Replacing Noodles with veggies

Charlotte loves a carb. I love a carb. Charlotte is slowly turning into a more picky eater and becoming more selective. In addition she more and more wants whatever I'm eating. Usually I'd make a separate meal for her, especially when she was on purées and then soft mashable foods and then only finger foods. Anyway, since she's wanting whatever I'm eating and to save myself the trouble of making too meals/only making something for her then eating pop tarts or a hot pocket for dinner I am attempting to cook in advance and eat healthier. By no means is the meal "healthy" due to the amount of cheese I used hahaha but it has very minimal carbs, which is something she gets a lot of and more green veggies something she gets less of. So it's healthier. 

Anyway I thought I'd share my recipe in case anyone was interested! 

First assemble your ingredients! Feel free to put whatever you want in. I used about a pound of lean ground beef (change to turkey for healthier), some Italian sausage (I always like to use beef and sausage in my Italian recipes!) tomato sauce (I usually make my own but was feeling lazy, this is where you can get real crafty, next time I'm mincing carrots, peppers, some spinach and mixing it into my sauce to pump us full of more veggies) cheese (I used ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan and Romano....I told you I added a lot of cheese) 1 egg, and a large zucchini! 

What I did next was slice the zucchini. As you will see mine is short because I used my kitchen aid slicer attachment (again, lazy) but if you aren't lazy or have a mandolin slicer you can slice the entire length of the zucchini and it will be the length of a lasagna noodle! Now here is the important part I skipped! When you sit your zucchini slices aside, salt them to take out the moisture, zucchini has a lot of moisture.  

Next I mixed my ground beef and sausage and browned it in a pan with spices (I use garlic, pepper, salt, parsley, and red pepper) 

Then mix all your cheeses and the egg (I save some mozzarella, Parmesan and Romano for a nice layer of cheese on the top) 

Now that you have all your layers mixed and ready to go, just layer it up! 

I did, zucchini, meat, sauce, cheese, zucchini, meat, sauce, cheese, zucchini then topped it with the remaining cheese,  I baked it at 395 for I have no idea how long....just use your judgement, when its bubbly and brown in top it's ready to go! 

So I didn't salt my zucchini so it was definitely juicy due to the water from the zucchini but I had no problem with that, and after it set it turned solid again. Another tip I read online, was to grill your zucchini before layering which is provably good too, but I like that it was a tad crunchy (I always cook my noodles "al dente") 

Then....eat!!