Low Carb Zucchini Lasagna Recipe

Lately I have been craving marinara sauce like CRAZY. I could seriously eat a can of Prego with a spoon. As far as my research has shown, I most likely have an iron deficiency. Working on that (hello multivitamin)... Anywho...

I got this recipe from Skinny Taste and then I kind of adapted it in a couple of ways for my taste (made it saucier). If you havent checked Skinny Taste out and you are a low-carber, I HIGHLY recommend it.

Before I jump in to the recipe, a couple things: I wish it had more zucchini, I also wish it had a little less cheese ( Sayyy what? For real. It had a lot of cheese, dont get me wrong I love cheese, but it would cut down on the calories if you only use about 3/4 of it).

So here is my version of the recipe. 

Me and my puppy, cooking up some low-carb lasagna

Ingredients:  

• 1 lb 93% lean beef
• Garlic Powder
• Dried Onion Powder
• Dried Basil 
• Dried Oregano
• Dried Cilantro
• 1/2 onion
• salt and pepper
• 24 oz can Marinara sauce (make your own if you are avoiding added sugars)
• 3 medium zucchini, sliced 1/8" thick
• 15 oz part-skim ricotta
• 1 large egg
• 16 oz part-skin mozzarella cheese, shredded

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Slice zucchini into 1/8" slices. I used a mandolin slicer and it only took about 5 minutes to slice all three zucchinis. Set zucchini aside on a plate. 

Brown hamburgers with spices and onion. While you are browning the hamburger, turn a skillet on medium heat and place zucchini slices in a single layer and cook each side for 2 minute or until zucchini slices are slightly browned and tender.

 In a small bowl, mix together Ricotta, the egg, and the same seasonings that you used on your hamburger. Set aside.

 Once hamburger is browned, add in your marinara sauce and stir together. And now, youre ready to layer.

 In a 9 x 13 inch casserole dish, pour down a thin layer of meat sauce. Place a layer of zucchini on top of the sauce, add a layer of ricotta, then a layer of mozzarella. Continue this pattern until your casserole dish is full. Add any additional cheese to the top of your dish. 

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. I put my dish on a cookie sheet just in case it bubbles over a bit. 

This recipe makes 8 servings. Each serving is about 596 calories and 20 g carbohydrates. 

I consider this a more indulgent meal for low-carbers because its still pretty high in fat and sodium. This isnt something that you should eat everyday, but it is definitely a great meal for when you are craving pasta. This definitely kept me full and it tasted amazing. I would actually prefer this over regular lasagna. All of the taste is there, but the carbs arent.

Have you ever used zucchini in place of traditional pasta? Tell me about your experience below. 

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Low Carb Zucchini Boat Recipe

I went to my parents house yesterday and they have so much zucchini from the garden, and the tomatoes are coming on too! I wanted to help use some of it up, so I made us these low carb zucchini boats. They are delicious and easy to make. Heres how:

Ingredients
2 medium zucchini, cut long ways in half
1 lb lean ground beef
2 tomatoes, diced
1 green bell pepper,  diced
2 cloves garlic, diced and separated in half
1/2 tablespoon dried onion
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
3/4 cup shredded cheese (optional), separated in half

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with tin foil and set aside.

Use a metal spoon to scrape the center pulp out of the zucchini halves. leave about a 1/4 of an inch worth of zucchini in the peel, dont scrape too far through! Set the boats and pulp aside, youll use them later.

In a pan, combine ground beef, tomato, green pepper, one clove of garlic, dried onion, oregano and Italian seasoning. Brown ground beef completely. Add half of the shredded cheese to your ground beef and combine.

In a blender or a food processor, blend zucchini pulp and garlic together until it is a smooth texture. Pour pulp into hamburger mixture and mix well.

Place boats on lined cookie sheet and spoon mixture into each one. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and bake for 30 minutes.

Each boat counts as one serving, this recipe makes four servings.

This recipes is low in carbohydrates. The sugars are primarily coming from your vegetables. If you are looking to cut down on the fat, eliminate the cheese and switch to ground lean chicken, turkey or your favorite vegetarian crumbles. 

Have you ever tried zucchini boats? What do you fill yours with? 

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Low Carb Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Im a fan of anything cheesy and meaty. While I try not to over do it on cheese too often, every once in a while I like to indulge with a gooey, cheesy, low carb recipe. These low carb* stuffed peppers are amazing! Instead of using rice, they us quinoa.

Ingredients

4 large green bell peppers
1 pound hamburger
1 c. cherry tomatoes, halved
1 c. fresh spinach, chopped
1/2 tablespoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 c. shredded cheese, divided
1 c. uncooked quinoa

In a large pot, bring water to a boil. Slice tops off of green peppers and remove seeds and core. Place in boiling water and boil for about 7 minutes or until tender. While peppers are boiling, combine hamburger, tomatoes, spinach, Italian seasoning, salt and 1/4 c. cheddar cheese. Cook until hamburger is done. In a small sauce pan, add two cups of water to the quinoa and cook until quinoa is translucent and tender. Add quinoa and beans to hamburger mixture. Remove peppers from pot and place in a baking dish. Fill each pepper with the hamburger mixture and sprinkle remaining cheese over each pepper. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.
 *Note: I added pinto beans to mine in this picture because I had gone on a long run that day. :) To keep it low carb, I cut them out of the recipe.

Serving size is 1 pepper. This is a filling meal, and it makes great leftovers, too!

You can dress these up with sour cream or hot sauce, but they are also just as good plain. If you want to cut out some calories, cut back on the cheese by excluding it from the hamburger mixture.

If youre looking for more cheesy, delicious recipes, check out this low carb Pizza recipe. Its the BEST!

Whats your favorite cheesy, low carb meal? Share a link in the comments section below!

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Celebrate Your Victories Even the Dirty Ones

Last week I blogged about how excited I was to do the Dirty Dash for the fourth time since starting my weight loss journey and as promised, here is a race re-cap and some pictures!

Saturday morning rolled around and it was race day. I was incredibly nervous. I wasnt sure if I would be able to do all of the obstacles, I was nervous that maybe I hadnt trained enough. With all the nerves, the hour long drive up to Soldier Hollow seemed to take for-EVER.

Luckily my roommate Mattie was coming with me. This was her first Dirty Dash, and I wanted to make sure it was a good experience for her. Shes not really into running, so I told her she would control the pace and we were just going to have fun.

Pre-race:

I gave Mattie all  my Dirty Dash advice: make sure your shoes are tied tight, stick to the edges of the start line, its less muddy, ect.. We were both pretty nervous, but we were also ready to conquer the course.

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During the race, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to do all of the obstacles with relative ease. We jogged parts and walked parts. Since its not a timed race and since there were so many people, we didnt feel pressure to rush. A lot of the times the groups of people made it difficult to walk anyway. Even though we didnt do too much running, I felt like I could have run the whole thing. With the Dirty Dash, you have the option to do a 5k or a 10k. By the time we ascended the final hill before the 5k/10k split, Mattie was pretty wiped out. She did incredible too! She did twice the amount of obstacles I did when I did it for the first time. We opted for the 5k and made our way to the giant slip n slide. With a running start, I supermanned down that slide SO FAST. :) It was pure joy.

Post-Race:

I kept thinking the whole time how proud I was of my body. I  felt strong and empowered through the whole thing, and it was a major confirmation to me that my working out is paying off.

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Sometimes I get frustrated with myself because I dont feel like Im where I need to be weight wise, and then things like this happen and I realize that there are many different types of progress, and the scale is only one of them. For me the victory of seeing how much easier this race is this year compared to last year was worth celebrating.

What small victory can you celebrate today?

Ive come so far. My weight will most likely always be a work in progress, but as long as Im not stagnant, as long as I take the time to celebrate my small victories, its all going to be worth it.

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Im Afraid To Think About Him

Thinking about him is painful.

Ive told other people Im fine with doing the day to day stuff without him because that is what were used to. Because he was gone for weeks at a time, and we mostly spoke on the phone, so I had to manage everything here on my end...but with his help.

If I keep busy, I dont think. I dont want to think. I dont want the edges of the pain to slowly peel away, revealing what is really going on in there, because it hurts too much. And when I dont think, I feel OK. Still incredibly sad, but at least I am not thinking about him every. single. minute.

Is that wrong of me? There is no right or wrong way to grieve, I know that. But I feel guilty for not wanting to think about him. But its the only way I know how to cope! I just cant handle those sneaky little thoughts. Im denying myself the right to think about him, because I am afraid to cry, afraid to feel sad, afraid that I will become a sobbing mess and distraught all over again.

I wish I knew if it was ok to do this, I dont know if I should, or if by denying myself the pain, that I am only prolonging my grieving. I still am grieving, but I avoid like the plague, the things that cause me the most sadness.

My husband was a HUGE, HUGE, fan of Opie and Anthony, a talk radio show on XM. He listened to them every. single. day. All the time, he was even somewhat obsessive with it, lol. On Saturday nights, they had another show on that channel called Weird Medicine hosted by Dr Steve. They did segments on Truckers, and Barry was supposed to be a regular contributor. On September 19th, he was on the show talking, and Dr Steve gave me the link to the show. Last night I listened to it and recorded Barry talking.

That was such a huge, big, incredibly stupid, mistake on my part. I cried so hard hearing his voice. I dont want to hear his voice, but I wanted to save the clip for posterity, so the kids could hear his voice down the road.

I dont think about him too much, I prefer to occupy my time with other stuff, but its hard not to let that little sliver of Barry slip into my head, and then the waterworks start. When he died, I had this intense need to write down everything he told me. EVERYTHING. but then I started blogging, and I havent wanted to do that. I just dont want to think about him. But how can I not?

So what do I do? Do I close my mind to thoughts of him? Or do I think about him constantly until Im emotionally and physically exhausted? Is it wrong of me to not want to think of him, or is it completely normal? I dont want the kids to think I dont love their dad, that I dont miss him, that I dont want to talk about him, but its so fucking hard to do that. I cant even look at his pictures. They can, but I just CANT. I dont want them to get the wrong impression, that Im not grieving, but I have to be strong for them.

Am I doing him a disservice by not thinking of him? by avoiding him? I love him so much that my heart feels like it is splitting apart because I am so sad. I really dont know HOW I can go on and do this without him. I dont feel like it will EVER get better. Yeah, its only been two weeks, but I just dont know how I will ever feel happy again. How I will ever get over this pain, this feeling of drowning and desperation.

Im just so confused!

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Low Carb Lasagna With No Zucchini!

Did you ever watch Garfield? There has never been a cartoon a relate to as much as I do that hungry, chubby cat. Garfields biggest struggle in life is his love for Lasagna, but his need to lose weight. 

I cant even remember the last time that I ate lasagna, noodles and all. Its been too long. 

I have tried zucchini lasagna, and it was pretty good. However, it wasnt a completely authentic lasagna taste (No duh, Low. No noodles. Hello?). Anyway... I wanted to try making noodles with the cauliflower breadstick I made a few weeks ago. I was confident that if you can make a bread stick, you can make a noodle, and if I could make a noodle, I could make Low carb Lasagna. 

Turns out.. I was right :) I found a recipe on peaceloveandlowcarb.com that did just this! I tweaked the recipe a little bit to make it slightly lower in fat! 

This was so good. Like seriously, I know its been awhile since Ive had lasagna, but one bite of this and my inner Garfield was awakened. 

Youll want to try this one this week. Trust me. 

Ingredients

For the Noodles: 
4 oz. Cream Cheese
¼ Cup Parmesan Cheese – Grated2 Eggs
1 ¼ Cup Mozzarella Cheese – Shredded
1/4 tsp. Italian Seasoning
1/4 tsp. Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp. Onion Powder
For the Filling:
1 lb. Lean Ground Turkey¾ Cup Mozzarella Cheese – Shredded
1 ½ Cups tomato sauce, Divided1 Tbs. Onion powder
1 tsp. Dried Oregano
1 tsp. Garlic Powder
1 tsp. Dried Basil
1 tsp. Italian Seasoning
1 tsp. Trulicious powdered stevia
6 Tbs. Low fat ricotta cheese

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Try These Cheesy Cauliflower Bread Sticks

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Directions for the Noodles:
Soften cream cheese in a microwave safe dish. Add in eggs. Cream together. Add Parmesan and seasonings and Mozzarella. Using a wooden spoon, mix well until mostly smooth. 

Spread mixture into a 9x13 inch casserole dish thats either lined with parchment paper or sprayed with Pam. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool for 20 minutes in the fridge. After cooling, cut into three pieces. 

Directions for Layering and Baking:
In a large skillet brown ground turkey, add 3/4 tomato sauce. Season with onion powder, dried oregano, garlic powder, dried basil, Italian seasoning and Trulicious powdered stevia.

Pour ¼ cup marinara sauce into bottom of loaf pan.  Top with the first “noodle” layer
Layer a third of the ground beef mixture.  Top with ¼ cup mozzarella cheese and 3 Tbs. ricotta cheese, and cover with another “noodle” layer.  Repeat these steps.
Cover the top “noodle” layer with remaining ground beef, and mozzarella cheese. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. 

Tada! I hope you love this low carb lasagna as much as I did. Unlike the original recipe, I used lean ground turkey, low fat ricotta, and made my own sauce of using store bought. You can view the original recipe here.

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