vegetarian

Today is National Lasagna Day, and in celebration, I made vegetarian lasagna. I didn't really follow a recipe except the one a friend of mine gave me for sauce. Other than that, I just layered some oven-roasted veggies in with the noodles, sauce and cheeses. I used spinach, mushrooms, zucchini, yellow neck squash. I was going to use broccoli, but I forgot. I also forgot the asiago cheese, but I had mozzarella, parmesan and parmiggiano reggiano, I believe.

The tomato sauce recipe is below, as it was given to me. I sort of threw things together mostly from memory. Last night I put everything in the slow cooker and let it cook on low overnight. I forgot to decrease the amount of liquid, so it was super watery. I let it cook while I was at work. At the suggestion of a coworker, I strained it when I got home using cheese cloth and a colander. It worked wonderfully! The sauce actually turned out a little acidic, so I added some sugar and some more spices.

I wasn't terribly happy with the slow cooker minestrone. I didn't give the noodles enough time to cook because I was paranoid that they would get mushy like last time. This time I added zucchini and potatoes and used mostly tomato juice with a little bit of water. It came out a little too thick, but I'll just add water later. The sourdough grilled cheese made a wonderful accompaniment.

The recipe below is what my minestrone is based on.

I threw together this quick pasta dish with a mixed greens salad, balsamic vinaigrette and croutons. All I did was cook the pasta as directed, fry up a red bell pepper, green bell pepper and poblano pepper, half a white onion in butter. I added a little water, covered the peppers and onion for about 10 minutes, then I added the pasta with salt, pepper, parsley and oregano. Easy!

Today DH and I went to the Children's Discovery Museum with my sister and nephew. I packed a lunch for the four of us in my Lock & Lock set consisting of California wraps, bread with two kinds of cheese, cucumber salad, hummus with pita and apples. I tucked a cold pack on each side of the bag to make sure everything stayed cool, not that the weather was particularly warm.

The California wraps were tasty, though I didn't put enough cream cheese. The cucumber salad was based on this recipe, except I didn't slice the cucumbers as thin, and I omitted the wasabi powder. Next time I'll probably add pepper to the cucumbers. My father-in-law uses pepper and his tastes better than this recipe did.