with toddlers who are now going through those struggles. You know who you are!
I’d like to share an easy, healthy recipe I received yesterday from my friend Janelle Rucker, who covers Franklin County for The Roanoke Times. Janelle made these miniature lasagnas and said they were delish. The vegetables (tomato and onion) are pretty well-disguised, and the ground turkey makes these leaner. It strikes me that one could make 12 of these babies and freeze what’s left over for quick and easy meals throughout the work week.
For the rest of this month, I want to share at least one healthy recipe per week, and I would love it if you all would share your very favorite healthy recipe, too. I will enter them into the PlateUp database so we’ll have a good selection of recipes that your stomach AND your heart can love.
Petite Lasagnas
Makes 12
12 oz. ground turkey
¼ tsp. salt, divided
¼ tsp. pepper
1 cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped mushrooms
1 (14.5 oz.) can crushed tomatoes, or tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tsp. dried oregano, divided
½ tsp. dried basil
1 ½ cups part skim ricotta cheese
24 small, square wonton wrappers (the kind near the tofu in the refrigerated section of the produce department)
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the turkey, onions, mushrooms, salt, and pepper. Crumble the meat and saute the mixture for about 10 minutes, or until the turkey is cooked through. Add the garlic and stir constantly for 30 seconds.
2. Add the crushed tomatoes and 2 tsp. of oregano. Bring the pan to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, a pinch of salt and pepper, the remaining teaspoon of oregano, and the basil. Stir to mix well. Set aside.
4. Coat a 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Place 1 wonton wrapper in each of the 12 cups, pressing firmly in the bottom of the cup and up the sides.
5. Using half of the ricotta mixture, divide it among the 12 muffin cups. Next, using half of the turkey tomato sauce, spoon it evenly over each of the ricotta filled cups. Sprinkle with 2 tsp. of mozzarella.
6. Gently press another wonton wrapper on top of the mozzarella layer.
7. Repeat the process by distributing the remaining ricotta, then the remaining tomato sauce, and finally the rest of the shredded mozzarella.
8. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.
9. Let the cups cool, remove them from the pan, and serve!
Nutritional information for 1 petite lasagna:
Calories: 181.2, Total Fat: 7.9g, Cholesterol: 41.9mg, Sodium: 389.5mg, Total Carb: 13.6g, Fiber: 1 g, Sugars: 1.6g, Protein 14.1g
Adapted from www.hungry-girl.com
March 4, 2011 - 7:00 AM
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Speaking of healthy eating, I recently found out that raw spinach is high in lutein content and that people who eat a high lutein diet are 40% less likely to develop macular degeneration. Spinach salad sounds good to me.
What a neat idea. Thanks for sharing the recipe, Janelle.
This looks delicious…I might try it this weekend.
Hungry Girl recipes are wonderful!!
My husband & I have been doing Weight Watchers since the start of the year and only make recipes from there, HG, skinnytaste.com, and LaaLoosh. We’re both down over 15 pounds!
Go healthy!
What a great idea! I will stop at store on the way home from work and get the ingredients and give this a shot this weekend. Thanks!!
When I looked at the picture, the outside looked like layered lasagna noodles. Wonton wrappers are a great idea!! The noodles could possible get a little tough during the baking process. But this looks wonderful and another way to use ground turkey! Gonna have to try this one!
Way to go, Meghan!
Wonton wrappers in muffin pans could be a base for a lot of different fillings.
Yea Kathy, the tops of the Wonton wrappers got a little crispy and I picked them off the first night. But when I reheated one for dinner last night I didn’t have that problem.
Another friend of ours, Heather, also noted how anyone can get creative with this and make it vegetarian with those soy crumbles and other veggies. I found a recipe for kale lasagna that I might try next time with the wonton wrappers.
Enjoy!
My wife and I have found since really working to get rid of both allergens and junky food ingredients, we’ve each dropped almost 25 pounds each since about Thanksgiving. Right now she’s doing the oligoallergenic diet (aka few foods diet) to start from scratch to determine what foods are safe, and which ones aren’t. Right now it’s beef, chicken, rice, potatoes, broccoli, apples, pears, salt. We’re working to add a new food or herb/spice to the mix every week to see if it’s safe for her. This is a result of her going to the ER after being exposed to a pizza brought into the house by a friend (that had oregano in the sauce)…she had a severe reaction and needed a benadryl IV to reduce her reaction to a manageable level. Oddly enough, her allergist recommended the diet yesterday, and we had worked it out over the weekend without knowing it was actually a type of diet…
We’re hoping that a few additional fruits and vegetables will be safe, along with a few spices and herbs, but those will be tricky. I’m hoping garlic and onion are safe along with black pepper. I can do a lot with those…
The allergen dieting has proven to be most helpful though, because we watch everything we eat and read food labels religiously. We found a lot of junk we didn’t want to be consuming, and that alone has greatly improved our health. We no longer eat anything with high-fructose corn syrup, no caffeine (I only drink one can of caffeine-free soda with my lunch and it’s made with cane sugar…otherwise it’s water), no added chemicals, no gluten/eggs/dairy/soy (soy is by far the hardest), and we watch our portions very closely. We also have stopped eating out. We had eliminated all fast food last year, but now we just don’t eat out anywhere because we kept getting cross-contamination with stuff we can’t have.
And oddly enough, we’ve found that the very basic food we’re eating is pretty tasty. And when we try to eat something that we used to, we no longer like it.
Those are adorable! I think I’ll try it this weekend. Thanks, Janelle!
Here’s a recipe I’ve enjoyed, and I’ve used light cream instead of regular cream to cut back on the fat. It’s easy and delish!
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/09/pasta-with-tomato-cream-sauce/
I’ve used wonton wrappers – and gyoza wrappers – to make short-cut ravioli with my own filling before. I love finding off-label uses for things like dumpling wrappers.
wow, can’t wait to make these!
I love making things in my muffin pans – but never thought about lasagna.
I wonder if I could change the batch up a bit and do part of them w/ meat and part veggie only?
Good luck, OJ. I have found that the ‘Greek Diet’ is one that promotes a healthy & nutritious lifestyle. The amount of fruits & vegetables is really not that overwhelming. I would add this caveat – if you select grass finished beef, it is as healthy as any of the fish that you could source for protein. Actually, it is even better. Thus you can sate your desire for beef (if you have one) while still maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Plus, that can feed into your overall intake of truly healthy foods, where you don’t have to worry about carcinogens and food-borne toxins.
Good luck in your search.
andnva, that’s one change we’re hoping to make, switching to grass-fed beef. We know the owner of a local beef company that does exclusively grass-fed products. The only thing holding us back was the price, but we’re now in a better position to do it.
It is true that grass-fed beef is high in Omega-3. I have been seeing it for about $5 a pound, which is indeed a high price compared to the grocery store, but if you think about it only about $1-2 more than the 90/10, which I think is generally about $3.99 at the store.
My philosophy is to try and incorporate local meat every other week or so. I will try to increase the frequency, but every little bit helps in terms of both our health and supporting the local farmer.
OtherJOhn, I’ve gotten 2 quarters – yes, a half I know but at 2 different times – of grass fed cattle from local farmers in the past year. The meat is not only healthier, but better tasting. I’d say in both cases – from 2 different farmers and processed by 2 different slaughterhouses – the meat came in at an average of about $4.50/lb – a screaming deal if you price it individually at a farmers market.
Taking the upfront hit is a little depressing, but if you prorate it out over the course of time it will take to finish it – keeping in mind you won’t have to buy meat anywhere else – it ends up working out. Plus it’s healthier AND supports the local guys…it’s really win/win/win.
Between that and the half hog we got at Xmas time, I haven’t bought any Kroger meat all winter. I do the occasional meatless dish, and yesterday I broke down and bought a chicken for tonight’s dinner at the store because at the moment I’ve had no luck tracking down available local poultry, but I expect that to change in a few months.
If you ever wonder about the value of local farm products, stream Food Inc on your Netflix.
I’ve watched Food Inc a few times and it confirmed a lot of what we had suspected already. We’d love to get a whole quarter, but right now we lack freezer space for it, so we’re looking to buy in smaller bunches, so the price per pound will be a bit higher. But it’s still something we’re looking to do. And if we can get a bigger freezer squished into our laundry room, we’ll go fo it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/us/06farmers.html?src=me&ref=homepage
Along the same lines…
Funny, I have a story just like that on my to-do list. Thanks for the link, Kristen.
OJ, you could check classifieds for used freezers to save money. We bought ours from my sister-in-law and I love having all the extra space.
Charlie, my friend made these in vegetarian form this weekend. She just skipped the meat and sauteed the onion, garlic and extra mushrooms, then added sauce and layered them as the recipe states. As long as all of the veggies are cooked, and the meat is cooked, you could do half meat and half veggie.
She also said she could have made 15 with the ingredients she had if she used all of the cheeses and a little less sauce in each cup.
OtherJohn, this is the one we picked up in December.
http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?partNumber=90724-2251-LFFC09M5HW&langId=-1&storeId=10151&productId=3047202&catalogId=10051&cmRelshp=rel&rel=nofollow&cId=PDIO1
It’s under $300 and holds 9 cu. ft of food…I had all my beef and pork in it at the same time, and had plenty of room to add containers of soups and stews I made and needed to freeze, and even THEN it wasn’t full. It has baskets on either side up top and a nice shelf in the bottom. If you can’t find a used one, this one is pretty inexpensive and for most people I’d think it would provide more than enough space.
Lindsey, let me put in a plug for sweet Angie Lenoir. I just love doing business with her and would LOVE to see an article featuring her and her operation.
Other John,
HomeDepot has a 5cu ft freezer for $168, Ive got the same model and it fits a half cow with room to spare.
Its a chunck upfront cost to buy in bulk but considering the quality of gf beef, plus the fact that you literally only need to source veg, fish and chicken, you cut down the food bill for at least 6 months.
Check out mountainrunfarm.com
Great folks, serious about raising sustainable, humane and fingerlickin’ good meat!
@Kristen, I name-drop Angie and Patricia at Blue Ridge Poultry Co-op about as often as I can. They usually send me an e-mail when they’re going to have fresh chickens for sale. I’ve had their chicken and it’s wonderful.
http://blogs.roanoke.com/fridgemagnet/?s=LeNoir&x=0&y=0&archive-dropdown=
Lindsey, chicken is the one thing I’m out of now but I think it’s a matter of them being all babies now – nothing’s ready for sale yet. I’ll just have to wait but please let us know again when their chickens are ready, because they go fast!
I have bought several of Angie and Patricia’s chickens and they are indeed wonderful. I think they only sell them a few weekends a year though. Like Kristen said, they have to be big enough to sell.
Honestly, the best way to control the sodium in your chicken stock is to buy one of those chickens, roast it, eat all of the meat off it, then submerge it in a pot of water with some onion and carrot and celery and herbs and let it simmer for a few hours. Hooooeee! Salt to taste.
Oh yeah! It smells as heavenly cooking as it tastes too.
Funny you mention making stock, Lindsey. I have 2 giant split chicken breasts in my freezer I plan to use for chicken & dumplings. I was going to make stock with the two chicken breasts, then pull the meat from the bones & proceed with the dumplings. I wanted to do it this past Sunday, but looks like it won’t happen until this Sunday. I hope the end product turns out as wonderful as it looks in my head!
Ditto Kristen’s comment about Angie.