April 7: Vegetarian Lasagna

In addition to the Turkey Paprikash from the previous post, I made Vegetarian Lasagna for our guests on Sunday. I think I woke up at about 5:45am to get this started. I gathered up the ingredients:

 

I sliced an eggplant and salted it. I let that stand to reduce some of the bitterness:

 

While that was standing, I cooked some whole wheat lasagna noodles:

 

After the eggplant was rinsed and dried, I drizzled it with olive oil, and browned it in a skillet:

 

Meanwhile, I combined a container of ricotta cheese, 6 oz. shredded Jack cheese, and 1/2 c. Parmesan:

 

When the eggplant was done, I removed it to a plate, then added some onion and mushrooms to the skillet. I cooked them until softened:

 

To the skillet I added a jar of pasta sauce and a tsp each of dried basil and oregano:

 

Then I started the layering in the crockpot. I spread 1/3 of the sauce in the bottom. I layered that with one third of the lasagna noodles, half of the eggplant, and half of the cheese mixture:

 

I repeated those layers, and for the last layer I used the remaining noodles, the zucchini, the remaining sauce, and topped with 1/2 cup of Parmesan:

 

I covered and set it to cook on low for 6 hours:

 

I served it alongside the Turkey Paprikash. The lasagna is in the back:

 

Our guests seemed to really like the food. They told me they enjoyed being Guinea pigs.

 

DH is on the right.

 

And we had a delicious dessert of strawberry shortcake.

The lasagna was very good! I would definitely make it again, but DH didn't even try it. He said he would never eat vegetarian lasagna on principle. He doesn't know what he's missing.