success food day

Man today was the best food and related wise. For breakfast I had oatmeal that is instant banana bread flavor and mixed in oats from a container. it was good. For lunch I wanted protein, so I had scrambled cheesy eggs, black beans, toast from bread I made, and a small salad. Talk about heavy.
Then I got presents from clydes mom (we both got them for getting married) that was a pepper grinder, one that I almost bought the other day. And those spice mixtures the clyde and rubbo loves that you add oil to and heat up. And 2 cookbooks. I looooove getting cookbook presents because I never buy cookbooks for self but love them so. One if them is titled :"500 greatest-ever vegetarian recipes" and it really is. just looking thru I have found so many things to cook. I will update you as I cook them. The other one is comfort vegetarian food, and there is a tempeh section. I can't wait to cook. Its like I want to have already tried them all already, but that would ruin the fun.
So then for dinner I made vegetarian lasagna. It was pretty good, but I tried something new that didn't quite work out. I tried frozen spinach. Its so tempting because everyone on Foodnetwork uses it, and it takes a lot of spinach to cook down to have any amount of substance. but it was a mistake. it was tough and stringy. but the rest of the lasagna was good. clyde and I had fun trying to talk about how the flavor was changing in each bite: "sweet, savory, sweet....spicy" it always ended with spicy. here is the recipe:

First I got my tofu pressing to be my ricotta.

while it was pressing I made the sauce:
1/2 onion
3 cloves garlic
2 cans diced tomatoes pureed in magic bullet
about 10 leaves of basil
1 sprig rosemary
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

I sauteed the onion with some salt in olive oil until almost translucent.
Added the rest of the ingredients. Cooked until ready to assemble lasagna.

Next I cut up one container of mushrooms, and melted 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan and cooked them until the liquid came out and then got absorbed back in. Then I added in strips of zucchini I cut up for about 2 more minutes, and took it off the heat. The other day I read you can put white wine in sauce, and so I tried deglazing the pan with white wine and then put that into the sauce. it didn't really help. I thawed that nasty spinach.

I took my pressed tofu and crumbled into pieces, and added 2/3 cup of tomato sauce, spinach, and about 2 cups of mozzarella cheese, salt, and fresh ground black pepper (thanks to my new grinder).

I boiled my water and cooked my noodles. they were still hard when I stopped. So oven 375 degrees. I put about 2/3 sauce on bottom of lasagna pan. then then I put half of the tofu mix on it and pressed it down. Then I put all of the vegetables on top of that. Followed by enough sauce to cover the top layer.
3 more noodles. rest of tofu and more sauce.
3 more noodles. rest of sauce. about 1 and 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese and about 1/8 cup Parmesan cheese.
I cooked covered with foil 20 min and uncovered 10 min.
Clyde ate four pieces. he is so cute.