a peek inside the fishbowl

Before I get into the nitty gritty of this recipe I have to tell you about what went down at Casa Fishbowl yesterday. The National was coming to my house (remember?) and I had a few things to do around here.  My priority was to clean the kitchen and my mop head tore clean off. I had lemons simmering on the stove (a natural air-freshener) when I discovered I’d accidentally brought a bag of dog poop into the house and it was sitting on our front stairs. (Ew.) Seriously, it became a comedy of errors which grew progressively laughable as the day wore on. My finest moment was loudly begging Sarah to stop playing with the dog and tidy the living room. I may have used the words “I BEG YOU.” Yes. Fine.

As for me, I did what I could with the kitchen floor and the rest of the house, and swept everything from my desk area into a laundry basket and shoved it in the closet… and prayed that no one would find a reason to look in there.

I joked to Sarah: “I hope this story isn’t going to be an investigation of Canadian closets!”
“Or our bedrooms!” she chirped cheerily.

Ha.

Ha.

I tried to ignore the beat up baseboards in the front hall THE BEST I COULD.

*sigh*

Anyway, other than camera-crew related cleaning woes it went fine, more than fine, it was great. They were here for about 3 hours and it was really fun. And that was only part one. Now, on to the recipe du jour!

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I have a thing about lasagna. I love it, but I feel like it’s too much work so I never make it. I’m also very picky about my lasagna. It has to be the right balance of meat and veg and I can never get it quite right. I’m also not a fancy lasagna person. No chicken and mushrooms and reams of white sauce thankyouverymuch.

That’s why I was very happy to find this easy recipe for a lazy (wo)man’s three-cheese faux lasagna. It’s from Karen a.k.a. ScatteredMom. She blogs here and here, and is also a meal planning editor at a website called EverythingMom.

Her recipe has all the great hallmarks of lasagna: the cheese, the sauce, the noodles, without the pressure of making a giant tray of the stuff. And you know what? It’s meatless (yay!), and a bit of spinach gives it an extra boost of flava and improves its healthy quotient.

Karen is busy. And I trust her judgement. And she loves healthy dinners as much as I do. If she says it’s good, it’s going to be good. And she wasn’t wrong about this one.

The recipe is posted here. (Just scroll down to “Friday.” )

I’m not even going to bother posting a photo of my results, because hers is so gorgeous.

I will add this:

• It’s good to have meat-free dinners every once in awhile. Did you know that if everyone had a a meat-free dinner once a week it would help make the world a better place? Read more about this at Meat Free Mondays.
• I used half as much spinach as Karen called for in her recipe. I had a feeling it would be too spinachy for my non-spinach eaters. And here’s a surprise… they ate it. (!) Well, mostly. The older one liked it more than the younger one, but she’s not a tomato-sauce lover, so I had that against me at the outset. But STILL. I do consider this a keeper.
• I recommend boiling a couple of extra noodles in case they, um, stick to the pot or drop on the floor. (Which would NEVER happen around here.)
• I think I overloaded the first few rolls with too much filling. You really only need a heaping tablespoon or so.
• I used Western-brand pressed cottage cheese (it looks like a squished ball of vacuum-wrapped mozzarella) and it worked great.
• Buy real parmesan cheese! If it comes in a plastic container that looks like a giant salt shaker and smells like sneakers, that’s not real parmesan. The real stuff costs $12.00 for a wedge. You owe it to yourself to buy the real thing, even if you have to sacrifice a trip to Starbucks or a pack of smokes in order to afford it.
• Check the sodium level on your store-bought spaghetti sauce and compare different brands. You might be surprised. (I used this PC Blue Menu brand for this recipe.)

Anyway, the lasagna turned out wonderfully; happy tummies all around. We served it with fresh bread and a salad. It’s a keeper. I hope you try this one out!