ALONG COMES MARY

2 of the most delicious meals I have had the pleasure of having have been lasagna. The 1st time was last summer on my trip up to Northern CA to see one of my best friends, Ariel. Her room mate, Helen, made a BOMB tofu veggie lasagna…it took over 3 hours to prepare & is seriously one of the best meals I have ever had (Complete with 2 dollar red wine, mmm…). The other time was a few weeks ago on my Arizona river trip when Jamie made her famous recipe…both times, these great gals made sure it was gluten-free pasta for moi 😉 I decided to try Jamie’s recipe myself, but with a few of Helen’s ingredients, the result? YUM!

I highly recommend trying it for yourself, & like other recipes I have posted, it can be gluten-free/vegetarian/even vegan, it’s up to you. For me & my diet, dairy cheese, gluten-free pasta & tofu were for me….

What you will need:
Lasagna Pasta
3 jars of tomato sauce (I ended up using just 2 & they were mushroom flavored)
Tub of Ricotta Cheese
Tub of Cottage Cheese (in a silly attempt to make it less fattening, I used 2%)
Bag of mozzarella cheese (Also low-fat)
Brick of Firm Tofu (*or any meat you would like)
Any veggies! For me, I used eggplant & zucchini

*Preheat oven to 350, Boil your pasta & fry up your tofu (I used grape seed oil to fry it). In a mixing bowl, pour out the entire tubs of ricotta & cottage cheese & mix well together. Cut the veggies up. When the pasta is ready, pour out 2 of the 3 sauce jars into a baking pan to line the pan, then put the boiled pasta on top of the sauce. You will now pour in the cheese mixture then add in tofu/veggies/whatever you like & top it all off with about half of the mozzarella. Pour the final sauce jar on top of all this, add the rest of the pasta & finish up the mozzarella.

*Bake for about 50 minutes; I took it out at 45, yet it didn’t seem just right, but 50 did the trick for me. Let cool for about 10 minutes then EAT UP 😉