Play in LA: Question: What's For Dinner? Answer: Veggie Lasagna!

ingredients

A friend suggested that I share on this blog my meal ideas. Not wanting to disappoint, and also thinking it might be helpful to parents, I decided to oblige.

The first thing I want to write about is a delectable vegetarian lasagna recipe that I whipped up this evening with rice noodles I found at Whole Foods this afternoon. They were on the shelf, practically jumping up and begging, no, challenging me, to make my veggie lasagna with them. I couldn't resist.

So, here goes. I tend to improvise when I cook, so I don't have exact measurements. Shouldn't be too hard to follow, though, and successfully replicate.

Main ingredients are shown in the photo above. I didn't necessarily use everything but you can see all that goes into producing the final product:

1 tub of ricotta cheese

1 box of no-boil rice lasagna noodles

1 package of small-medium-sized organic zucchini

1 small organic yellow onion

1 package of organic mushrooms

1 package of shredded mozzarella cheese

2.5 jars of organic tomato basil pasta sauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit then prep ingredients. First, chop a few cloves of garlic, the small onion, and saute in a frying pan over medium-low heat with some olive oil, Then, slice each zucchini in half, length-wise and chop into half-moon shapes. Add zucchini to garlic-onion mixture once that is translucent. Note: I sauteed the mushrooms separately in a pan with olive oil and salt because I knew someone I was going to feed didn't like mushrooms, so I only put them in half of the lasagna. But they can go right in with the zucchini and garlic-onion mixture.

Once the stove-top ingredients are cooked to perfection (slightly firm, not mushy), start laying the sauce and noodles into a rectangular pan. Sauce goes in first, then a layer of noodles. On top of that, put another layer of sauce, veggies, crumbled ricotta, light layer of salt and pepper, few shavings of mozzarella, and more noodles to top it off. Repeat last step and cover with the rest of the mozzarella. Pop into oven on middle rack for 30 minutes uncovered, then take out, cover with aluminum foil, and put back in for another 30 minutes.