ratatouille recipe.

so far id say the only pleasant side-effect of my new gluten free diet is all that ive finally broken out of our long standing dinner rotation of pizza, mac and cheese, stir fry, hummus, fish tacos, and soup. seriously, that was our week of dinners every week for i dont even know how long.  not that theres anything wrong with any of those meals, especially given that all of them were made from scratch and absolutely delicious, it just got really, really boring. 

i have to admit that finding recipes that are: 1. gluten free, 2. dont cost seven hundred dollars, and 3. dont seem like they taste like cardboard,  are pretty dang hard to find. honestly ive pretty much been completely avoiding any kind of recipe thats specially marked as "gluten free", and just sticking to finding new recipes that are coincidentally gluten free. like ratatouille. 

a couple of weeks ago my mom gave me some squash that she grew in her garden and i wasnt sure what to do with it, but then i remembered when i was on bedrest before alice was born and this nice young lady from our church brought over the most delicious ratatouille and couscous so i decided to try and recreate that. heres what i did:

ratatouille:
serves four

ingredients:
1 large (or two small) zucchini 
1 large (or two small) yellow squash
1/2 jar spaghetti sauce 
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
olive oil
lemon juice, salt, pepper, parmesan cheese, basil, oregano, and garlic according to your preference

preheat oven to 375. start by greasing a large casserole dish (i use this one) with olive oil and set it aside. next thinly slice all the squash, using a mandoline if you have one (unfortunately we dont). once thats all done (it will seem like forever), start arranging a single layer of squash on the bottom of the casserole dish in a sort of fish-sale arrangement. once thats finished you can begin the entirely unscientific step of seasoning the squash however your heart desires, before topping it with another layer of squash, and then a few spoonfuls of spaghetti sauce. repeat this step until you run out of squash (in our case about 4-5 layers), then finish by topping with a layer of sauce and finally the mozzarella cheese. bake for 45 minutes and serve hot. 

since i cant eat couscous i substituted some quinoa, but unfortunately i havent quite figured out how to make it taste like anything other than just air. so if youre making this and you dont have celiac disease, id say go with the couscous. 

im really, really glad that i branched out and tried making this, it came out so good that im really excited to put it on our rotation for the summer (or at least, until squash stops being on sale for 99 cents every week).