Skillet Lasagna

I made this for dinner sometime last week, clearly into skillet meals lately (I hate doing the dishes), and was pretty surprised that it actually tasted like lasagna!  I was a little leery because it called for cottage cheese instead of ricotta...and I am not a fan of cottage cheese - AT ALL!  Although I wish I was, its super high in protein and low in carbs, but I just can't make myself do it.

1 cup Regular (whole milk) Ricotta Cheese - what you normally use to make lasagna:

428 calories, 32 grams of fat, 7 grams carbohydrate, 28 grams protein

1 cup Low Fat (2%) Cottage Cheese

180 calories, 5 grams fat, 8 grams carbohydrate, 28 grams protein

Just a warning, I made this in my big pot instead of a skillet like the recipe said...it never would have fit in a skillet, so don't try it!  Other things I changed: extra lean ground beef instead of lean, low sodium canned ingredients, extra veggies.

1 pound extra lean ground beef

1/2 large onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 can low sodium diced tomatoes, undrained

1 1/4 cup water

8 oz low sodium tomato sauce

1 tbsp parsley

1 tsp basil

1 tsp salt

2 1/2 cups whole wheat noodles broken into pieces (recipe called for whole wheat lasagna noodles, but I couldn't find them - I used a mixture of what I had in the pantry)

1 cup low fat cottage cheese

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

1 egg

Low fat mozzarella cheese for topping

Brown ground beef in large pot with onion and garlic until no longer pink.  Drain.

Add tomatoes, water, tomato sauce, parsley, basil & salt.

Stir in uncooked pasta.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until pasta is cooked - about 20 minutes.  You may need to add in some extra water at this point to make sure the noodles are actually boiling in liquid.  I think I added an extra cup or so.  I also added 1-2 cups of steamed zucchini and squash that I had left over from the night before when the pasta was done cooking - totally optional!

Meanwhile, combine cottage cheese, Parmesan cheese, egg and pepper to taste in small mixing bowl.

The recipe then said to drop the cheese mixture by spoonfuls on top of the pasta, cover and cook for 5 more minutes, sprinkle mozzarella on top, then serve.  But this is how that looked after 5 minutes of cooking...

Gross.  And, with mozzarella sprinkled on top...

Still gross.  So, I stirred it all together and it made a creamy tomato sauce.

Much better!  This recipe made a ton...after feeding both of us for dinner and putting away some for lunches the next day I still had enough to freeze...which we will be having for dinner again next week!

ENJOY!