Save time by skipping one or more steps while making your dish heathier!

To save time and increase the healthiness of your next baked ziti or lasagna, skip cooking the noodles and add veggies that hold a lot of water which will absorb into the dry pasta and will capture crucial healthy vitamins.

• Cover the bottom of a baking or casserole dish with about 1/4 c of tomato sauce.
• Add about 3/4 box dry ziti or corkscrew pasta
• Add a layer of fresh or frozen sliced zucchini, a layer of fresh or frozen spinach, and a layer of sliced squash or carrots.
• Add a thin layer of low fat ricotta cheese.
• Pour 1-1/2 jars to 2 jars of pasta sauce on top, and gently shake the casserole dish to help the sauce settle into the open gaps.
• Add about 1/4 c of veggie bouillon to the top and gently shake again. (Add any remaining tomato sauce if you have room.)
• Cover dish and bake at about 350 for 45 mins to an hour.
• Add mozzarella on top in the last 5 minutes of cooking.

* NOTE: Make this dish gluten free by using brown rice pasta, artichoke pasta, or other gluten free noodles.

*NOTE: If you like to add meat to your baked ziti, add a layer of pre-cooked ground turkey, ground chicken, or ground beef on top of the veggies and under the ricotta cheese layer.

*NOTE: If you choose to use frozen veggies, don’t worry about thawing them (another time saving step) layer them into the baking dish right from the freezer.

In addition to saving time you would have spent pre-cooking the pasta, the pasta will absorb all the liquid from the veggies, capturing the vitamins usually lost when cooking and draining these veggies of their excess liquid.  It’s a double bonus!