Brownies and Zucchini

My family loves lasagna.  We used to have it for many different celebrations growing up; birthdays, holidays, and sometimes just for no reason for dinner. My mom is pretty famous for her classic meaty lasagna so when it is made there are usually very few leftovers.  However, meaty lasagna isn’t my favorite thing. When I was little, I would pick around the beef and eat the cheese and noodles.  (Does this really surprise any of you that read this blog regularly?  I didn’t think so.)  When I was older I started to request that my mom make a separate meatless lasagna for me when we were having lasagna for meals.  You can imagine how time consuming this was to make a whole other lasagna (it was usually just a half size one) but my mom made it for me, as any mother of a picky child would to to get them to eat a decent meal.

Years went by and we still had lasagna every once in a while for various occasions.  Meaty and meatless versions.  Last weekend, my mom asked if the husband and I would like to come over to have lasagna for dinner.  She said she would make her version and I could make my own alternative.  Note to self:  When you write a food blog, people will know that you actually enjoy cooking and might suggest you make things to contribute to family gatherings.  At first I wasn’t sure what to make.  I didn’t want it to be too different – I do love my cheesy noodles.  Then I remembered that I had recently found a Butternut Squash Lasagna recipe on Pinterest.  The recipe seemed easy enough, so I decided to go for it.  Everyone loved the Squash Mac And Cheese that I brought to a previous gathering, so I thought they might like this as well.  You can find the recipe here.

I liked it! I only kinda liked it at first, but the more I ate the more I liked it! It was still the noodles and cheese that I love, but with a healthy – and pretty tasty – addition of butternut squash.  The sauce in it is different than the typical pasta sauce on lasagna.  I wasn’t sure how I would like lasagna with a cream based sauce but it worked well with the squash.  I think the addition of spinach and parsley to the sauce added some flavor and made it less intensely creamy.

Everyone else seemed to like it too!  There were only a couple of pieces left at the end of the night.  Score.

Ease: B, there is quite a bit of prep work with the squash and sauce but nothing too horrible.
Taste: A, It was definitely different than the lasagna that I am used to, but I really liked it!

Would I make it again? Yeah I think so.  It is a good dish to bring to parties, or to freeze for later.  It also is almost as good reheated!

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Filed under: Dinner, Pasta, Veggie Tagged: | dinner, lasagna, squash, vegetarian