Delicioso! Plant-Based Lasagna

What a delicious Sunday Dinner! My love and I just finished watching "Where'd You Go Bernadette?" while devouring the lasagna that I made for us this evening.

Please mind my food photography skills :)

I made the "Can't Believe It's Vegan" Lasagna from Carleigh Bodrug's book titled 'PlantYou'.

No Oils. No processed vegan cheeses. JUST PLANT POWER DELICIOUSNESS!

So simple! So tasty! So easy!

We had an easy Sunday - turning the word "lazy" into "leisure". We both worked all week so today was the best day to just leisurely go about this beautiful May Sunday. My love requested a home cooked meal so we immediately went to 'PlantYou' so I could finally try one of Carleigh's recipes!

Before I go any further...I never had such an easy digestion post-lasagna-eating. The last lasagna I made was on Thanksgiving which was full of dairy. My 'old' lasagnas were immersed in mozzarella and ricotta. Two slices and you're out for the count trying to sleep off the stomach pains from digesting all those layers.

I am happily full! I'm not kneeling over trying to hold down the gases nor trying to soothe my digestive track. This is just a delightful process - from the preparing to the cooking to the serving to the eating to the digesting.

I really loved how this recipe was super easy to follow. The recipe calls for the tofu ricotta which is listed as another recipe in the book. Luckily, early last week I discovered how to turn tofu into a creamy additive to a sauce so I was just waiting to try using the 'tofu cream' in this lasagna!

I was intimidated trying to make this dish only because I never cooked a dairy-free lasagna and not using vegan cheeses was also making me feel anxious. But! This turned out fantastic! Also, this was my first time using noodles that didn't require them to be boiled.

I used my food processor (I'll have to get a larger one down the road) to chop up the red bell peppers, spinach, garlic, and onion. Threw them all in a pot, turned on the heat, watched them simmer, then threw in two jars of sauce.

Then I made the tofu ricotta. The recipe called for cider vinegar and miso paste, but I didn't feel like buying those ingredients. I just used basil, lemon juice, extra firm tofu, and more garlic. Creamy! Delicious! Yay!

I should've purchased a smaller dish to cook the lasagna in so I'll remember this for future renditions of this meal. I was a bit worried that the sauce was more watery then it should be, but then I read that the noodles requested you throw in water (which was all new to me).

It came out perfect! It tasted like a garden heaven! The noodles soaked up all the moisture that I initially thought was too much. I'm glad that the recipe made the sauce more normally than I was used to. I'm even more glad that I decided to go with the no boil noodles rather than doing it the way I normally do with "regular lasagna noodles".

No oil? No dairy? Not even the use of vegan cheeses? And it still came out this good? What in the world!

The dish felt like I used real ricotta. The tofu was super creamy! I'll probably make two batches of that tofu ricotta for the next one when I bring this over to a family gathering.

I highly recommend you get this book and try this recipe out! I have ideas on how to modify this recipe and incorporate different flavors.

What a delightful surprise and a perfect way to spend my Sunday!

Delicioso!