Beefy Vegetable Bake

My family loved this! I topped with american and parmesan cheese.

I love this recipe! It's difficult to find a good ground beef recipe that actually involves real vegetables. I used grass fed ground beef, and I didn't snip the ends of the green beans which meant I kept hitting those weird hard things (that was completely my own fault, of course, I've never cooked green beans fresh before). The tomatoes were a surprisingly understated flavor in the final dish, and the thyme, pepper, salt seasoning combination was such a huge hit with the husband that he wants me to figure out some way to use it with hamburgers. At times like this I wish I had a garden so I could make this all of the time. But I suppose I'll have to keep it for the times when I have the time to go to the farmer's market. Speaking of time, that was really the only problem I had with this: It is very time consuming. I think I spent my entire morning preparing and cooking this. But good food is worth time, and this is excellent food.

I like this a lot, but other family members felt that something was missing. So, with the remaining food, we added tomato soup-and then they loved it! My dad said that next time we could add the tomato soup after it is cooked, and then when serving you can put cheese on top at microwave it. Although it took a long time to prepare (we don't have a food processor)I am sure I will make it again! *I cooked the ground beef first even though the recipe says to put it in uncooked. (I think that having it uncooked may be a typo)

Changes I made: I made 2/3 of the recipe and used soy crumbles instead of ground beef. This was too salty for me and a little dry. But that could be because I soy crumbles instead of ground beef (MUCH less fat). Changes I would make next time: reduce the salt by 1/2 t (at least), maybe add a little veggie broth, mix garlic and some other spices with the veggies intead of sprinkling on top of them. I might also add a layer of cheese over the beef.