help me makeover my baked ziti please!

I use reduced fat cheese and light sour cream.

A good way to reduce meat - other than subbing the ground beef with ground turkey: use half the amount of meat and add same amount of finely chopped mushrooms. I throw the mushrooms in a mini-food processor and voila! If I'm making lasagna I make sure to add spinach to my ricotta mixture. I always use the skim cheeses.

Chopped zucchini or red/yellow bell peppers would be delicious too!

I never buy jar sauce - I studied in Italy and my Italian friends taught me better! It doesn't take long to make a quick marinara sauce or a meat sauce to serve on pasta and you can control the amount of sugar, salt, fat. Once you get going you'll be able to whip it up in no time.

The trick is not to use the entire block of mozzarella!! You can cut back and still have cheesy goodness.

The American Heart Association publishes some excellent cookbooks full of tasty recipes that teach you how to convert your favorites into much healthier versions. I bet their web page has some great suggestions as well! I'd stay away from the processed food as much as possible - I don't think I've made any pasta dish with jarred sauce in decades! Good lucky and very happy, healthy eating!

In place of the 'creamy' ingredients, I use Bertolli's light Alfredo sauce. Works wonders!

Make your own sauce!! LIke another poster said. I'm also Italian and grew up on homemade sauce it is really easy. If you use a jar make it just a tomato basil or marinara not meat sauce and only use 1 jar.

also use lean beef and cut it to a half pound. Sometimes I use two Italian sausage links instead(cut the casings off) It adds a lot of flavor.

cut back on cheese. sometimes what ill do is add a ton more cheese to 2/3 of the pan for my family and I eat off the other side. get rid of the ricotta. save it for lasagna

add roasted red peppers and onion for bulk if your family permits or just eat a big whole heaping pile of veggies with it. Put it all together on the same plate for yourself so your plate looks full

My baked Ziti looks like this on a busy night where I forgot to pull sauce out of the freezer.

1 box of whole wheat pasta or Barilla plus (slightly less than 1 lb but you wont notice)
1 jar of tomato basil sauce
2 cups of part skim Mozzarella
1/2 lb of lean ground beef

8 servings at around 371 Cals per serving

Feeds my family of four with leftovers

I add ground vegetables to anything that calls for ground meat. In my spaghetti sauce I use my food processor to grind, carrots, broccoli, peppers, onions, garlic, zucchini, mushrooms ..any vegetable I have on hand really. It really adds to the nutritional content and makes the meet go farther reducing the calories.

Extra lean ground beef and make your own sauce. I would stick to regular cheeses to be honest, I have no idea what kind of things are in low- fat cheese.

Make sure you still drain the fat from the beef also, even though its extra lean it will still have some fat to drain.

Try it with quinoa pasta instead of regular pasta.

Make a smaller portion and serve with a heap of vegetables.

Ground chicken or turkey instead of ground beef

I make a separate dish for myself by measuring out the pasta and sauce, using low fat cottage cheese (protein!) and a couple of tablespoons of grated Parmesan. I don't love cheese so this is a great alternative for my family-we all get the dinner we like and I don't feel guilty. Serve it with roasted broccoli or cauliflower and yum!