spinach and mushroom lasagna!

i made spinach and mushroom lasagna tonight.

it was going to be my first, full on, vegan spinach mushroom lasagna. as in, the kind with cheeze. because, i do pasta dishes that are naturally vegan all the time, but never any that have, you know, vegan type 'products' in them. but i was going to try an actual recipe that included tofutti and vegan shredded cheeze. i wrote down the ingredients i needed and went to the supermarket.

and guess what? they didn't have tofutti or shredded vegan cheeze. and, for various reasons, it just wasn't feasible tonight to trek on over to try the other supermarket. so, i decided i'd just improvise and buy what i thought would be the ingredients for a related vegetarian spinach mushroom lasagna. as it turns out, i did pretty well. only bought one thing that wasn't in the recipe.

and the first recipe i clicked on was one that i liked, which almost never happens. and, interestingly enough, the winner is some kind of hybrid in a green planet series that was developed by emeril but is owned by martha stewart. i don't make these combinations up. (click here to link to the original recipe).

i'm wondering if there's a dinner recipe on this blog that doesn't start out with onions and garlic. i don't think so. i'm certainly not breaking that chain now:

add some mushrooms...

and then the spinach...

and then tomato sauce (i also added some tomato paste), veggie broth, and spices. and there you have it - lasagna sauce!

mix low-fat ricotta with a touch of nutmeg. and there you have it - lasagna cheese filling!

assembly is easy: first layer no-boil noodles...

for the record, its hard to spread ricotta on noodles. not a TOP CHEF moment.

follow that with a layer of sauce...

and a layer of shredded mozzarella. repeat assembly 3x's.

this is what it looks like finished with some locatelli romano, pre-oven

and post-oven. done. i could have taken a pic of this on the plate, but, uh, it wasn't pretty on the plate, although it tasted quite good. but i think it looks pretty here, so here is where i will leave you. thank you and please have a nice day.