Zucchini Pasta Bake

At our house, in order to increase variety & also to address the complaints department (... do I have to eat the greens?) my kids each have one night per week to choose our dinner meal. Oscar has Mondays, Amaya has Wednesdays. We have done this for years & originally they were expected to help prepare the meal as well, however that part of the deal has fallen by the wayside a bit. They are welcome to help, but usually they don't want to & I kind of prefer cooking alone.

So, last night was Amaya's night & she wanted pasta & cheese sauce. As we are all allergic to milk & try not to eat a lot of carbs, this is a rare meal in our house, but it was her night after all. I do consider it fairly obvious to toss some veggies in with the noodles, add cheese & bake, but it turned out yummy (how could it not) and I managed to slip in quite a few delicious Tap Root veggies, so I thought I'd post.

I fried a couple of strips of bacon chopped into small pieces (you could easily skip this & just start with some veg. oil)
chopped & added to the bacon a big fistful of garlic scapes
wilted the entire bag of arugula into the bacon drippings
tossed all this together with pre-cooked noodles and put in the bottom of a baking pan
then I sliced my zucchinis very thinly with a mandolin and drizzled the zucchini with a bit of olive oil & salt & arranged the zucchini slices on top of the noodles
I did not make a cheese sauce, though it would have been yummy
I just threw a bunch of crumbled cheese (cheddar & blue) on top of the zucchini with several basil leaves & some salt & pepper
I baked it at 375 F for about 45 min.
My friend Katie & her 2 boys came by for a spontaneous visit & we had a little pasta party.