Lasagna with Soy

This is a delicious child-friendly lasagna! I've used some shortcuts to save money and time, but feel free to do everything from scratch, if you desire. The olives I bought whole and sliced myself to save money, and the sauce is store-bought to save time since making lasagna is time-consuming enough. The brand I chose does not have corn syrup. (My husband is hypoglycemic, so we need to watch that closely. Now, our whole family does not eat or drink anything with corn syrup for health reasons.) I made it on Saturday night, and my two older blessings have been eating up the leftovers for breakfast and lunch ever since!

This is a picture of the whole lasagna.

This is a picture of a square of the lasagna. Notice all the goodies inside.

Lasagna with Soy

Ingredients:

1 box of lasagna noodles
1 tsp. canola oil
1 package of SmartGround, original style
2 - 12 oz. boxes of silken firm tofu
2 Tbs. chopped fresh parsley (we used flat style from our garden)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 bunch spinach
1 can of whole olives
2 jars of Classico Fire Roasted Tomato spaghetti sauce
1 cup of Vegan Gourmet cheese, cheddar style, grated finely

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and put your top rack into the second position from the top. Cook noodles according to package directions. Drain and rinse under cold water until you can handle them with your hands. While the water for the noodles is heating to boil, prepare the rest of the lasagna fixings. Heat the oil in a small saucepan and add the SmartGround when ready. Cook until it browns, then set aside. In a medium bowl, mash the tofu with a fork and stir in the parsley, salt, pepper, onion powder and oregano. Set aside. Wash the spinach thoroughly and tear the leaves into bite size pieces. Discard stems (or put them in your compost like us). Drain and slice the olives into thirds. In a 9x12 baking pan, pour 1/2 cup of the sauce on the bottom and spread around. You are now going to make three identical layers with the noodles and other ingredients. Start off with three rows of noodles to cover the sauce. If you are using a more narrow noodle, you will have to adjust the rest of the amounts accordingly. Spread 2 Tbs. of soy on each noodle, followed by three Tbs. of the tofu mixture on each noodle. Layer a blanket of the torn spinach leaves on the tofu, followed by a 1/4 cup of the olives spread over the spinach. Pour one cup of sauce on top of that. Follow with two more layers exactly like this one. On top of the third layer, add one more layer of noodles. Cover this with 1 and 1/2 cups of sauce, making sure all the noodles are covered (or else you'll get dried out noodles). Sprinkle with 1 cup of cheese and top with the rest of the olives. (You will have leftover sauce and noodles for another meal.) Bake for 40 minutes, then turn on the broiler for five more minutes to melt the cheese. Let set for five minutes or so before cutting. Feeds at least five hungry vegans. Enjoy!