spinach lasagna with vegetable tempeh sauce

Pasta with red sauce is my love language.

I'm not kidding. 

We don't have pasta too often in our house, but when we do, I savor every scrumptious last bite and make sure not to leave any sauce behind by using my toasty garlic bread to get every last bit, like any good Italian would do. Right?

When my husband and I were first married I scoured cooking magazines and printed recipes off the Internet and began to hoard an unrealistic amount of recipes around the house in a little bit of a  disorganized state. In fact, I still do. 

Somehow one recipe for spinach lasagna from one of the cooking light magazine my mother in law lent me (they returned to her with 30% less pages in them) made it's way to my counter top where I gave it a whirl, and then made it again and again. Then it kinda got buried underneath all the other recipes floating around the house and I forgot around it, until last week.  

Last week I got the idea for a vegetable sauce from this blog that my church does. She used tempeh as an alternative to meat and it was so good. I immediately thought this would be perfect for lasagna!

I just love how many vegetables are in this meal! Oh, my new favorite food combo is green bell peppers and red sauce. Something magical happens when the two come together! 

The filling for the lasagna is really simple. Wilted Spinach, part-skim ricotta, garlic, salt & pepper. 

Do you see this? All that spinach (almost two whole bags) wilted down to about the size of a baseball.

You can made your sauce with any red sauce that you like and really and veggies. I used Prego's traditional sauce, red and green bell peppers, onion and zucchini. 

Tempeh not pictured. I used the organic three grain tempeh from Trader Joe's

I browned the tempeh and sauteed the vegetables before adding them to the sauce.

Then the fun part comes, layering the red sauce, noodles, filling and repeating two more times.  

Then a layer of fresh mozzarella cheese on top!

Spinach Lasagna with Vegetable Tempeh Sauce

Ingredients

For the filling
2 - 6 ounce bags of spinach - wilted & squeezed dry
11/2 cups part skim ricotta
1 garlic clove, mined OR 1 T minced garlic
course salt & ground pepper

For the sauce
2 1/2 cups jarred tomato sauce
1 package of Tempeh
1 small zucchini halved and sliced
1/2 red bell pepper - diced
1/2 green bell pepper - diced
one small onion - diced
olive oil

6 no boil lasagna noodles
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Make filling by mixing together wilted spinach, ricotta, garlic, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Set aside. Brown tempeh with olive oil. Add vegetables and cook for a few minutes. Then add vegetable and tempeh mixture to the red sauce. Cook on low for a few more minutes until heated through.

To assemble the lasagna, start by adding a thin layer of the sauce to the bottom of an 9 x 9 pan. Then add a layer of noodles, followed by a layer of the filling. Repeat two more times ending with another layer of red sauce at the end and a layer of the mozzarella cheese. Cook for 35-40 minutes or until the cheese begins to bubble and brown.