Meatless Mondays -- Pasta Bean Casserole

Its that time again, kids! Yep, Uncle Joey has another tasty meatless recipe that is sure to excite! Tonight's recipe was Pasta Bean Casserole.

I will spare you the details of our 2012 plan to go meatless on Mondays. We're not pushing the vegetarian lifestyle (I make my love of bacon known quite often), nor pushing any sort of green agenda on anyone (for many reasons, meatless Mondays are good for the environment) -- Erin and I mostly started this to see if we could (1) do it and (2) maintain it. So far, so good!

First, here is what you will need:

(1) box of penne pasta (about 16oz)
(2) can of diced tomatoes (about 14oz)
(3) two cans of kidney beans (about 32oz total)
(4) jar/can pasta sauce (about 26oz)
(5) 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
(6) broccoli
(7) 1 small onion

Preheat the oven to 375 and also put water on to boil for the pasta. You will want to go ahead and drain the kidney beans and rinse them and set them aside. Boil the pasta as directed, strain and rinse, return to the pot. Once in the pot, add the tomatoes, pasta sauce, kidney beans, broccoli and onions (chopped up of course). Pour all of that into a casserole dish, top with cheese and bake for 30-35 minutes.

You could serve with bread and butter (a staple in our home) or salad, but its a hearty meal on its own. The girls seemed to enjoy it. Well, Jordan ate every last bite, anyhow. Madison is Madison. Both ate and neither complained. Erin and I enjoyed it quite a bit as well. The beans are a great protein source, and a good substitute for meat (not in taste, of course). However, with the veggies and beans, you won't miss meat. Its quite tasty. We used Italian diced tomatoes (that is what I prefer) which adds some garlic,etc. The casserole is almost on par with a vegetable lasagne, and I think you could add zucchini or summer squash, as well as mushrooms for added depth and nutrients.

Give it a try! Actually, it would go very well with the breaded eggplant I made last week. If you make it, let me know how you liked it!

Meatless Mondays - Vegetable Lasagna

Last night, I made my famous Mushroom Lasagna, a constantly evolving dish (read, constantly improving) that sort of morphed into Vegetable Lasagna (click the link -- every time I say vegetable lasagna, I think of this).

In our continuing effort to eat vegetarian on Monday nights, I made this lasagna meatless. It isn't necessarily low calorie, but its lower calorie than a typical lasagna.

I started with two types of mushrooms, baby bella and white mushrooms (just the caps, I don't use the stump, myself -- note, I often use cremini as well, but they weren't available at Target, so we skipped them), and sliced up some zucchini. In addition, I used lasagna noodles, red sauce (1.5 jars), white sauce (1/2 jar), low fat sour cream (you can use ricotta or cottage cheese in its place), mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese and spinach (i used frozen, but it must be defrosted and wrung out completely -- you can use fresh).

I don't cook the noodles in advance. Save the time and effort. I start with a very thin layer of red sauce at the bottom of the pan, and a layer of noodles, covered in a thicker layer of red sauce. Next, I made a layer of thinly sliced zucchini, followed by a layer of white sauce. On top of the white sauce, I put the layer of baby bellas and spinach, covered by a thin layer of sour cream. Next, the second layer of noodles, covered again in red sauce, with a second layer of zucchini and the white mushrooms. On a side note, for the mushrooms, I mostly just capped them, and cut them into halves (except the large ones) as chunky mushrooms, in my opinion, make it feel bulkier and more satisfying. On top, I put a good layer of mozzarella cheese, sprinkled a small amount of parmesan cheese and added a few small dollops of red sauce for appearance. You'll want to bake it for about 45 minutes, at 375 degrees. It is best if you let it sit for about 30 minutes, to solidify, but if your family are hungry hungry hippos (I'm not calling anyone fat here!), they won't likely want to wait. The final result looked like this:













I served this tasty dish with bread sticks and a veggie salad. The veggie salad was composed of the leftover zucchini slices (halved), carrot pieces and chunked tomato in a zesty Italian dressing and a little bit of mozzarella.

I would love to hear if any of you guys try this, and what you think of it. My family loves it, even though it changes every time. I wouldn't recommend shiitake musrooms or oyster mushrooms for this lasagna, as I didn't personally enjoy the lasagna much the times I tried adding either of those.

As always, happy eating! I'll be back next week, hopefully with something somewhat exotic (like lentil burgers).