Lately, the weather has been wonderful. The babies love our new baby pool. We look forward to many hours of water play this Spring and Summer.
The babies had so much fun together.
Ryder loved the spray of water from the side of the pool.
We were honored to have a visit from my grandfather-in-law who is 102 years old! He is so much fun and loves spending time with his great grandchildren. We took him and our other relatives to a cousin’s house for brunch.
He is looking good at 102!
For those of you who have been following me on Pinterest, you know I have been interested in making individual rolled lasagnas. I tend to stick with recipes that are baked goods until I know the recipe well enough to experiment. But, with other recipes I often look at the recipe for an idea and then do my own thing. I went completely off the recipe for rolled lasagna. Since we had family visiting who entertained the babies, I was able to spend more time preparing dinner. I will share the recipe I invented after being inspired by other recipes. If you want to see the original recipes that led to this inspiration, you can check out my board on Pinterest (link to follow me on upper right hand side).
Veggie Lasagna Roll Ups:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease one 13″ x 9″ pan and one 8″ x 8″ pan.
For the lasagna noodles, you can either make your own using a semolina egg pasta recipe, or you can use store bought. I used the semolina egg pasta recipe that came with the Kitchenaid attachment. If you make your own, there is no need to boil them first. If you use store bought, cook the noodles until just tender to the bite. I used thirty noodles. You can adjust the amount of noodles and pan sizes to meet your family’s needs. If you end up with leftover filling, it would make great grilled sandwiches or omelet filling later in the week.
Filling:
1 10 oz. bag of spinach, chopped
10 oz. mushrooms, thinly sliced
½ cup of chopped onion
12 oz bag of artichoke hearts, thawed and chopped
1 tablespoon of butter
1 ½ cups of whole milk ricotta cheese
1 cup of shredded mozzarella
8 oz of cream cheese, softened
1 egg, beaten
½ teaspoon lemon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon dried oregano
Bechamel Sauce:
I used this recipe from Mario Batali.
Topping:
1 Cup of mozzarella cheese (Or, you can change it to suit your preference. You may wish to add parmesan.)
1 Cup of marinara sauce
The dough is made with the dough hook and then flattened into noodles with the pasta roller attachment.
Then the noodles are cut to size and laid out between towels to prevent them from drying out.
After the noodles were done, I chopped the fresh spinach.
You could use thawed frozen chopped spinach with the water squeezed out instead. Next, I sliced the mushrooms and chopped the artichoke hearts and onions. I sauteed the onions in the butter until soft and then added the artichoke hearts and mushrooms for about two minutes. I added the spinach and stirred until it was just barely wilted and set aside the mixture to cool.
In another bowl I mixed the cream cheese, ricotta cheese and mozzarella and stirred in the beaten egg. Once the vegetable mixture cooled, I added it to the cheeses and stirred in the seasonings. I refrigerated the mixture until I was ready to fill the pasta. Then I made the bechamel sauce. Later, I spread about three tablespoons of filling onto each noodle and rolled them up.
The noodles were easy to roll.
I spread a thin layer of bechamel sauce onto the bottom of each pan and added the rolled noodles to the pans. I spread the remaining bechamel sauce on the top, sprinkled with mozzarella cheese, covered with foil and baked in a 350 degree oven for thirty minutes. Then I put two rolls on each plate and drizzled them with warm marinara sauce. I served the veggie lasagna rolls with fresh fruit salad and warm dinner rolls.
The marinara sauce added a splash of color.
The fruit salad was refreshing.
We enjoyed getting together with family. It was fun for me to have extra time to cook one of my Pinterest inspirations. The babies enjoyed the lasagna and fruit. What have you enjoyed recently as a family? I would love to hear your stories. As always, comments are welcome.
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Thanks for the lasagna recipe… I might try this next week!
Hi 'Sleeping Mom.'
You're welcome. Let me know how it turns out. Have a great week.
: 0 ) Theresa