Vegetable Lasagna

2011 has been a major year for us. I turned 30, Walnut started Kindergarten, Peanut started Preschool, we celebrated 10 years of marriage, I've had the same best friend for 20 years, I ran 3 half-marathons and a handful of other smaller races, and we were surrounded by family and friends whom we laughed, cried and enjoyed time with.

                                               *yes, I often run with my eyes closed apparently...

What I learned the most from the last year is the importance of fueling your body with what it needs and not what tastes good or is convenient. I've learned you only have one body and you need to take care of it from a young age. I've learned also, that sometimes your body just needs a break. You can only push so hard, ask it to do so many things and ignore small aches and pains for so long. Then you take a break. You heal, you pray, and you start again but this time wiser about what your body needs.

I'm not a vegetarian by any means, but I will go a few days without eating meat.  Some meals I've learned can be enhanced by leaving out the traditional meat I usually add to the recipe and instead replacing it with a rainbow of vegetables.  My husband may not agree with this enlightenment I've come to find, however.  But I've decided an occasional meat free meal isn't going to kill anyone! 

The base for my lasagna is hearty vegetables: egg plant, zucchini, and mushrooms.

Topped off with homemade sauce using fire roasted tomatoes and lots of herbs!

The filling is ricotta and spinach  <---- More veggies!

And for some reason I can make homemade spaghetti sauce every day of the week, but I've become to lazy to boil noodles!

yuuuuummmmmmm........and topped with CHEESE!

             Baked up to Golden Perfection and I'm ready to dig in!

Vegetable Lasagna

For Sauce:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 red onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, diced

1 medium zucchini, chopped to 1/2" cubes

1 small eggplant, chopped to 1/2" cubes

8 ounces mushroom, sliced

28 ounce can fire roasted diced tomatoes

6 ounce can tomato paste

1 1/2 tablespoon dried oregano

1 1/2 tablespoon dried basil

1 1/2 tablespoon dried parsley

1 teaspoon salt (or adjust to your taste)

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

For Filling:

15 ounces ricotta cheese

2-3 cups fresh spinach

1 egg

8 oven-ready lasagna noodles

1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large pan, heat olive oil and add onion and garlic and saute for 1-2 minutes until they start to brown. Add zucchini, eggplant and mushrooms and continue to cook for about 5 minutes until vegetable start to soften. Add tomatoes, paste, dried herbs, salt and sugar. Reduce to simmer for 10 minutes.

While sauce is simmering, put ricotta, fresh spinach and egg into a food processor and pulse several times until spinach has been incorporated into ricotta.

To assemble:

Spray a 9x13 pan with cooking spray. Lay 4 noodles in bottom of the pan (or enough noodles to cover bottom of pan). Scoop 1/2 of sauce over the top of noodles. Then spread all of ricotta mixture over top of sauce. Add another layer noodles, top with remaining sauce and sprinkle with shredded mozzarella cheese.

Bake uncovered for 45 minutes. The top layer of cheese should be melted and beautifully browned.

Enjoy!!

*I split the ricotta over two layers, but the top layer kind of dried out while baking, so going forward I will put all the ricotta between the two layers of noodles as the directions indicate!