Gluten Free Vegan Spinach Lasagna

There are a few comfort foods that I have really missed since going gluten and dairy free.  Lasagna is one of them!  Mom-Mom had such a great lasagna recipe that we used to make but of course it was full of cheese and gluten-filled meat replacers.

My best friend, Sherri, insists that she tried to get me to try this lasagna quite a while back, and that I turned up my nose at it!  I suppose that is possible in my pre-dietary change days.  But wow, what a mistake that was!  She shared the recipe with me recently and insisted that it was one of her family's favorite things to eat.  So I decided to try it.  Oh. My. Goodness.   IN LOVE.  This is all that was left of the huge pan I made!  Did I mention how incredibly easy it was to make??

Without further ado, here is my (only very slightly altered) version of Sherri's recipe.  :)  You can get the noodles at Walmart, but we go through so much of this now that I just get the case on Amazon as linked.  :)  You can also use regular noodles if you aren't gluten free.  The original recipe used regular ones.  

Gluten Free Vegan Spinach Lasagna

1 package Tinkyada Brown Rice Lasagna Noodles 

Fresh spinach leaves - use as few or as many as you'd like.  You can also use frozen spinach.

1 jar of spaghetti sauce

1 cup of water

Tofu Cheese Topping (recipe below)

Layer sauce, uncooked noodles, Tofu Cheese Sauce and spinach, ending with the sauce.

Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour at 350 until bubbling hot.

Remove foil and bake 5-10 more minutes.

Tofu Cheese Topping

1/2 cup raw cashews

1/2 cup water

2 tsp salt

1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes

2 tbsp lemon juice

pinch of garlic powder

1 lb tofu, rinsed and drained

Combine all ingredients and blend until creamy and smooth.

That's what it looked like before it went in the oven.  So pretty and fresh looking!  None of us could believe how much this tasted and had the texture of ricotta cheese!  It really was incredible!  We've already made this several times!

Thanks for holding out on me, friend!  :P    Love ya!  :)

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Vegan Block Cheese Success!

We've been making a vegan cheese sauce for quite a long time now that we really like, but we have never tried our hand at making something more solid.  So when my SIL pinned this recipe on Pinterest, it looked easy enough to try - so we did!  And it was a success!  Here it is!

Vegan Block Cheese

• 1 Tbsp agar powder (I use Frontier brand)
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup raw cashews
• 1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp sesame oil
• 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• anything you'd like to add to flavor the cheese - spices, chopped jalapeños, etc.

Lightly grease a small bowl or whatever container you'd like to shape your cheese in.

Grind cashews to a fine powder using food processor. Add all but the first two ingredients and process until smooth.

Bring agar and water to a boil in saucepan. Continue to boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add mixture from food processor. Mix until smooth and creamy. Pour mixture into greased bowl and allow to cool. Move to fridge and allow to chill.

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The first time I made this, I followed these directions exactly, but used my Vitamix instead of a food processor.  The Vitamix was rather hard to get clean - the cashew mix was very sticky.  So, the next time I made it, instead of adding the cashew mix to the pot, I added the water/agar mix to the vitamin and whizzed it up in there and poured it out into the container.  Both worked fine.  Next time I might try the food processor and see how that goes.  I'm not sure it would get the cashews as fine as the Vitamix, though.





And LOOK!!  It slices AND shreds!!!

We've had this cheese with pizza, quesadillas and grilled cheese - all with great success!  I don't think it melts quite as nicely as Daiya, but the family has all called this the best vegan cheese they've ever had, so I'm happy with that!  I know exactly what goes in it - and it's all good!





More cheese?  Sure, why not!?  It's good for you!!  :)

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Spur-of-the-moment Applesauce!

While looking through my fridge this morning I found a bag of pears that we had forgotten about.  They weren't bad, but they weren't pretty anymore - you know the type.  Basically, my kids were going to look at them and refuse to eat them as they were.  So, I thought I'd just cut them up and make a sauce of some sort out of them.  Well, my mother-in-law happened to be at our house that day and she offered to cut them up for me.  As she was cutting them up, I thought about the apples that were in the fridge and asked if she would mind doing some of those as well.  I got more and more excited about this, knowing that she had made applesauce before, and I decided to get a whole bag of apples out.  I used my apple peeler/corer/slicer and we ended up with a pot full of cut apples and pears.  :)

We added just about an inch of water to the pot and cooked them down for about 30 minutes.  When it was done, I put the apples into the VitaMix and blended them up.

Voila!  Easy peasy applesauce!  I am totally inspired to dive into this a little further!  I can't wait to go get some apples (in quantity!)!  What's funny is that I don't even like applesauce.  But my kids do, and I love knowing exactly what's going into it (as well as what's not!).  They loved it with some cinnamon sprinkled on top.   We use the Vietnamese Cinnamon from Frontier and love it - it's a great quality cinnamon!

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Green Eggs!

It seems I'm constantly looking for new ways to get veggies into our kids.  Don't get me wrong, they are really good eaters.  But we still get stuck in ruts and it feels like we eat the same things over and over again.  Trying new things is always a challenge - with four kids, it's hard to please everyone!

Getting greens into my daughter especially has always been a challenge - you could hide a teeny tiny piece of something green in a bite and she would find it in her mouth!  It's like a little green filter hides in there.  There are a couple of exceptions to that, namely broccoli and spinach, and so I try to find ways to exploit them.   *giggle*

I don't remember where the initial idea came from, but I decided one day to try to use the novelty of old Dr. Seuss and see if I could sneak some greens in.  Of course, we don't eat ham, so we just had them with ketchup!  ;)

It really couldn't be easier to make green eggs!  I cracked a dozen organic eggs and put them in my Vitamix.  Then I dumped a bunch of spinach on top!  I didn't really measure it - I just pretty much filled the container to the top - but I didn't push it down and pack it in, just threw it in.  Then, starting on low and working up to full speed, I blended it for about a minute.  

After they were blended, I just scrambled them like normal - in some coconut oil.  The mixture was a little frothy, but it cooked up just fine!  And once again, this creation was Kid Approved!!  Surprisingly, I didn't feel like you got much taste of spinach!  Even the kids said so.  

If you happen to be thinking, "Hmmm, sounds like garlic would be a nice addition to those eggs," let me just tell you that I had those same thoughts - and, errr, it wasn't such a good idea.  At least not the way I did it!  I threw a (way too large) handful of raw garlic cloves on top of the spinach.  Yeah, probably not the brightest thing to do, but anyway, it sounded good!  haha.  It was horribly overpowering and no one liked them!  Not even me!  LOL  Trust me on this.  Maybe roasting it first would be good, and not adding so much of it.  But for now, we'll stick to just the spinach.  :)

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Homemade Flax Milk

I first discovered the simplicity and cost effectiveness of making our own flax milk about six months ago.  I'm not sure why we haven't made it since, other than the extreme convenience of buying cases of rice milk at Costco!  For around $14 we would get 12 quarts of organic rice milk.  That's a pretty good deal in my opinion.  Well, it was anyway...

Fast forward to today when *gasp* we opened our last carton of rice milk.  Oh, the tragedy!  Now that we are in the country, it takes a little more doing to get to Costco.  Hubby could have stopped on the way home, but he was already running late and I opted to have us be able to see him a little longer before the kids went to bed.  So, I decided to pull the old flax milk trick out of my hat and try it again.  

All that you need is a high-powered blender (VitaMix is our blender of choice), flax seeds (I have used both dark and light flax seeds) and your sweetener of choice.  We chose vanilla flavored stevia drops from SweetLeaf.  Additionally, you'll need something to strain your milk after it's blended.  We use something we brought back from Thailand - a Thai tea strainer.  You could use any muslin strainer or even a stocking - you just want it to be a fine way of filtering as the particles will be very small that you want to take out of your liquid.  

Homemade Flax Milk

Ingredients:

6 cups water

1/4 cup organic flax seeds

15 drops stevia

Directions:

Put all ingredients into your blender.  Blend at high speed for about 2 minutes.  Strain into a container.  Store in the refrigerator.  Enjoy the savings!!

  

Before we even strained it, N wanted to taste it!  I got a quick approval and was begged to allow them to have cereal for dinner!  How could I say no?  ;)   

Look how nice that milk looks pouring out of that pitcher.  And just look at that face of approval!

And I approve of the savings!!  I paid just over $2.50 for a pound of organic flax seeds.  There are approximately 3.5 cups of flax seeds in a pound.  That's 14 batches of milk for just -  let's call it $3.00 to include the stevia drops!  Yes, $3.00 for about 21 quarts of milk!  Costco can't touch that!  :)

I also love that drinking flax milk helps up our intake of Omega-3 essential fatty acids!  As {trying-real-hard-to-be}vegans, that's important to us!  :)

Let me know if you try making your own!

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Sugar-Free, No-Cook Berry Jam

For a mom who isn't crazy about sugar filled jams and jellies, likes using fresh, organic ingredients over canned products whenever possible, and likes things simple - well, this recipe couldn't make me any happier!

This particular batch of jam was made using fresh blackberries.  You could use any kind of berries you want - we've used strawberries before and I think blueberries would be great, too.  I'm actually going to try it out with a non-berry fruit like peaches and see how that turns out.  Having a half-bushel of yummy peaches on my counter right now might have something to do with that...

Anyway, get ready - here's the big old list of ingredients!

1 cup berries (organic is always best here to avoid those nasty pesticides!)
1 Tbsp chia seeds
1 tsp honey

Throw all of that into your blender (I use a VitaMix and love it!).  Whiz it up until it's smooth and put it into a pretty little jar.  As it sits, the chia seeds work to make it gel up a bit.  I honestly can't say that it has the same consistency as a "normal" jam or jelly, but it's certainly a spreadable consistency and it works!  My kids approve and that's what matters to me!  :)

Let me know if you've tried this, what you used and how it turned out!

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