Engine 2 Diet Vegetarian Lasagna Recipe

So I made this Vegetarian Lasagna from the Engine 2 Diet book I have.  Here is the recipe:

Vegan Lasagna

Ingredients:

• 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
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon basil
• 1 teaspoon rosemary
• 2 jars pasta sauce ( I used left overs from the tomato soup I made)
• 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

Preparation:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.Sauté the onion and garlic on high heat for 3 minutes in a wok or nonstick pan. Add the mushrooms and cook until the onions are limp and the mushrooms give up their liquid. Remove them to a large bowl with a slotted spoon. Reserve the mushroom liquid in the pan. Sauté the broccoli and carrots for 5 minutes and add to the mushroom bowl. Sauté the peppers and corn until just beginning to soften. Add them to the vegetable bowl.

Drain the silken tofu by wrapping in paper towels. Break it up directly in the towel and mix into the vegetable bowl. Add spices to the vegetable bowl and combine.

To Assemble:

Cover the bottom of a 9-by-13-inch casserole with a layer of sauce. Add a layer of noodles. Cover the noodles with sauce. This way the noodles cook in the oven, saving time and energy. Spread the vegetable mixture over the sauced noodles. Cover with a layer of noodles and another dressing of sauce. Add the spinach to the second layer of sauced noodles. Cover the spinach with the mashed sweet potatoes. Add another layer of sauce, the final layer of noodles, and a last topping of sauce.

Covered with tomatoes

Cover the lasagna with thinly sliced roma tomatoes.

Cover with foil and bake in the oven for 45 minutes. Remove the foil, sprinkle with the cashews, and return to the oven for 15 minutes. Let sit for 15 minutes before serving.

Makes 10 – 12 servings of sweet potato lasagna.

This recipe is okay.  It is not as good as a meat or cheese lasagna, but perhaps once I get more accustomed to a vegan diet I will forget all about meat and cheese and lasagna…Until then, Happy Eating!

My Shiny New Play Thing

Okay, so it is really not shiny or a play thing.  I recently got the book, “Women, Food, and God” by Geneen Roth.  I saw Geneen Roth on Oprah and her book is about emotional eating.  And although I am not a woman, I figured I could learn something.  I know I talked about the Engine 2 Diet book, I tried to read it, but it was too boring.  I mean I love to read, but this book was blah blah boring.  Something about adopting a vegan diet and firefighters, I feel asleep.  Maybe one day, I will pick it back up.  It had recipes and I tried one, which was expensive to make and not that good.  Anyway I am excited to read “Women, Food, and God.”

My First Painful Meal- Vegan Tomato Bisque

Today was the most difficult meal I prepared and all I got in the end was some soup…Let me tell you the issues, I could not find my camera, so I had to use the iSight camera on my MacBook.  Then the sweet potato gnocchi was terrible, and I almost spilled the soup.  But anyways, I am done.  Here is my first recipe from “The Oyster Evangelist”

Vegan Tomato Bisque

Serves 4 to 6

12 Roma tomatoes (about 3 3/4 pounds), stemmed and halved
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme ( I did not have any, so maybe next time)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
5 garlic cloves, peeled
3 medium onions (about 1 pound), halved and sliced into 1/4-inch slices
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 cup raw cashews, soaked overnight or covered with water, brought to a boil and soaked for an hour, drained
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. In a large soup pot or saute pan with a lid, combine the tomatoes, 2 teaspoons of the salt, the red pepper flakes, thyme, and oregano, the garlic, and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Arrange the tomatoes so they are all cut-side down.

Roast, uncovered for two to three hours, until the tomatoes are tender and the skin has cracked and the garlic is good and soft. Longer is better, but I ran out of time yesterday and pulled them after two hours and everything was peachy keen.

Meanwhile, add the onions, the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil, and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt to a large skillet, and caramelize the onions.

After I roasted the tomatoes!

When they are done, add two tablespoons of tomato paste and cook, stirring often, while the paste caramelizes a bit, about 3 minutes. The bottom of the pan should be covered with browned bits of onions and tomato paste. Add 2 1/2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to dislodge the bits.

Transfer the large pot with the cooked tomatoes to the stove top, and pluck off as many tomato skins as you can. Pour the onion-tomato paste-water mixture into the pot and bring this mixture to a simmer for about 10 minutes, just to encourage the flavors to mingle. While it bubbles, put the soaked cashews in a blender with 1/2 cup of fresh water and puree until perfectly smooth. Remove the cashew cream from the blender and set aside.

Working in batches, puree the the tomato mixture until smooth. Once all the soup has been pureed, whisk in the cashew cream. Return to the burner over medium heat until hot.

So this recipe is pretty solid.  I will blame any reservations I have about this recipe on the fact that I spilled this on the counter and made a huge mess.  I will use this as a sauce for some stuff pasta shells that I am trying to develop.  I also hope to find my camera so I can deliver better pictures.

Transition

These past weeks have been very crazy, sorry for not posting more often.  During this time, I have really been trying to find my blog voice and develop a blog that is engaging, creative, and inspiring.  So I have decided that this blog may be more interesting with me cooking different vegan recipes.  That’s right! This is going to be a food blog.  Of course, I will tell you about the weight loss and document the emotional journey so don’t worry.  I hope to post a new recipe this weekend, now I am off to dig up my digital camera.  Stay Tuned!

Breakfast is the Most Important Meal of the Day!

So I have been writing down what I eat in a food journal.  I realize that breakfast is the most important meal of the day on so many levels.  I have realized that if breakfast is unhealthy that I give myself permission to eat unhealthy for the rest of day.  I did not realize I was doing this until I looked at my journal and when I caught myself at lunch about to make a terrible lunch choice.  I was also realize that I was making deals with myself.  I would say “if I eat this unhealthy choice now, I will workout tomorrow.”  Then I would not really keep my end of the deal, which is weird because I am on both sides on the deal.  I am going to start packing breakfast to make sure I do not need to find a breakfast meal from the restaurant.  So now that I have realize a stumbling block is breakfast, I will be extra vigilant and making sure that I start the day off right.

Happy Mother’s Day!!

Happy Mother’s Day!  Wow….This week was pretty okay for my vegan diet.  I was able to stay on for most of the week.  I want to post a menu and weight loss chart, but I cannot figure out how to have multiple pages so that my food logs and weight loss can be their own separate pages and not be on the main page of my blog.  As soon as I figure it out I will post those things.  Now, in the spirit of mother’s day, I think it is important to reflect on thing we learned from our mothers.  More specifically, I am reflecting what I learned about food from my mom.  I remember growing up and my mom would make the most the delicious fried chicken and she would put Lawry’s seasoning salt in the flour and it was so good.  I mean it was off the chain. LOL….I also remember her making biscuits from scratch and macaroni and cheese.  Also, my mother was not really big on portion control.  I remember she would say until her 30s she could eat whatever and how much she wanted.  I know I would eat whatever, and how much I wanted.  Now I am learning that portion control and exercise is important.  So whatever bad habits we picked up from our mothers regarding food, remember that from this day forward we can write our own destiny and maybe even pass it on to our mothers and families.  Happy Mother’s Day….

Regrets….

I saw this excellent article on Oprah.com about how to live a regret free life.  It has six step.  I am going to go through a step every day (or every other day) and learn from this powerful article.  The first step is as follows:

‘1. Get beyond denial.
As long as you’re thinking, “That shouldn’t have happened or I shouldn’t have done that,” you’re locked in a struggle against reality. Many people pour years of energy into useless “shouldn’t haves.” The angry ones endlessly repeat that their ex-spouses shouldn’t have left them, their parents shouldn’t have overfed them, or their bosses shouldn’t have made them wear uncomfortable chipmunk costumes in 90-degree heat. Even drearier are the sad ones, who forever drone some version of “If only.” If only they’d married Sebastian, or gotten that promotion, or heeded the label’s advice not to operate heavy machinery, they would be happy campers instead of les misérables.

I call this unproductive regret. People use it to avoid scary or difficult action; instead of telling the story of the past in a useful way, they use it as their excuse for staying wretched. If you’re prone to unproductive regret, please hear this: Everyone agrees with you. That thing you regret? It really, really, really shouldn’t have happened. But. It. Did. If you enjoy being miserable, by all means, continue to rail against this fact. If you’d rather be happy, prune the “shouldn’t haves” from your mental story, and move on to…”

This step really spoke to me.  I say the shouldn’t haves all the time.  I say I shouldn’t have dropped out of grad school without trying harder.  I shouldn’t have gone off my diet.  I use to think by saying this that I was dealing with reality, but I found myself becoming more depressed and then I would give up, now I am realizing that this behavior is self-defeating.

What do you find yourself saying you should not have done?

Just Checking In!

So I have finished my first month, being a “vegan” well some trip ups.  I believe that that May will be better.  I have started to write down what I eat everyday.  I will post them on Sunday along with my weekly weigh ins.  Also, I am reading “The Engine 2 Diet” by Rip Esselstyn.  I hope to post a review of it in the next week or so.  Sorry for the short post, but I gotta go…

Fear and More Fear

I have recently developed a fear of flying.  I used to be a comfortable flyer, until I saw a documentary about TWA flight# 800 from New York to Paris and it exploded in mid air about 12 minutes into the flight.  I was okay about the facts of the case and then the documentary showed a computer recreation and I became terrified. And every time I got on a flight I became so scared and constantly was unnerved by every noise and tick and vibration.  This past Thursday, I had to take a flight and I was totally freaking out, I had to take some nyquil and a two shots of vodka.  As I was on the plane, I had to constantly talk myself and remind myself how safe flying was and the noises I was hearing were normal.  Another, fear I had with going on the trip was I would lose control.  I have difficulty adhering to a vegan diet when I make my meals and do my own shopping, but for this weekend I have been in a place that is not so vegan friendly, but that is life, and I am staying in a hotel and having to order out for my meals.  Starting tomorrow, I am going to write down everything I eat and my workouts.  Every Saturday or Sunday, I will then post my weekly meals and workouts and hopefully you guys will help keep me accountable and on track.  I will post more when I get back to Chicago.

Setbacks =(

“A setback is a set up for a comeback”

A friend had the above quote on her Gchat status and it is just what I needed to hear (or read).  I have had some setbacks.  I find myself falling into the same traps that have sabatoged my weight loss attempts in the past.  I realize that “I’ll do it tomorrow” has become my best friend and that gives me an excuse to eat whatever I want.  Then I procrastinate even more, but saying “I will start on a Sunday” or “I will start on an even odd day like the 17th”  or “I will start next month”  I have been lying to  myself over and over again for many, many years years.  I mean I have been talking about weight loss for all these years and not really making any substantial progress.  So what is up with me?  I need to set goals.  So here goes, I want to lose 100 by the end of the year.  I will begin with weekly weigh ins to make myself accountable.  I am also going to make it a point to review vegan products and articles, etc.  So here’s to my setback making way for a comeback!  My first weigh in today is 335LBS, so I lost 5 pounds since the 1st. YAY ME!