Meatless Wonder... kinda

Night one in getting back to healthy eating: Vegetarian Baked Ziti.

Or in my case, baked rotini since the grocery store didn't have any ziti pasta (or a wide selection of whole wheat pastas I might add). This recipe was built off a vegetarian lasagna recipe I got from a friend, and since the very same grocery store's only eggplant was the size of plums, (who eats eggplants that small? Little tiny mouse vegetarians?) I opted to adapt the recipe to my other known pasta making skills.

I arrived home with my ingredients, only going $3.97 over budget. That $3.97 went mostly the meatless alternative that I was skeptical of, but interested to try.

I got the pasta going and aligned my other ingredients. I nixed the usual 'heavy-on-the-mozzarella" attitude and used only low fat ricotta inside the dish. The only other dairy was the asiago/romano/parmesan shaker mix that i sprinkled over the top. I sauteed an onion with the non-meat veggie substitute, and the only visual difference was that it was really really ground up and had a beany aroma to it. I have to say, flopping it out of the vacuum sealed package was kinda gross, but so is taking the skin stuff off a sausage link.

When I opened up the can of spaghetti sauce, i saw my first mistake with this vegetarian recipe... "sauce flavored with italian sausage" in black and white... Oops! It was just regular spaghetti sauce, and the message was in fine print. There was little meaty chunks in too. Lucky for me, I'm not going vegetarian, so i didn't have to stop everything and go back to the store. This is one of several reasons I don't want to go fully vegetarian... if i didn't eat meat, i wouldn't have eaten that and I would have had to go through the annoyance and hassle of getting some non-meat flavored sauce. What a pain to worry about accidentally eating a little bit of meat.

So I pressed on. It made a little more than a 9x12 dish, so i zealously filled a round pan for leftovers. With baked pastas, I've found that there is no real need for layering, i just kinda plop it all in there evenly and make sure the pasta pieces are covered so they won't dry out in the oven. II covered the dishes in foil, and into the oven they went.

I slightly missed the bubbly brown mozzarella on top, but the cheese blend sprinkled on top gave it a little bit of a "outer shell" I paired it with a basic salad that was heavy in spinach. Which brings us to my second mistake. I forgot to put the spinach in the bake. Boo. It would have been really good with a veggie addition. I think even zucchini would have been good in there.

Even still, the meat alternative worked, and tasted good. If I made it again, I'd supplement the can of spaghetti sauce with a little bit more tomato sauce; it was a little dry, but it was a big hit to the boyfriend. He wasn't excited about the meat substitute, but after scolding him for serving himself up a third (and later fourth) helping, he told me: "There's just something about that fake meat that just makes it so good!"

And now, as the boyfriend naps in baked rotini coma, I'm pretty sure if I uncovered my "leftovers", it will be at least a quarter eaten or more. At least it was healthy, right? And i would buy the meat substitute again, but ground turkey is a lot cheaper for more of it, so until I get that business venture underway, meat substitute will have to stay on the splurge list.

Email me for a more line-by-line recipe!