Meatless Monday - Vegetable Lasagna

Trying to come up with something other than eggplant for this week's Meatless Monday, I decided to try a vegetable lasagna.

Keep vegetables on hand at all times by buying a bunch when you see them on sale, cutting them up, and freezing them. Or, buy frozen vegetables. For this recipe, I not only used a bag of frozen broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, but I used frozen spinach and onions and some of the frozen bell peppers that I had bought when they were at a great price, cut them up, and froze them.

Switch the recipe up and use your favorite vegetables! This recipe would be great with zucchini or squash, or just broccoli alone.

Vegetable Lasagna

• 4 lasagna noodle sheets (if you cannot find these, simply use 8 noodles that you have boiled first)
• Olive oil
• Salt & Pepper
• 1 bag of frozen cauliflower, broccoli, carrot mix, thawed
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 bell peppers (use your favorite color, or a mixture of 2 or 3) cut in a large dice
• 3 T butter
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 cups milk
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 10-ounce package of frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed of excess water
• 24 oz. ricotta cheese
• 2 & 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9x13 baking dish.

Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Add broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, onions and bell peppers. Season with salt & pepper and saute for 7-8 minutes. Set aside.

In a medium sauce pan, melt butter and add flour to create a roux. Stir until flour and butter are blended and whisk in milk. Whisk over medium-high heat until milk becomes very thick. Add spinach & 1/2 cup of Parmesan. Remove from heat and stir in nutmeg.

Season ricotta cheese with 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp of pepper.

In bottom of prepared dish, spread 1/3 of spinach mixture. Top with 1 layer of lasagna noodles, all of the ricotta, all of the vegetables, another 1/3 of spinach mixture, and 2 cups of mozzarella cheese.

Add another layer of lasagna noodles, top with remaining spinach mixture, 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese and top with remaining 1/4 cup of Parmesan.

Bake until golden brown on top, about 30-35 minutes. Cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.