My Green Family. ramblings of one family's journey to green living

Its amazing how green it is to be a vegetarian. I used to think it was just a Hollywood fad and for people who where worried about animal cruelty, but it’s actually an incredibly green thing to do. Not eating meat saves energy and water. Meat is the least energy efficient food and according to Renee Loux in Easy Green Living beef requires 35 calories of energy for every 1 calorie it provides. Not very sustainable.

Cows drink gallons of water, literally, and to produce 1 pound of beef they require 2500 gallons of water. And let’s not even get started on the poop, every year 11 billion pounds of manure, sludge and slurry waste are produced by livestock. And I thought I had dealt with a lot of poop in the last 3 years with 2 kids! The reason the waste is so bad for the environment is because it turns into volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are organic chemicals that are gaseous and usually have a bad effect on air quality (think smog). One of these VOCs is methane which is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. The livestock industry is responsible for 20% of the methane in the atmosphere. Think about that the next time you take a bite of that burger! And then think about how much of an impact it would be if everyone would go veg for just one day a week.

Now I love my meat. I was brought up in a meat and potatoes home and I love chicken and I love prime rib burgers. But since we started the gluten free casein free diet with Tristan I’ve had to completely change the way I cook. I’ve had to tweek all of our favorite recipes to do without dairy and wheat. I cannot tell you how difficult that has been at times. We where cheesealholics! I still am, I can’t get enough cheese, I put it on everything. I’ve found a lot of great websites and cookbooks though to help me through this new journey of cooking. My favorite gf/cf website is Karina’s Kitchen, and many of her recipes are also veg.

So the latest recipe I tried out was a lasagna-ish type dish: Spinach Mushroom Lasagna, from The Kid Friendly Autism and ADHD Cookbook. Although if you don’t use cheese and meat can it really be called lasagna?

Ingredients:

• 4 cups marinara sauce
• ¼ cup olive oil divided
• 1 pound mushrooms chopped
• 1 onion diced
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 2 tsp salt divided
• 1 pound chopped spinach
• 1 can chickpeas
• 1 can red beans
• water
• gluten free lasagna noodles

Heat 2 tbsps of the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add mushrooms and cook until they release their liquid. Add the onion, garlic and 1 tsp of salt and cook for 10 min, stirring occasionally. Add the spinach, reduce to low heat and simmer until heated through.

Drain and rinse the chickpeas and beans. Pulse in a food processor (magic bullet works great) with 1 tsp of salt. Add the rest of the oil and process until smooth; add water until the puree is creamy and spreadable. Mine looked a little like cream cheese.

Spread the marinara sauce on the bottom of the baking dish, I just used our favorite pasta sauce. Add a layer of noodles. Spread the chickpea puree on the noodles, top with the veggie mixture, I then topped this with some zucchini I had leftover. Repeat this two times and then bake at 375F for an hour.

Surprisingly I enjoyed this. The chickpea puree had a really nice flavor and texture. Not surprisingly Tristan started to cry as soon as he saw what was for dinner, ah my picky kid! One day he’s going to eat everything in sight, I know it! Maya on the other hand ate it up and kept asking for more! So going veg doesn’t have to be painful, you just have to have an open mind and stomach!

Veggie dish anyone?