A Better Bag of Groceries

Crowd-Pleasing Dinner

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 10:05 AM

Do you have a recipe that you love so much, you just look for an occasion to make it?  For me, it’s Cooking Light’s Garden-Style Lasagna.  It’s a recipe that calls for a crowd.  It is big – it serves 12 – and truth be told, it’s a little labor-intensive.  When I spend that much time cooking something, I need there to be more than three other people at my table to tell me that they love it!  This past weekend was my Dad’s birthday and we had ten people gathered around the table – the perfect occasion to sharpen my knives, get out my biggest cutting board and get to work.

This recipe incorporates a lot of Incredible Vegetables!

For the most part, this recipe incorporates ingredients with great NuVal scores:

Onion (NuVal score: 93)

Garlic (NuVal score: 91)

Olive Oil (NuVal score: 11)

Zucchini (NuVal score: 99)

Yellow Squash (NuVal score: 99)

Carrot (NuVal score: 99)

Broccoli (NuVal score: 100)

Salt (NuVal score: 1)

Flour (NuVal score of 67 for King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose)

1% Lowfat Milk (NuVal score of 81 for Hood 1% with Vitamins A, C & D)

Parmesan Cheese (NuVal score of 20 for DiGiorno) I used only half of the Parmesan that this recipe called for, and it still tasted great.

Black Pepper

Nutmeg

Frozen Chopped Spinach (NuVal score: 100)

1% Lowfat Cottage Cheese (NuVal score of 41 for Land O’Lakes)

Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese (NuVal score of 21 for Price Chopper’s Part-Skim Low Moisture mozzarella)

PreCooked Lasagna Noodles (NuVal score of 57 for Ronzoni Oven Ready, Simply Perfect)

If you’d like to try this recipe yourself (and I really recommend that you do), click on the Cooking Light link above for the detailed measurements and instructions.

In the meantime, I’ll tell you that there are 7 basic steps to the recipe.

Step 1:  Microwave the spinach, let it cool and then squeeze out the water. (easy enough!)

Step 2:  Chop, chop and chop some more.  (Those pictures above say it all, don’t they?)

Step 3:  Saute your veggies.  Have a really big metal bowl handy because you saute them pretty much one veggie at a time.

Step 4:  Make your Spinach sauce.  Warning:  This is where you can end up with a gluey mess if you are not paying attention.  I tell you this from experience.  Stay focused, never stop whisking and you will be OK! 

Step 5:  Make your cheese mixture.  Thankfully, this part is simple and quick.  Just two ingredients and no chance at all that you will make glue.

Step 6:  Layer your little heart out.  I have to keep reading and re-reading my recipe here.  Just remember it goes cooking spray, spinach mixture, 4 noodles, cheese mixture, vegetables, spinach mixture, 4 noodles, cheese mixture, vegetables, 4 noodles, spinach mixture.  Top with parmesan and mozzarella.  Got that???

Step 7:  Bake – 20 minutes covered, 20 minutes uncovered.

Exhale and get a glass of wine.  You deserve it.  Oh, and get your husband to help you with the dishes.  You now have two pans and two big bowls dirty – plus some measuring instruments.

So back to our dinner party….my husband and I were in a good place.  Years of entertaining together have certainly helped us to smooth out our pre-party routine, but our too-small kitchen and smallish house can make it a little stressful at times.  On this day, things were going well.

With the dishes done, we had time for a last minute sweep through the house to hide put away toys, Clorox wipe clean the bathroom, and Swiffer vacuum the floors.  Then, after washing hands thoroughly, it was back to the kitchen to set out crusty bread:

Make a salad…

and set out some wine.

Things were looking good.  Until I took the lasagna out of the oven.  Now, I have made this recipe probably four times prior to this occasion and it has always been great.  But this time, the top was crunchy.  And not in a good way.  In a bad, uncooked noodle kind of way.  Not the whole top.  Just around the edges.  Like a very wide mat in a picture frame.  A very wide mat of crunchiness.  Ugh!!!

I now realize where I went wrong with this recipe.  I got overzealous with the lasagna noodles.  The recipe says use four noodles.  I used six.  I was trying to cover the top of the casserole.  I just wasn’t thinking!  These are no-boil noodles.  They will expand.  So, use restraint.  Four.  Noodles.

My husband, who honestly should have been wearing his SuperMan cape on this particular day, said, “Why don’t we use the kitchen shears to cut away the crunchy part?”  And we thought those kitchen shears were only for cutting the tops off freeze pops!  Actually my husband is always trying to use them to cut things like paper, credit cards we don’t need, and metal wire.  It is also his tool of choice when opening new toys – all that clam shell plastic packaging and twisty things.  And I always yell, “Not the kitchen shears!”  So where he ever came up with the kitchen shear idea to solve a culinary problem, I have no idea.  But with a houseful of dinner guests now, we went for it.  To cover up the missing topping, I used the rest of the cottage cheese (I added more of the 1% milk) and brushed it around the cut-out part.  I covered that with baby spinach leaves that I found in my fridge (because one of these days I really am going to make a Green Monster shake) and more of the grated mozzarella.  

I popped it back in the oven, covered this time, for about 5 more minutes and voila – it was perfect!

Disaster averted, we had a lovely dinner and were treated to an evening of entertainment.  My kids were in charge of that part, so it included a SpongeBob theme song sing-a-long, the Cha Cha slide dance-off, the YMCA (even seated Great-Grandmas can do that one) and a rousing game of Zingo (Great-Grandma’s know how to play Bingo, so they quickly learn Zingo). 

I’m not sure if it was the SpongeBob theme that my kids picked for Papa or the Cabernet, but my Dad seemed to have a great time.

So, I hope I haven’t scared you out of making this recipe.  It is sooooooo worth it!

Winner of the Trade-Up Tuesday GiveAway

Congratuations to Commenter #46, Vanessa!  You have won the perfect bean giveaway.  Send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com and let me know your mailing address.  Thanks to all who entered!

Posted by: Melissa 3 comments

Posted in: Cooking Light, Dinner Recipes

Tags: Cooking Light, Garden-Style Lasagna