Lasagna Roll Ups- Now and Later

This is the recipe, photos, and results for the Lasagna Roll Ups. I made up this recipe while I was pregnant, and wanted to figure out a way to make lasagna, that could be a good freezer meal. It has almost always been exactly this recipe. I combined three recipes, and used tips from my sister (the vegan one.. not sure if I have mentioned her before. She is vegan, and loves to cook.)
YAY. I remembered to take pics the whole time.

so here is the recipe.



1/2 pound each ground turkey and turkey sausage
2 1/2 cups diced mushrooms
1 onion diced
2 cups zucchini diced
1 box of lasagna
1 jar of sauce ( dealers choice, we use four cheese)
2 cups of cheese (Italian blend or 1/2c Parmesan and 1 1/2 cups Mozzarella)
2 tbs olive oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 block soft tofu
1 box of lasagna noodles

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add 1 tbs of olive oil and 1 tbs of salt (IF YOU WANT. Some people swear by all of this. I recommend the oil though because the pasta will be sitting for a few minutes while you prep the roll ups.)
Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add 1 tbs of olive oil. Saute' mushrooms, zucchini, onions, and garlic. Cook until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms and zucchini are soft. Divide the mushroom, zucchini mixture.
Combine 1/2 of it with the tofu. Add the garlic powder,
and the grated Parmesan cheese.
This will replicate ricotta in a standard lasagna recipe.
Cook the turkey and sausage. (I use the same pan that I cooked the veggies in.)
Cook the lasagna noodles, just a little short of al dente. (if you cook by the times. do it for about 2 minutes less.) Pull the noodles out and lay them out on a cookie sheet.

So now you have, everything cooked. Lay it out and prep your area to make 3 meals worth. This can be one meal for dinner tonight, and 2 freezer meals, or 3 freezer meals.

This is how I set up to make these tonight. I am right handed. so I work right to left. Right. sauce (no need to heat it), the veggie and tofu mixture, the cooked turkey and sausage, and the rest of the cooked veggies. Middle, I am using a cookie sheet to prep the rolls on, above the cookie sheet I have the lasagna noodles in a roasting pan. (it was close and easy.) I have the black cookie sheet, for the ones I am freezing, and the baking pan for the ones I am cooking for tonight.

First coat the noodles in a little bit of sauce. As you can see in the above picture.
Second spread 2 tsp of the veggie tofu mixture across the noodle. Leaving about 1/2 an inch at the bottom of the noodle. The far left picture above, you just layer everything on. I do the tofu mixture, cheese, meat, and then the veggie. You can do a second layer of cheese. all these layers should be about 2 tsps. you don't want too much in there, then it is hard to roll.

Once you have rolled all of the noodles. It should look like this.Tonight I had enough to make 17 rolls. There was a little meat and veggie left. I could have done meat and veg in the two I made with just cheese. Instead I just topped the roll ups with the meat and veg, then the remainder of the sauce, and then about a 1/4 c of cheese. (whatever is left.)

< This is what it looked like about to come out of the oven. And that> is what it looked like in the freezer.
This is what it looks like once I bagged them up with the directions and the cheese with it.When you want to eat these for dinner. DO NOT DEFROST. Prep a baking pan, with about 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce. Lay these in the pan, cover with sauce and top with cheese. Bake 40-45 minutes in a 350.

This is what it looked like for dinner last night. I usually have one, sometimes two. I was going to make a salad, but ran out of time. This would be great with the garlic monkey bread.

This is the first in a series of Freezer Meals. The second of a Fast meals pictorials.

FoodSperiment: Green Banana Muffins

I did it. I made GREEN banana chocolate chip muffins. The worst thing in these is the chocolate chips. They came out awesome, and no food coloring. Secret ingredient? Spinach. that I got for $.99 for a pound of washed bagged leaves. My kids ate them (ages 2-4), My best friends kids ate them (ages 9 and 11), My mother in law, best friend and her husband all ate them. No one said "Hey why are these green?" or " what are these green flecks?"
Do I get extra mommy food war points when I get other peoples kids to like them?

I combined these two recipes.
http://www.anjasfood4thought.com/2010/11/spinach-banana-muffins.html
combined with my normal recipe of
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-chip-banana-muffins-2/
This is what I came up with... YUMMMY
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 egg
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
• 3/4 cup spinach puree ( I used raw spinach in my food pro, with about 1-2 tbs water)
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Measure dry into large bowl. in different bowl beat together, eggs oil, yogurt, vanilla and bananas. then add wet to dry, stir gently to combine, add spinach fold in, and add choco chips.
375 12-15 minutes.
They came out so good. They are green and pretty. (were... they are gone now. they lasted about 15 hours.) It made 12 muffins and 2 mini loaves.
That is EXACTLY the recipe as I made them.
this is the recipe I actually created
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 egg
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
• 3/4 cup spinach puree
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
I don't know HOW. But i omitted almost 3/4 cup of flour and it didn't seem to affect it at all.

Foodsperiment- Peanut Butter Banana Magic Muffins

This is our recent Foodsperiment. ( with plans of repeating it tomorrow.)
Peanut Butter Banana Magic Muffins.
Here are the ingredients, peanut butter, banana, brown sugar, 1 egg white flour, baking powder, baking soda, oh.. and the MAGIC.. in this case it was Sweet Potato. The original recipe called for 1/2 cup of carrot or cauliflower puree, I didn't have either. I did have sweet potato puree.
The first time I did them. My daughter wanted to help make them. she saw me making the sweet potato puree and started in with " EWWW I don't like that" I said " You don't know that you don't like it you haven't tried it". Then she asked what it was. I said. "Magic." She said " MAGIC?" I went with it... "This is the magic that gives fairies and princesses their magic." She seemed to be good with that. The first batch was realllly sweet. (The 3 year old and the 18 year old loved them. I think because I didn't reduce the brown sugar to accomadate the sweetness of the sweet potato. But I liked them. I am making another batch tomorrow. The next try, I am doing 1/2 the brown sugar. I used smooth peanut butter the first time, but I think I will use chunky next time.
Here is the recipe- and my changes in BLUE
1 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar (1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar)
1/2 cup natural peanut butter ( 1/2 cup JIF because it is what we had.)
1/2 cup carrot or cauliflower puree (1/2 cup sweet potato puree)
1/2 cup banana puree ( I actually pureed up some bananas, but I think it was an unnecessary step. I keep bananas in the freezer to make muffins. All you have to do is let them defrost and cut the peel and slide the banana goo out. )
1 large egg white
1 cup whole wheat flour ( I used AP because; say it with me now: it was what I had)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
1. Preheat oven to 350. Coat a 12 cup muffin tin with cooking spray or liners.
2. In a large mixing bowl, mix 1/2 cup of the brown sugar and the peanut butter, the vegetable and banana purees and the egg white using a wooden spoon. (I was trying to read the recipe and let the three year old help. so I did all the brown sugar at this point. and we used a silicone spatula.)
3.Put the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a smaller bowl or ziplock bag, stir or shake to mix. ( I put it through a mesh strainer, instead of dirtying another bowl or wasting another bag) Add to the peanut butter mixture and stir just to combine. Batter will be a little lumpy, do not overmix. ( pretty sure that the Three year old helped over mix a bit...) add the remaining 1/2 cup of brown sugar and stir once or twice. ( like I said.. I didn't have any sugar to add here.)
4. Divide the batter among the muffin cups and bake until the muffins are lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean. 15-20 minutes. turn muffins out onto rack to cool.
5. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days or wrap and freeze for up to one month. ( there were only 3 left and they were eaten the next morning.)

I don't know how many changes you have to make to a recipe to call it your own and not someone else's. But CREDIT where credit is due. this was originally a recipe from Jessica Seinfeld's book Deceptively Delicious.

Tomorow is Peanut Butter Banana Magic Muffins take two and Pink Berry Muffins (and depending on the size of the fit my daughter pitches.. Little Boy Blue Muffins too.)

Scrambled Egg-Speriments

I have this great cook book, Deceptively Delicious, by Jessica Seinfeld. It is all about ways to incorporate and hide vegetable and sometimes meat in foods, normal foods for your kids.
One of the fist recipes I found and tried was for scrambled eggs. Caleigh LOVES scrambled eggs and I figured sneaking veggies into it would be great.
First, I tried sweet potato puree. No go. She ate one bite and spit it out.
Second try, I tried the actual recipe. 2 eggs, 4 egg whites, and cauliflower. NO GO again. Total ambivalence, she ate a few bites, but not like her usual breakfast eating habits.
Third try, this time I did 6 whole eggs, and 1/2 cup of cauliflower puree. Success. Both hubby, and Caleigh devoured them, no question.
I have since played with Egg beaters, and egg vs egg white combos. I can get away with a half and half ratio. I have used cauliflower and squash puree. Both eaten successfully.
I have found for my kid. it needed to look "normal". The sweet potatoes, actually add a sweet taste. If you started off with that and it was all the kids knew, you could maybe get away with the sweet potato. I like the cauliflower and the squash.
For adults. I have also added, cooked chopped broccoli, carrots and zucchini. I have had people who HATE zucchini, But love my veggie scramble.
Score one for the Mommy. I have managed to convert my kids to love something that has veggies in it... WOO HOO.

Little Picky Eaters

This is the beginning of what I am calling FoodSperiments. I need to get food into the kids. I need for that food to contain veggies and to be good for them. They want to eat crackers, muffins, cheerios, macaroni and cheese and as my daughter calls it "chicken srench sries". So this is the battle ground. Mommy's goal to trick the children into eating as many veggies as I can. Kids goal, to try and thwart mommy and only eat Yummy food. These are my opponents. Declan 18 months and Caleigh age 3.

Here are the battles so far. (Blog posts coming to describe each battle in detail....)
*Scrambled Eggs with sweet potato puree... BIG fail the first time. (Kids 1- Mommy 0)
*Macaroni and Cheese with sweet potato puree, another fail. (Kids 2- Mommy 0)
*Cauliflower Mashed " Potatoes" 1/2 win for mommy, Daddy LOVED it, and he normally hates cauliflower. (kids 3 -Mommy 1/2)
* Scrambled Egg whites with Cauliflower (another fail....) (Kids 4 -Mommy1/2 )
*French Toast with Sweet Potato puree. HUGE SUCCESS. My daughter's friend, who had already had breakfast, ate 2 whole pieces. Caleigh ate 4 pieces and Declan at 1. BIG success (Kids 4- Mommy 1 1/2) With NOTHING but successes since.
*Scrambled Eggs with Cauliflower FINALLY a success... WOO HOO (Kids 4 -Mommy2 1/2)
*Pancakes with sweet potato puree. ANOTHER success. (Kids 4 -Mommy 3 1/2 )
*Oatmeal with apples and applesauce. Success ((Kids 4 -Mommy41/2 )
AND MOMMY PULLS AHEAD
*Turkey meatballs and rice. Partial fail. Once I got Caleigh to try it she liked it, but Declan wouldn't eat it. (Kids 4 1/2 -Mommy 5 )
*Black Beans and rice (aka Con Gris. ) Always a winner. (Kids 4 1/2 -Mommy 6 )
* Chicken Strips Parmesan with cauliflower puree. ( hopefully a replacement for chicken and french fries...) Score one for the home team.. (Kids 4 1/2 -Mommy 7 )
Macaroni and Cheese with cauliflower or Squash puree ((Kids 4 1/2 -Mommy 8 )
Scrambled eggs with sweet potato humus. Success. (Kids 4 1/2 -Mommy 9 )
Chicken Poncit with broccoli, carrots, celery and bean threads, instead of rice noodles. Score for mommy. They Both loved it. ((Kids 4 1/2 -Mommy 10)
That is how the battles have gone so far. As you can see. Mommy is in the lead. When they have a few days of finickiness, I resort to one of the Big winners. usually french toast for dinner.
I still use some pre-made and boxed things. But it is all better, than fast food. Right?