Last Sunday (I know, over a week ago) I made lasagna roll ups for dinner.  We had made them before but I hardly remember them and Sat said he thinks that they were not that great.  Well with a new and improved vegan ricotta recipe we tried it again and had GREAT results.  If you are a Flickr stalker (like some of Sat’s female CSE friends, Ms. B, ahem), you have probably already seen the photos.  Our only problem in making them is that we didn’t have, well, half of the ingredients at the start – and were still missing some at the end – but it all turned out well.  To make is super easy – just lay out some cooked lasagna noodles and top with ricotta, faux-beef crumbles, parmesan, mozz, and some sauce and then roooooolll it up!  Unfortunately, we ran out of sauce to top out little rolls with in the pan, but it turned out just fine.  It turned out to be the perfect “wing it” recipe as we didn’t really follow any recipe except when we needed to know the oven temp and time.

It was easy to veganize the recipe just by using margarine for “butter” and Ener-G Egg Replacer for the egg.  The cookie dough was super easy to make but the assembly of the cookie was a little more trying.  If you are feeling froggy and want to try to make them I have a few suggestions.

1. Don’t forget to chill your dough!
2. Work in small batches or a really cold kitchen (walk-in freezer?)
3. If you have a marble counter or cutting board, use it!  If it is a board you might want to chill it with the dough – this will help keep the dough chilled longer and therefore easier to work with.
4. When it says “lightly floured surface” feel free to be liberal, and make sure to flour the rolling pin too!
5. If you are expecting the cookies to bleed on their own, don’t.  Mine didn’t bleed at all – could have been the high quality, chunky jam I used though.

You may want to wait to preheat your oven until you have them made just to help keep the temperature in your kitchen down, but I am not sure how much that will help.  Enjoy baking!  (I’ll post pictures when we get them uploaded!)

~C

Apple Crisp

Today we honor the humble Apple Crisp.  Why it is humble, I don’t know, because it FREAKING ROCKS!  Simple ingredients, easy to make and nearly fool proof.  This is one of the few times I will post a recipe (from memory).  And no, it is not my recipe, it is from my favoritest cookbook ever – the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book (that for some reason Sat and I call the “Betty”)

Apple Crisp With Ice Cream

Humble Apple Crisp
Lots of apples, peeled, seeded, and sliced thin
2-4 tablespoons of granulated sugar
Some lemon juice to prevent discoloration (I dilute with water to make it go farther)

1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c rolled oats
1/2 c flour
some cinnamon (teaspoon-ish?)
1/4 c. softened margarine

Prepare apples and put in lemon juice water mixture until completed.  Rinse apples and place in baking dish of choice (I used a glass pie pan).  Stir in granulated sugar.  Combine the rest of the “dry” ingredients in a medium bowl.  Cut in butter until mixture is “crumbly”.  Spread mixture over top of apples.  Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes.  Serve with really good ice cream.