Three Cheese Summer Squash Veggie Lasagna Recipe

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Support your local CSA and enjoy a great veggie lasagna recipe

Are you looking for another way to get your kids to eat vegetables? How about trying a cheesy and delicious veggie lasagna recipe?

Last week, the kids and I headed to the local farmer’s market to pick up our first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share of the season. CSA’s are a great way to support local farmers and to get fresh local produce. It comes with a bit of a risk because you don’t always know what or how much you are getting, but it’s usually a pretty safe bet that you are going to get ingredients that will help you execute a delicious veggie lasagna recipe. You’ll have lots of fresh veggies when the crop is good and I think the mystery element is fun because it gives you sort of a weekly Top Chef/Next Food Network Star challenge every week. You might not know exactly what you’re going to make, but you’ll know you’re going to execute a veggie squash lasagna recipe of some sort and you’ll feel good about supporting local agriculture. And if you know your local conditions and growing seasons then you have a reasonable shot at predicting the sorts of items you can expect every week. It’s a win win. You get a little mystery and intrigue which is fun, but you won’t have too many items coming completely out of left field ala Iron Chef. Worse yet, Fear Factor! I mean we like to experiment and all, but stinky tofu and grasshoppers might be taking it a bit far. Maybe.

If you’d like to find Community Supported Agriculture in your local area, and perhaps try out a delicious veggie lasagna recipe then localharvest.org is a great tool for doing just that! And checkout Foodie Tots for more ideas for local recipes.

So this week we received several types of squash in our CSA share which led me to trying out a Vegetarian Times recipe I found several years ago. That recipe calls for mint which we didn’t have so I substituted a teaspoon of dried italian seasoning. It came out great, very delicious! A word of warning though, this is not a one pot meal. But to make things easier I sauteed the leeks and squash a day or two ahead of time. You can also use no boil noodles to make things easier, which I’ve done in the past, but this time I boiled regular whole wheat lasagna noodles. If you do use the no boil lasagna I recommend pouring a little milk over the top of them to soften them a little.

Not a bad way at all to support your local growers and to get your daily intake of veggies in the form of a delicious vegetarian lasagna.

On to the recipe!

Three Cheese Summer Squash Lasagna

9 whole wheat lasagna noodles
1 Tablespoon olive oil
3 medium leeks, chopped
6 cups summer squash (zucchini, yellow squash, and patty pan)
Fresh herbs (parsley, rosemary, thyme)
1 16 ounce container of low-fat cottage cheese
6 cloves or garlic
1 10 ounce package of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 large egg
3/4 cup crumbled feta
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Cook noodles according to package directions. Heat oil in skillet over medium high heat. Add leeks and saute 6 minutes. Add squash and saute 8-10 more minutes. Stir in herbs and season with salt and pepper.

Blend cottage cheese and garlic in food processor until smooth. Stir in spinach and egg.

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray pan (13 x 9) with cooking spray. Place 3 noodles in bottom of pan. Top with 1/3 squash mixture, then 1/3 spinach mixture, and sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of feta. Repeat layers twice ending with spinach mixture. Top with remaining feta and mozzarella.

Coat foil with cooking spray. Cover lasagna and bake for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before serving. Or cool completely and freeze (to reheat let lasagna sit at room temperature for 1 hour, bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until hot and bubbly).