Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Happy accident

There is a post coming about Evie turning one and the week leading up to it. I just have to dig deep for that one and it's gonna hurt. For now you get a short little post to hold you over.

Cooking isn't my thing. I do it an awful lot, but I'm pretty sure I suck at it. I am brilliant at following a recipe. So, if the recipe is good then I'm golden. Beyond that I just make something and cross my fingers. I have actually been saying "cross your fingers" to Lila so much recently that she loves to run up to me now with her fingers crossed and say, "mommy, you can do it!". Love that girl.

Anyway, within the past week I have been pretending to be a vegetarian. It's been creeping up on me for a while now. Then I got a stomach bug. Then Seth went out of town for forever. And well, all of these things plus a good dose of laziness had me going meatless without really doing it on purpose. That and NGD. I am in love ya'll. It just keeps getting better and better. AND, my girls are like kids in a candy store when the box comes. Except it's fruits and vegetables and not nastiness.

With an abundance of vegetables I needed a recipe that would knock them out and then let them stay frozen. My immediate thought was lasagna. Unfortunately, I don't keep ricotta cheese and NGD makes it hard for me to get my behind to the store. I began the Pinterest quest for the perfect veggie lasagna with no ricotta. I found some stuff but nothing quite fit. After reading as many recipes as Pinterest could find for me I then did a Google search. I probably ready thirty veggie lasagna recipes. I was a girl on a mission. Slowly I started thinking maybe there was a chance I could wing it. What if I took a leap of faith (in myself) and made lasagna based on the random assortment of recipes now floating around in my head? So I did it. For the first time in my entire life I created a recipe and it was amazing.

Here's the thing. I will eat pretty much anything. Everything tastes good to me. Except cottage cheese. But literally, I think most things are amazing. So you may not want to take my word for it. But, if you want to take a chance on me and my crazy recipe cross your fingers you aren't disappointed. I can't guarantee that.

Here it is. If you make it please tell me. If you hate it please tell me. If you love it please tell everyone you know!!!

*Disclaimer - To me, lasagna leaves a lot of wiggle room anyway. Hence the lack of exact measurements or exact ingredients.

Ingredients:
1 box lasagna noodles
1 yellow onion
mushrooms (whatever you have, however many you want)
1 red bell pepper (or any color bell pepper) thinly sliced
grated carrots (I did four or five I think)
3/4-1cup greek yogurt
1/2-3/4 cup of pumpkin puree (I know...sounds ridiculous...I needed to beef up the texture of the yogurt and I had leftover pumpkin from a can I used for bread)
2T Italian seasoning
salt and pepper to taste
shredded mozzarella
spaghetti/tomato sauce (I had made some that already had veggies in it too and was frozen)

Directions:
1) caramelize the onion
2) cook the pasta according to the package
3) mix the yogurt, pumpkin, italian seasoning, salt, and pepper in a large bowl
4) saute the mushrooms and pepper in the liquid left from caramelizing the onion plus olive oil if needed
5) add the veggies to the yogurt mixture
6) spray a casserole dish and put a thin layer of sauce on the bottom
7) put your first layer of noodles, then a layer of the yogurt/veggie mixture, then a layer of mozzarella (eyeball all of this)
8) keep layering until you are out of stuff and top with the caramelized onion
9) bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes

Enjoy!

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