Vegan Lasagna!

I love cooking and eating! And for some reason lately, I've been really into taking pictures of my food. So I want to periodically post some recipes with photos of my favorite foods. Some of them I came up with on my own (like today's lasagna), some are from cookbooks, and some are from vegweb.com--but I'll always give a recipe! So enjoy today's recipe. Who doesn't love lasagna?

Vegan Lasagna

Ingredients
--1 box lasagna
--1 jar marinara/pasta sauce
--a bunch of sauteed veggies (optional, but awesome)

“Ricotta” Filling:
--1 block firm tofu (usu. one pound), crumbled into small ricotta-like pieces
--about ¼ - ½ block Follow Your Heart Vegan Soy Mozzarella Cheese, grated
(Follow Your Heart, available at Daily Groceries Coop, is my favorite because it actually melts

and is vegan—no casein)
--about 2-3 T Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese (or other vegan cream cheese)
--about 2-3 T soy milk
--about ¼ C nutritional yeast
(the yellow flaky stuff you get in bulk, not “brewer’s yeast”)
--about ½ t – 1t each of:
garlic
basil
oregano
salt
pepper
dried or fresh parsley
--about ¼ t nutmeg

Crumble the tofu, grate the soy cheese, and mix all ingredients in a bowl. Sautee the veggies if you want veggie lasagna. I usually spice up the veggies, too. In the meantime, bring water to a boil and cook the lasagna. Rinse lasagna in cold water and set aside Lightly cover a baking dish with some pasta sauce, and place one layer of pasta in the dish. Cover pasta with the “ricotta” filling, sauteed veggies, some pasta sauce, and top with more grated Soy Mozzarella. Repeat pasta, filling, veg, sauce, cheese, etc, until you run out of ingredients! I also like to top the completed lasagna with a bunch of sauce and then some soy cheese, too. You can also use the ricotta filling to make stuffed shells, ziti, whatever you like.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 20-30 minutes, until sauce is bubbly. The cheese won’t necessarily be totally browned, what with it being soy cheese and all, but it will be melty. And delicious.