Birthdays at our house always include the birthday celebrant’s favorite food. Sometimes we go out to eat, but often I would get a request to make a particular meal such as sausage and eggplant ziti, meatloaf, steak, or crab legs. Note the common thread running through these requests: meat and seafood – definitely NOT vegan.
So what to make for hubby’s birthday dinner? Stir-fry veggies? Veggies over rice? Chick peas and veggies? Yeah, I agree – pretty lame. Then I stumbled across this recipe for Skinny Vegan Lasagna at hummusapien.com (so clever! ha!) and for the first time since we started this vegan experiment, I got really excited. And nervous. How in the world do you make lasagna WITHOUT CHEESE? Would this be the grossest birthday dinner ever?
And what the heck is nutritional yeast, anyway? (Thank goodness I looked it up or I might have used active dry yeast instead – yuck.)
Nutritional yeast, aka Nooch
After an hour of prepping and cooking, I pulled the lasagna out of the oven. Portioned it out. Hesitated. Took a bite.
Luscious, cheesy, fabulously skinny vegan lasagna!
Oh. My. God.
It was a layered square of cheesy, gooey, garlicky goodness. I couldn’t shove it down my throat fast enough. Even my 8-year-old inhaled it in a matter of minutes. Hubby went back for a large second helping, and then thanked me profusely for not serving a plate of vegetables.
It was sooooo good he was understandably skeptical. “Are you sure there’s no cheese in this?”
This was truly the first time that I thought: I can really do this! I can be a vegan and not feel completely deprived! I don’t have to eat broccoli and beans every night! Woo hoo!
I really need some more good vegan recipes like this to try. Got any??
I’m so glad to hear you loved it! Thanks for posting about it 🙂