Low-Fat Baked Ziti with Spinach

Low-Fat Baked Ziti with Spinach

I have been spending way too much time on Pinterest lately, and have been extremely distracted from regular life. If you haven't created a Pinterest, I don't know what else you're doing with your down time. But it sure as heck ain't looking at really awesome clothes, art, and recipes like me. Pinterest is a website full of pictures, basically. Anyone who has an account (they are free) has access to life's wonders. It is sort of like Instagram, because you can follow people's "pins". Each picture is a hyperlink, so if you see a clothing item or recipe you want to view, you just click on the picture and it takes you to the originating website (tight!). Here is a link of my Pinterest, if you wanna check it out. Or don't. Whatever.

OOOKKKK big sidetrack, but anyways, I recently found an amazing pasta recipe and had added it to my "Recipe" category on the site. When Riley said he wanted to make pasta, I knew we had to check out my Pinterest and see if any recipes peaked our fancy. Indeed, the Baked Ziti won and we were soon chopping up spinach and buying ricotta cheese from downstairs. It is a Low-Fat recipe, and that hasn't turned out well once before, but it didn't taste like you-know-what. It was honestly hard to put down. You can find the original recipe here.  I will put my spin off of the recipe below. 

The original recipe asks for a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes, but there are a few risks to using aluminum canned foods, so I try to avoid them. One risk is that botulism (clostridium botulinum), a bacteria that thrives in no-oxygen environments, can show up, which is extremely bad for you and actually is kind of sketchy and I don't suggest looking it up. This is very rare, so don't freak out. Most cans do not have this. I am just being extra cautious. I eat a good amount of meat, so I try to balance that out by watching where the other foods I eat come from. Another risk of cans is the presence of BPA, which has been found in plastic, but now also in aluminum cans. One more reason to be careful is that there sometimes can be a lot of additives in canned food, like massive amounts of sodium. If you are using pre-canned foods, check for "no salt added" ones, if you are careful of what you eat. If you aren't, don't even trip, and disregard everything I just said. 

Oh, and one more thing, I would have posted a picture of the finished product, but it got eaten too fast and so I had to take a picture of half of it, because the other half was annihilated. 

Ingredients:

1 lb high fiber ziti
1 can of tomato basil pasta sauce
1 tomato (or two or three or four if you like)
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 stems of green onion, sliced thinly 
3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon marjoram 
10 oz spinach
1 teaspoon oregano
2 tablespoons chopped, fresh basil
8 oz fat-free ricotta
1/4 cup Parmesan
2 cups part skim mozzarella
Cooking oil spray
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 9x13 inch baking pan with cooking oil spray  
2. In a large pot of salted water, cook pasta until al dente. Drain and return to pot
3. Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, add olive oil and saute garlic and green onion

Add chopped spinach, salt, pepper, chopped tomato(es), and pasta sauce. Season with basil, oregano, marjoram, salt, and pepper.

4. Add sauce to the pasta and combine the ziti. Add half the mozzarella, all the Parmesan cheese, and all the ricotta. Mix well and then transfer to the baking pan

5. Pour the pasta mixture into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Top with the remaining mozzarella

6. Bake for 30 minutes, or until mozzarella is melted and the edges are lightly browned