Vegan Lasagna

I mentioned in a previous post that my cousin and her family have been vegan for the past year. I think our whole family was surprised that her meat-and-potatoes loving husband was up for it, but he is just as dedicated as she is. My own meat-and-potatoes loving husband has told me many times over the past year "not to get any ideas" from Rebecca. Until it was his own idea.

Since Addie was diagnosed with colic about 11 weeks ago, I have been off dairy. I've had to get a little creative with my cooking and haven't been able to go out to eat as much (which has actually been a good thing) but it honestly hasn't been as difficult as I'd originally thought. Of course, when you're doing something like that for a sweet, precious baby who looks at you like you're her favorite thing in the world (because you are), anything is possible. Since I do most of the cooking, Jordan hasn't been eating much dairy, either, and he also says it hasn't been bad at all.
So we decided we'd give the whole less-meat-in-our-diets thing a try. We eat pretty healthy anyway, and Jordan's on a bit of a health kick right now, so the timing is perfect. My goal for now is to make a vegan dinner once or twice a week. My first official attempt was tonight - vegan lasagna. Here's the recipe I adapted from:
Whole Wheat Lasagna with Italian "Sausage" and Peppers
Ingredients

• 1 box of whole wheat or brown rice lasagna noodles
• 1 (16-ounce) box of frozen spinach, thawed, squeeze excess water out
• 2 (26-ounce) jars of vegan marinara (Morgan used a basil marinara)
• 4 vegan Italian "sausages" cut into cubes
• 2 green bell peppers, chopped
• 2 T olive oil
• Vegan shredded cheese (enough to sprinkle on top only)
• 1 lb. extra firm tofu
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 2 heaping T nutritional yeast
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• Black pepper to taste
• 4 T chopped sundried tomatoes
• 1 cup (a few huge handfuls) chopped fresh basil
• 1 tsp. dried oregano

Press water out of tofu by wrapping in a clean towel, and placing a pot or pan on top for about 10-20 minutes

1. Crumble the tofu in a bowl, and add lemon juice, garlic, nutritional yeast, sea salt, black pepper, sundried tomatoes, fresh basil, and dried oregano
2. Using a potato masher, smash up the tofu really well until it resembles ricotta cheese in texture
3. Set aside until ready to use
4. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water with 2 T olive oil to a boil, and cook noodles according to package (the oil will prevent the noodles from sticking together)
5. Cook them for a few minutes less than suggested, so that they can finish cooking in the oven
6. When noodles are done cooking, drain and rinse in cold water
7. While the noodles are cooking, heat 2 T olive oil in a saute pan, and saute sausage a few minutes
8. Use a potato masher to help crumble the sausage into slightly smaller pieces
9. Add 2 jars of marinara sauce and 2 chopped green peppers to the pan, and let simmer about 10 minutes
10. Preheat oven to 425 degrees
11. In a rectangular pyrex glass dish, start layering your lasagna
12. Start by adding a little sauce on the bottom, then 4 noodles, then sauce, spinach, tofu ricotta, 4 noodles, sauce, spinach, ricotta,4 noodles, and then end with sauce and cover the top with shredded vegan cheese (you should have 3 layers of noodles) Cover top of dish with foil, and bake for 30 minutes
13. Uncover and cook an additional 10 minutes until cheese melts a little on top
14. Let cool 5 minutes

Here's what I did differently:
I used oven-ready noodles. I don't have time for noodle cooking. I didn't think this recipe called for nearly enough vegetables, so I included eggplant, squash, red pepper, red onion and baby portobello mushrooms. I sauted those and then added the two jars of marinara and let it simmer for a bit. For the ricotta, I put the tofu, several handfuls of fresh spinach (used my spinach here instead of layering in the lasagna), the garlic, lemon juice, spices and sundried tomatoes in my food processor. That seemed a heck of a lot easier to me. I omitted the fake sausage - that kind of creeps me out to be honest.

Lasagna was excellent - even Jordan loved it. The tofu ricotta was the best part - tasted exactly like cheese, and the flavors of the spinach, garlic and sundried tomatoes were delicious. Highly recommend! And I even remembered to take a picture - tasted much better than it looks!