I had lunch today with a childhood friend. Someone I haven’t seen in years and years.

Ummm, close. But not exactly.

Alfalfa! I swear the last time I had alfalfa sprouts was in 1987 when my mom was into sprouting her own. It’s been a long time. Welcome back my friend, looking forward to visiting with you more regularly.

Soup and sandwich for lunch today – left over Curried Carrot Cauliflower Lentil Soup and a veggie sandwich with Sesame Ezekiel, mustard, red leaf, tomatoes and as I mentioned, alfalfa.

The girls busied themselves around the house and outside today while I putzed around doing housework sprinkled with a little playing as needed.

We broke for snacks some time mid afternoon. Fage and granola for me – so happy together.

But now, the reason we’re all here tonight. A Lesson in Vegetarian Lasagna.

Maybe you’re a pro and have made lasagna 1000 times before and you’re already yawning and scrolling through this part wondering when it’s going to be over. If that’s the case – run along and make me something to eat.

If you’ve never made lasagna and are either:

a. intimidated
b. curious
c. intrigued
d. hungry

then please, walk with me.

This is actually one of the first vegetarian dishes I ever made. No, wait. This is actually one the first dishes I ever made – period! It is very near and dear to my heart and is probably why I’m dedicating nearly an entire post to it. I made veggie lasagna years before we were actually vegetarians and were just looking for more meatless dishes to enjoy. This was also something I made early on in our marriage and first had my own kitchen and started making dinner like a grown up. I’ve made this dish many, many times and if I may be so bold I’m going to go ahead and say that I am a VLE. Vegetarian Lasagna Expert. Both in the eating and preparing sense of the term that I made up just now. This is an time intensive dish to prepare but it is honestly not very difficult. I usually only make this for dinner parties or if I’m in the mood to really COOK. Tonight happened to be the latter.

For the sauce you’ll need:

extra virgin olive oil
1 zucchini, shredded
1 carrot, shredded
1/2 cup of mushrooms, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
(the vegetable used in this dish are very flexible and veggies can be left out or included as desired)
15 oz can of diced tomatoes
4 oz can of tomato paste
1 cup of water
oregano
basil
S&P

For the cheese layer:

1 egg, scrambled
2 cups ricotta (or cottage cheese)
8 oz of mozzarella
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese

9 – 11 lasagna noodles – I use uncooked. I’ve never used pre-cooked so I’m not exactly sure how they work. If you’ve ever use pre-cooked noodles for lasagna, do you think it’s a big savings in time/energy?

You should only need 9 noodles but I make a couple extra so I’ve got a few “backups” in case one or two rip or I need to patch up a spot if the noodles are a little short. Plus I’ve got two children who are happy to eat left over, slightly undercooked, plain lasagna noodles.

A spread of everything you’ll need:

Well, everything minus the Parmesan that I didn’t remember to add to the picture until I was up to my elbows in vegetables, sauce, cheese and noodle madness.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large pan, saute veggies of your choice in EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) on medium heat until soft. While this veggies are cooking, fill and begin heating a large pan with water for cooking lasagna noodles.

Add tomatoes, tomato paste, water and stir. Add herbs and S&P.

Oh! And this is an important step. Take an extra carrot and slice it up to enjoy with salsa to snack on and enjoy while cooking. (OK that’s probably not very sanitary so skip that step if you are a food inspector or making this meal for a lot of people.)

While sauce is cooking and water for noodles is heating up, prepare cheese mixture. Scramble egg in a large bowl. Stir in ricotta, mozzarella and parm. Add a few splashes of milk if needed to make it a little thinner and easier to spread.

Cook noodles until they are Al Dante. (i.e., still a little bit firm) They’ll finish cooking as it bakes.

In a 9 x 13 inch baking dish, spread a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the dish.

Lay three noodles on top of sauce layer.

With a spatula, spread cheese layer on top of noodles. If it’s really thick a little milk can help thin it out and make it easier to spread.

One more time: a layer of sauce, noodles, cheese. Then a layer of sauce, noodles and sauce again. Sprinkle with parm and it’s ready for the oven!

A quick review on the layers, from the bottom up:

sauce, noodles, cheese, sauce, noodles, cheese, sauce, noodles, sauce, parm

In it goes!

You did pre-heat the oven, right?

Bake at 375 for about 35 minutes. I keep an eye on it and if I start to really smell it and see that it’s bubbling nicely, it’s done.

Take it out and let it sit for about 10 minutes to cool slighty and set. Slice and enjoy! Makes about 12 servings.

For dinner tonight, with a side salad. (And lunch tomorrow and the next day too probably!)

When I make this for a dinner party I usually make garlic bread too, but since it’s just us tonight I skipped any bread and just went with salad.

So there ya go – Veggie Lasagna a la Alison. Manga!

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Speed work was on the agenda for this morning. I was hungry but didn’t want to eat very much because the likelihood of puking on a run increases exponentially during a speed work session.

A small handful of raisins ought to be safe enough. It’s kind of hard see but my little pile of raisins were in my hand underneath the Newman’s Own Organics carton there. It’s almost as if the perfect portion just dropped right out of the bottom like magic. That would be really “handy”, wouldn’t it?

I out the door at about 6:45 – it was only 55 degrees out! I did almost an exact replica of a track work out that I did a couple weeks ago. Except this one was solo, on Thursday morning instead of a Friday afternoon and it was not nearly as hot. Like I said, almost an exact replica.

A ran a slow easy pace for the mile warm up from my house to the track, and then jumped right into 400 meter sprints (one time around the track), 200 meter recoveries (half way around the track), repeated 5 times. I ran each 400 meter in about 1:35 and each 200 meter in just over a 1:00. There were handful of walkers on the track this morning, I was the only runner.

I took the long way home for a 2 mile cool down. I’m fairly sure my total mileage works out to be just under 5 miles and I was gone just shy of 40 minutes.

I realized this morning that this is such a great way to mix it up. It went by really quickly and barely felt like a “real” run. The warm up run there was easy and enjoyable. The speed work itself didn’t feel like running – it was more like short bursts of torture. The cool down run home was easy and enjoyable too and I didn’t feel like I was slacking with a slow pace after a 15 minutes of running like I was trying to escape the police. The whole run went by really quickly. I need to start doing this more often. Sprinting, that is, not escaping the police.

Back home and grateful my raisins stayed down, I decided today was the day to hack into the young coconut I’ve had in the fridge for a few days now. Except I couldn’t find the mallet I use to pound on the knife to get the frickin’ thing open.

So I tried the “hold the knife behind your head and WHACK down on it”. Umm yeah, do you have any idea how hard it is to AIM a knife when you do that?? I hit the coconut each time but never in the same place twice.

OK, this was going to take ALL MORNING at this rate.

I gave up went to look for the mallet again. I didn’t find it but I did find an acceptable substitute. I’m going to leave it “acceptable substitute” because Zak reads the blog occassionally and I’d hate to incriminate myself.

But let’s just say my substitute did the trick and I finally cracked that nut.

This one was loaded with water and it’s contents filled the glass to the very brim! Probably 12 oz, maybe a little more because some slopped out when I poured it into the glass.

And per usual I scooped out the young coconut meat that I swear looks like squid and the only way I can possibly imagine eating this is pureed into a smoothie.  I’m gagging at the mere thought of slurping this down my throat any other way.

After coconut water and came some body weight exercises – a couple sets of push ups and some yoga flows to stretch it all out.

And finally, a breakfast worthy of sprinting to.

Buried underneath that pile of ground flax, sliced banana, spoonful of almond butter and sprinkle of homemade granola was chocolate overnight oats, believe it or not.

My overnight oat was typical mix of 1/2 c rolled oats soaked overnight in 1/4 c LF Stonyfield Farms vanilla yogurt, 1/2 chocolate unsweetened almond milk and about a tsp of unsweetened cocoa powder.

This breakfast makes me smile almost as much as all your comments and emails do. Almost.

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