Paleo-ish Zucchini Lasagna

Remember those giant zucchinis I picked? Well we found a use for one of them at least. Lasagna noodles!!! 

So, I made this lasagna out of yard veggies and local beef. The cheese I used was Kerrygold (I must say their Dubliner cheese is my favorite cheese ever). The cottage cheese was Kalona SuperNatural. Tasty stuff.

I chopped up a couple peppers and some onions to add to the ground beef. I think I used 5 garlic cloves as well.

I sliced up the noodles and put them in a colander. I read that you should sprinkle with salt and let sit a bit so the excess liquid drains off. I combined two scrambled eggs with a container of cottage cheese and fresh parsley (don't use as much as I have pictured above unless you really, really love parsley).

I layered the prepared meat sauce (Seasoned tomato sauce, 1 lb of beef and veggies), zucchini strips, egg and cottage cheese mixture, topped with cheese and I did this three times. The top layer I sprinkled with fresh oregano and parsley.

Here is the precooked finished product. I baked it covered until I decided it was done (probably like 45 minutes) and then took the foil off and bumped up the heat to brown the cheese on top. 

Sorry there were no after pictures. It was devoured almost immediately after it came out of the oven.

You look away for one minute...

Dara and I drove out to Rhode Island over the Labor day weekend. My family gets together and has a traditional clambake each year. This year we did not have a bake, but we still got together for a grill out. We had a lot of fun seeing the family and catching up with everyone. Next year I will document the bake and do a blog post about it. The whole process is fascinating and I am glad it is a tradition in my family. 






These are not cucumbers. Before we left for Rhode Island I checked our zucchini and saw a few tiny zucchinis with the flowers still on them. It is amazing how fast these guys can grow. That is a normal size spoon. We are making a Paleo zucchini lasagna with them. When they get this big we have also shredded them to make a Paleo meatloaf. You could make zucchini bread as well, or something I used to do as a kid, make a sail boat out of them.

Small Harvest

The garden is really starting to produce now despite the lack of rain. Soon our 50 + tomato plants will give us a crazy amount of produce. We really need to purchase our pressure canner soon!

Here we have chard, cabbage, tomatoes, summer squash, zucchini, green beans, purple beans and oregano.

Trellising

Patrick built trellises for the squash that we can mow
under but they will give slightly once the weight of the fruit is on them.

Zucchini.

One of the cosmos in the back bed was destroyed in a recent storm.
So far We've lost 2 sunflowers (from a prancing deer),
one squash at transplant and this. Pretty good so far.
I probably shouldn't have written any of that... I probably just
cursed my garden... ummm... knock on wood?

Mmmmm, peas! It's too hot for these now but omg, so delicious.
I miss them already :(

A trellis for this itty-bitty tomato.

And then a trellis for the real tomatoes

Here's the whole garden, well the whole raised bed garden and
everything we've trellised. In the pots are the lemon and orange
trees we moved off the deck and then we planted a lot of lettuce. It may
need to move inside. I thought it would be ok still but it's getting bitter.