Stroganoff Casserole

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces wide egg noodles
• 1 pound lean ground beef (turkey works too)
• 1 whole onion, chopped
• 1 whole bell pepper, chopped
• 2 whole celery ribs, chopped
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 6 ounce can of tomato paste
• 4 ounce can of sliced mushrooms, drained
• 1/2 teaspoon dried Oregano
• 8 ounces sour cream (I used light)
• 12 ounces small curd cottage cheese (I used low fat)
• 1 teaspoon Garlic salt
• 2 cups shredded Mozzarella
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

I'm not going to lie. I wrote down all the ingredients I thought I needed for this and forgot to get the dry red wine. In a panic as the egg noodles were nearly done cooking, I googled what I could replace for the dry red wine. Thank you Yahoo answers for telling me I could use either cranberry juice or apple juice to substitute. Lucky for me I still had some cranberry apple juice (oh yes I did use it for this!) left over in the fridge. Since it was my first time making this dish, I couldn't tell the difference (ha!).

Overall this dinner was pretty good! It's a great way to get kids to eat a ton of veggies (especially if you serve it with a salad) at once! The only thing I think is that one of the veggies was pretty strong in the dish. We couldn't figure out if it was the mushrooms or bellpepper but next time I'll go easy on both and hope for better reviews. Everyone still cleaned their plate so it obviously didn't put anyone off too much. I'm so surprised at how many recipes I'm seeing using cottage cheese as a replacement for ricotta. I have said before how I despise the stuff, but it's a great way to lighten the calorie load in a dish and inside a meal like this I can't even taste it.

I can't take credit for this recipe since I got it here. If you try it let me know how you liked it!