After being gone a week, it was a little daunting to come back home and plan dinner. Eating healthy, whole-food plant based, takes planning. You really can't just look in the pantry and whip something up out of can goods and boxed foods (unless you already have good things in the pantry). Anyway, I ran to the store on Monday and bought the ingredients for Lynn's Meatloaf and Raise The Roof Sweet Potato Lasanga from the website, engine2diet. You can read more about who this guy is and his journey down this path here. I didn't take any pictures, well because I was still travel-tired and totally forgot. BUT...it was good and our kids ate it! And they don't like meatloaf, so that's saying something. Here's the recipe and I think it's worth you trying. Also, if you don't know anything about lentils (I didn't either), then here's a little take away: they lower cholesterol, are high in fiber, helps manage blood sugar levels, helps prevent digestive disorders, are a good source of b vitamins, increase your energy by replenishing your iron stores, and in just one cup of lentils you will get 37% of your daily protein intake. There's a lot more I could say about them, but just realize these are so good for your body!
Lynn's Meatloaf
2 stalks celery, chopped
½ onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
10 ounces firm tofu, drained
¼ cup walnuts, finely ground
1 1/2 cups cooked brown lentils
1 ¼ cups quick-cooking oats
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons ketchup (additional for topping)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons dried parsley
½ teaspoon each thyme, sage, and rosemary
Ketchup, to taste
Instructions
Pre-heat oven to 350
Spray loaf pan (or use non-stick silicone bake-ware)
Sauté celery, onion and garlic on high heat in skillet with a little water or low sodium vegetable broth for 5 minutes until tender.
Remove from heat and cool.
Mash tofu in large bowl.
Stir in cooked mixture and remaining ingredients, and combine well.
Spoon mixture into loaf pan. Top with a layer of ketchup.
Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
On to my next meal:
Raise the Roof Sweet Potato Lasagna!
I L-O-V-E-D it!! But again, that's not saying much. I love pretty much all vegetables. And although the kids did eat it (Amelia even had seconds!), I think it was veggie overload for them and they just wanted more noodles. I had a feeling this one would be good because of the rave reviews online, so I took pictures.
Here's my disclaimer...again...this meal took a lot of prep work. Mostly chopping. And it takes an hour to bake, so you need to make sure you have time to make this. Or, just prep the veggies the night before and it'll make assembly go so much faster.
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 small head of garlic, all cloves chopped or pressed
- 8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
- 1 head broccoli, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2 red bell peppers, seeded and chopped
- 1 can corn, rinsed and drained
- 1 package Silken Lite tofu
- ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (I left this out)
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 teaspoon basil
- 1 teaspoon rosemary
- 2 jars Engine 2 approved pasta sauce
- 2 boxes whole grain lasagna noodles
- 16 ounces frozen spinach, thawed and drained
- 2 sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed
- 6 roma tomatoes, sliced thin
- 1 cup raw cashews, ground
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Their directions say to saute all of these veggies separately, but after sautéing the onions, garlic and mushrooms, I just mixed all of the others and sauted them together. Also, this recipe called for corn, but after reading the reviews, felt that we didn't need them, so I left them out.
While I was sautéing the veggies, I cooked my lasagna noodles.
(I thought one box would be enough, so I only cooked one. Yep, just like the directions said, you need 2. I had to cook more :o( ).
After all of the veggies were cooked, I mixed them all together in a big bowl, with the spices and the tofu.
This is the 3rd meal where I've used tofu. You can buy it anywhere, even Walmart. I drained the tofu and then kind of wrapped it up in about 4 paper towels, then squeezed out all of the juices, while crumbling it. I then dumped all of the crumbled tofu into the veggie bowl.
After that, I began to make up the lasagna.
The directions say to make this in a 9x13 pan, but after reading the reviews and how much was left over, I opted to make two smaller pans and then put one in the freezer so that I could just pull it out another night.
First, you put a layer of sauce down in the pan. I found this sauce at Trader Joe's and I think it's my new favorite spaghetti sauce!
Then you put down a layer of noodles and another layer of sauce. The recipe calls for whole wheat noodles and after going to two stores and not being able to find them, I decided it wasn't really that important!
After the sauce, I put down a layer of veggies. Doesn't the tofu look like cheese? It's a good way to trick your mind :o).
Then another layer of noodles and sauce.
Followed by the thawed, drained spinach.
On top of the spinach, add your sweet potato. It doesn't really layer on top, so I ended up just mixing the spinach and potato together.
Then add another layer of noodles, followed by the sauce, followed by a layer of Roma tomatoes.
Cover it with foil and bake for 45 minutes.
After 45 minutes, take it out and sprinkle the ground cashews on top. See, that kind of looks like parmesan cheese too, right?! Bake for another 15 minutes, uncovered. Let it sit for 15 minutes before serving.
This was delicious!! I am so glad we have another one in the freezer. I served this with strawberries and grapes and if I wasn't lazy, would have also made a salad. That was a lot of work! But, it was worth it! Try it!
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