She Will Remake a Favorite

Rachel Ray's Everyday magazine is my absolutely FAVORITE magazine.  It has a wide variety of recipes that vary in difficulty and prep time.  Everyday mag also has great ideas on vacation spots as well as fashion and home decor.  I have been getting this magazine for over 6 years and I make sure to keep this renewed at all times.  In fact, I renew this so often, I'm pretty sure I have at least 2 years in the pipeline!

One of my favorite recipes from Everyday mag, Matt and I found during our first year of marriage and our first year in Maryland.  It was for a greek dish, Meaty Moussaka.  Neither Matt nor I had a lot of experience with Moussaka previously but the basic idea of meat and cheese appealed to us.  The flavors were incredible, but this is not a great choice if you are looking to cut back on fat and calories.     

2 years later, Everyday Mag revamped the Meaty Moussaka recipe to make it a little healthier.  The new Moussaka recipe included roasted zucchini and eggplant in the meat base and used cottage cheese to make the creamy cheese top.  While it still tasted good, it didn't keep a lot of the spices that made the Meaty Moussaka so flavorful.  I still made it several times and even switched out the ground beef for MorningStar meat-like crumbles to make this meal vegetarian-friendly.  

A week ago Matt and I were trying to determine our weekly menu and were brainstorming recipes we hadn't tried in awhile.  Matt suggested moussaka so I picked up all of the ingredients for the lighter moussaka version, replacing ground beef with ground turkey.  We roasted the eggplant and zucchini to layer on the bottom of a 13 x 9  pan.

While creating the turkey mixture, I followed the recipe but decided to add in the spices from the original Meaty Moussaka recipe.  

I layered the meat over the veggies, then added pureed cottage cheese and topped with gruyere cheese.

Below is a better shot of the layers.

The dish bakes for 17 minutes, until the top is nice and bubbly!

If you have the time, I do recommend letting the dish cool to give it time to soak up all of the juices.  

This turned out PERFECTLY!  The addition of the cinnamon from the original recipe to the lighter recipe made this so much more flavorful.  Matt and I gladly gobbled this up for lunch the next several days.  I actually missed it once it was all gone.  I really feel like this could very easily be a family favorite for any family.  The flavors and ingredients are simple and can be altered to better suit your family's tastes.  If you are in the mood to try something a little Greek, you should definitely check these recipes out!

Lori