I recently finished some fun Halloween decorations for our house and thought I would share them with you. I made a Halloween banner, cut out some bats from the craft foam paper stuff and hung them from the cieling, and also make a cute little pom-pom spider. Click on the words for each decoration if you want the link for the bat stencil from conuntryliving.com or a demonstration for how to make the little spider.
Also, a little shout-out to my mother-in-law who came in town over the weekend and was so kind to polished up our silver that is sitting on the little half wall.:)
Back to talking about one of my favorite things.. FOOD!:) As mentioned in the title, this lasagna is one of our family’s favorites. It is a little labor intensive, but it pays great dividends in the end. I love that this lasagna uses things that we almost always have on hand (excluding the mushrooms). It is made from cashews for the white/cheesy filling and it tastes and feels so similar to it’s non-vegan counterpart.
Another thing I love is that although it has steps for the fillings, you don’t have to cook the noodles ahead of time. One less thing to worry about!
- 1 box of lasagna noodles
- 1½ cup cashews
- ½ cup water
- 1 onion
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1½ tbsp lemon juice
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp dried parsley
- 1½ tsp sea salt
- 6 oz. can tomato paste
- 2-14.5 oz. cans stewed tomatoes
- 1½ packet of McCormick Spaghetti Sauce Mix (I use thick and zesty flavoring)
- 1 red bell pepper, chopped
- 2 yellow squash, chopped
- 1 cup chopped button mushrooms
- 1 cup panko breadcrumbs
- 2 tsp olive oil
- Place cashews, water, garlic and onion in a food processor. Process until it is fairly blended and only has small pieces of cashew. Add in your lemon juice, nutritional yeast dried parsley and sea salt
- In a blender add the tomato paste, stewed tomatoes, and spaghetti sauce mix and pulse until smooth.
- In the same sauce pan that you cooked the onions and garlic, saute the chopped bell better, chopped squash and chopped mushrooms. Once the veggies are soft add in your spaghetti sauce and mix until the veggies are distributed.
- Using about 1 cup of the veggie spaghetti sauce, spread a thin layer over the bottom of a 9X13 pan.
- Lay down a layer of dry lasagna noodles.
- Spread ½ of the cashew mixture over your dry noodles.
- Spread ½ of the remaining veggie spaghetti sauce over the cashew layer.
- Spread remaining cashew mixture and then spread the remaining spaghetti sauce.
- In a small bowl mix the panko breadcrumbs and olive oil together. Shake this over the top of your lasagna.
- Cover your lasagna with tin foil and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. Remove the tin foil and bake for another 10 minutes.
Like I said, this recipe takes a little more preparation time than some recipes, but it is worth the time. We love it. There are a few ways you could cut down the time too if you felt so inclined. I mentioned using your own jarred spaghetti sauce, if you had a veggie spaghetti sauce already that you liked, you could even skip the sauteing of the pepper, squash and mushrooms, but I really love the fresh veggies in mine.
Hope you enjoy this Plant-based veggie lasagne!
Kristin
kristin reichert says:
Cathy,
Thanks! Those were some fun decorations. Sorry it’s taken so long to reply… I must have missed this comment.
This lasagna recipe is one of our favorites! Enjoy!
Kristin
cathy says:
Love your decorations! The lasagna looks super yummy…will try. Nice post Kristine.