Slow Cookin’ with Tomato Wellness & A Recipe for Healthy Slow Cooker Lasagna

Posted by tomatowellness on December 3, 2014 in Food and Nutrition, Health, Tomato Products | 1 Comment

By Lisa & McKenzie of Nourish RDs

We’re huge fans of our slow cooker. When we’re short on time and have a busy day ahead of us, it’s so nice to still be able to come home to a nourishing, wholesome meal at the end of the day. Slow cooking doesn’t need a lot of babysitting; it pretty much does all the work for you. It combines the flavors, tenderizes the meat, cooks the noodles – the slow cooker is practically magic.

That’s why we’re so happy Tomato Wellness is hosting a Slow Cookin’ Pinterest Sweepstakes!

It’s super simple to enter. All you have to do is:

1. Create a public board on Pinterest named “Slow Cookin’ with Tomato Wellness.” You can view our board here.
2. Simply pin all your favorite slow cooking recipes! A great place to start is the Slow Cookin’ with Tomato Wellness Board! Be sure to tag @TomatoWellness so they can repin your favorites, too!
3. Fill out the form for your chance to win the Grand Prize or one of their Weekly Prizes! Enter here.

And to get you inspired, here’s a recipe for our Healthy Slow Cooker Lasagna.

Healthy Slow Cooker Lasagna

Remember the days when making a lasagna was considered to be laborious and complicated? You can thank the slow cooker for making homemade lasagna as easy as can be. This recipe, in particular is packed with veggies and lower in saturated fat than your typical meat heavy, cheese laden lasagna. It’s a wholesome dish you can feel good about eating any night of the week.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

½ yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

2/3 pound ground turkey

8 ounces sliced mushrooms

24 ounce can crushed tomatoes with basil

14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes with Italian seasoning

2 cups low fat cottage cheese

2 cups frozen spinach or other leafy greens

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

1 ½ cups mozzarella cheese

Instructions:

1. In a large skillet, add the olive oil, onion, and garlic. Cook over medium heat until onions become translucent, about 2-3 minutes. Add the ground turkey, breaking up large chunks until the turkey is fully cooked, about 7 minutes. Add the sliced mushrooms and cook an additional 5 minutes.
2. Combine the crushed tomatoes and diced tomatoes to a large bowl. Add the turkey and mushroom mixture and stir until well mixed. Set aside.
3. In another large bowl, stir to combine the cottage cheese, leafy greens, and nutmeg.
4. In your slow cooker, add 1/3 of the meat sauce to the bottom and sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Next, add a layer of the spinach and cheese mixture and top with a layer of lasagna noodles. Repeat the layers until the ingredients are gone. Top all the layers with the remaining mozzarella cheese.
5. Cover and cook in slow cooker on low-heat until noodles are al dente and cheese is bubbly, approximately 4-6 hours.
6. Turn off the slow cooker and allow the lasagna to sit for 15 minutes before cutting.

NourishRDs is a nutrition communications and consulting company founded by registered dietitians McKenzie Hall and Lisa Samuel. NourishRDs‘ (non)diet advice? Eat real food and share it with those you love! McKenzie and Lisa are nutrition spokespersons, who write, speak and present on nutrition, real foods cooking and body image. You can read their blog, and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.