Vegetable Lasagna

Alert! Alert! This is my very first video on this blog! After seeing a friend's pizza making video, I decided I needed to learn to make videos. Enter this blog post. It's not the greatest as I'm just learning how to use iMovie, but it was still fun to take my pictures and turn them into a video complete with music!

This vegetable lasagna is awesome. I think it might be one of my favorite go to dinners for a group. Its easy, its quick and its different. I started making this years ago simply because I'm not that crazy for ricotta cheese, so I came up with an alternative. I'll never forget the first time I made this for my brothers and parents - they inhaled it! And they are not that big on the vegetarian main dishes. So ever since it's been in my repertoire.

So I had a few friends over for lasagna and homemade cheesy garlic bread. The girls brought wine and the traditional supper club salad (we have it every time we make dinner together) which consists of mixed greens, cucumber, garbanzo beans, corn and whatever salad dressing preferred. In this video, you'll see some of what we had for dessert - yummy cupcakes, in addition to cookies! Oh and can't forget the awesome time we had playing the Michael Jackson dance game on the Wii - that video might make an appearance some day. I love dinner night with the girls!!

  

The recipe follows...

Tips for next time on the video - I need people in my shots and I need to just set the camera up on a timed flash thing so it just keeps taking pictures throughout the cooking process.

Ingredients:

• lasagna noodles (1 box)
• pasta sauce (2 jarred or homemade)
• spinach leaves (1 bag fresh or 1 box frozen - i used a little of both)
• zucchini - green (1), squash (1)
• mushrooms (1 package, sliced)
• onion (1/2 onion)
• garlic (a few cloves, chopped)
• mozzarella cheese (1-2 packages)

The quantity of the above is totally dependent on how much you make, I always end up with more and its a pure guessing game on how much to use. But that's why its great - tailor it to your tastes.

Directions:

Find a super cute baking dish for your lasagna. I used my awesome purple Le Creuset bakewear that I got as part of my birthday gift from my gals! (Hence why the video starts with a shot of it!)

Cook the lasagna noodles according to the package.

Chop all the vegetables, except the spinach, and saute about 10 minutes. (Note: I chop the veggies really small, i.e. slice the zucchini in circles and then cut each circle into four pieces.)

Add the spinach (make sure if its frozen, you drain it.) and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

Cover the bottom of the dish with tomato sauce. Top with one layer of lasagna noodles. Spoon the vegetable mixture on top. (I do somewhat thin layers of veggies so that it ends up being 3 layers to the lasagna.) Top the veggie layer with some tomato sauce and then sprinkle mozzarella cheese over that. Top with another layer of lasagna noodles and repeat. After you put the last layer of lasagna noodles, top it with tomato sauce and more mozzarella cheese.

Bake at 350 for about 35-45 minutes. You might have to broil it for a few minutes to get the top cheese the right amount of melted/toasted/burned!

Try this recipe - your friends will love it! And its still great the next day!