Do not, I repeat, do not attempt the following:

• Wait staring through the oven window hoping that giving the lasagna the evil eye will make it cook faster.
• As soon as the cheese is melted and browned (and you’ve waited the horribly long 40 minutes), you take the lasagna out of the oven and immediately serve it because it just smells so good!
• Take a large heaping bite of a piece of Italian heaven, where only seconds later do you realize that the bite of glorious lasagna is actually horribly hot and you blow as much air in and out of your mouth until it is cool enough to chew and swallow.

Don’t do this like I did. Listen to your mother and do what she always said to do: ‘Blow it!’

 

 

Despite the burned tongue due to the hot first bite, I enjoyed every last bite of the remaining hunk of lasagna that was plated just for me.

 

Logan and I single-handedly killed the lasagna in 4 meals. So good!!!!

And just a side note, this recipe can definitely be made vegetarian. Simply leave out the step where you cook the meat! You might want to add in a little extra vegetable too, just to  make it extra delicious! 🙂

Whole Wheat Lasagna

adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Ingredients

• 1 pound lean ground turkey
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 6 ounces white mushrooms, diced
• 1 bell pepper (you choose the color…mine was green/yellow)
• 1 medium eggplant, skin removed, diced
• fresh ground black pepper
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
• dash of salt
• ¼ cup white wine
• 29 ounce can tomato sauce
• 1 tablespoon McCormick’s perfect pinch Italian seasoning
• 13 ounce package of whole wheat lasagna noodles
• 15 ounces part skim ricotta cheese
• 3 eggs
• 4 cups part skim shredded mozzarella cheese

How-To

1. Prepare the vegetables.
2. In a deep sauce pan over medium high heat, cook the ground turkey. Set aside in a bowl.
3. In the same sauce pan over medium high heat, saute the garlic, onions, mushrooms, and bell pepper in the olive oil, black pepper, salt and red pepper flakes. Once they’ve sweated out a bit and become tender, add in the white wine and stir. Next, add in the eggplant. Stir and cook for 3 minutes. Add the tomato sauce, turkey, and perfect pinch seasoning and let simmer on low for 20-25 minutes, uncovered. Stir occasionally.
4. Meanwhile, cook the lasagna noodles according to the boxes instruction.
5. Lay the cooked lasagna noodles on foil to cool and assemble the lasagna.
6. In a small bowl, combine the ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, eggs and some ground black pepper. Set aside.
7. To assemble the lasagna, spread a layer of the spaghetti sauce on the bottom of a 13″x9″ pan.
8. Place down a layer of noodles so that the whole pan is covered. It’s okay to overlap the noodles.
9. Spread ⅓ of the ricotta mixture on the noodles.
10. Top the ricotta mixture with ⅓ of the mozzarella cheese.
11. Spoon ⅓ of the sauce over the mozzarella and repeat with the noodles, then the ricotta, then the mozzarella, then the sauce.
12. Then, layer the last of the noodles, ricotta, mozzarella, and sauce.
13. Top with some more cheese.
14. Bake for about 30 minutes covered with foil and then another 10 minutes until the cheese is nice and melted and slightly brown.