Gluten-free and Autoimmune Safe Lasagna
vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, oil-free, *but NOT taste-free
I love Italian food. It’s my favorite genre of food — pizza, lasagna, pesto, alfredo, you name it, I love it. Italian food is based on gluten, dairy, and red sauce. Two out of the three I no longer consume, gluten and dairy. This does create quite a conundrum. Thankfully, there are numerous kinds of gluten-free pasta you can use which taste very similar to the real thing. And then there are also many rich, creamy, non-dairy substitutes you can use such as sauces and cheeses made with nuts, seeds, and coconut milk.
This lasagna is so full of flavor because of all the vegetables it has in it which also makes it high in vitamins and minerals. And without dairy and gluten, it’s autoimmune-safe and allergy-safe too.
Make sure your tomato sauce, tofu, rice noodles, zucchini, and spinach are all organic as these items will otherwise have high levels of pesticides.
If you are in the beginnings of getting better from your autoimmune, it would be better to omit the soy (even though it’s organic) until you’re making improvements in your autoimmune recovery. This is because after eating GMO soy for so long, the body can reject even the organic soy until it’s had a rest from all soy.
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Vegetable Lasagna
gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, oil-free, *but NOT taste-free
INGREDIENTS
1 package brown rice lasagna noodles
1 25 oz. jar of marinara sauce
1 medium sweet potato
1 medium zucchini, sliced in 1/4 inches
1 lb. frozen spinach or fresh spinach or swiss chard
half of a 13.5 ounce can coconut milk or cashew “cheese”
1 (16 oz.) package firm or extra firm organic tofu
1/2 tsp Himalayan mineral salt
1/3 cup fresh basil, chopped (optional)
DIRECTIONS
Slice the sweet potato and zucchini in 1/4 inch slices. Pour 1/3 cup of sauce on the bottom of a 9 x 13 glass baking dish and spread it evenly. Put one layer of uncooked noodles across the bottom. Layer in the sweet potato slices. Lightly cover the sweet potatoes with a layer of sauce, then another layer of noodles. Layer in the zucchini slices. Drain the tofu and crumble it over the noodles.
NOTE: If you are in the beginnings of getting better from your autoimmune, it would be better to omit the soy (even though it’s organic) until you’re making improvements in your autoimmune recovery. This is because after eating GMO soy for so long, the body can reject even the organic soy until it’s had a rest from all soy.
Sprinkle the salt over the tofu. Drizzle 1/4 of a can of coconut milk over the tofu. If you’re omitting the tofu, you can replace the tofu with the other half of the can of coconut milk. So instead of 1/4 of a can of coconut milk here, you would use 3/4s of the can.
Sprinkle the frozen spinach (or fresh spinach or chopped swiss chard) over the tofu coconut milk mixture. Follow this with another layer of sauce and the last layer of noodles. Pour the rest of the sauce over the noodles. Put about an inch of water in the jar, put the lid back on, and shake it to get the remaining sauce out of the jar. The extra liquid will also help this lasagna become the right texture as the noodles are not cooked. Spread the sauce evenly over the noodles making sure that all of the dry parts of the noodles are covered with sauce.
Drizzle the remaining 1/4 can of coconut milk over the top. Cover the lasagna with a glass lid, or if you don’t have one, use a piece of parchment paper and then a piece of foil over that. The parchment paper will protect the lasagna from aluminum leaching into it.
Bake the lasagna in a preheated oven at 350 F for 50 minutes. Remove the lasagna from the oven and let it sit for 10 minutes before serving.
Top with freshly cut basil and serve.
