Tag Archives: More with Less

Lasagna Roll-ups

Posted on by Erin

One of the first dinners I ever made for the Sweetie Pie, before we were even married, was a vegetarian lasagna. It was stuffed with zucchini and spinach and lots and lots of cheese. I no longer get to partake in the gluten-y, cheese-y yummy-ness (thanks, chronic illness!), but the rest of my family still loves a good veggie lasagna. So when I saw this twist on the traditional lasagna, I knew we had to try it.

Sure enough, it was quite a crowd pleaser. The only thing I had to buy was the lasagna noodles and some cheese, which made it budget friendly to boot. I typically use frozen spinach in my lasagna, but here I used fresh collard greens (Don’t look at me like that. I’m a southern girl! They were on sale!) The Sweetie Pie commented that he really liked the use of fresh greens and asked if we could have it that way again.

My only issues with this recipe were with the quantities of ingredients. I felt they were way off. I was trying to double the recipe and ended up roughly doubling the amount of noodles, tripling the cheese (but not the greens), and doubling the tomato sauce (but not the onions or cheese). The recipe below reflects my best guess as to what quantities I ended up using. My best advice: buy more than needed, hold the quantities loosely, and use your intuition.

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title below to import the recipe into your account.

Lasagna Roll-Ups

Source: More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre (adapted)

Ingredients

  • 1 16 oz. box lasagna noodles
  • 2 bunches organic spinach, chard or other greens, finely chopped
  • 6 Tbs grated Parmesan
  • 3 cups cottage cheese or ricotta cheese
  • 3⁄4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 cup onion, sliced
  • 2 cups shredded cheese
  • 8 cups tomato sauce
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tsp basil
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp marjoram

Method

For instructions, see page 119 in More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre **

** While it’s technically legal to repost recipes, we don’t feel it’s ethical to post copyrighted recipes from the same source for weeks at a time. I’m providing the ingredient list to use in creating a shopping list. We here at the Plan to Eat blog apologize for any inconvenience. If you don’t already own the cookbook, and don’t wish to buy it, most libraries have a copy on their shelves. Thanks for your understanding.

Green Bean Salad

Posted on by Erin

I really thought this dish would be a big winner with the hungry masses at the dinner table. They like every ingredient in it–green beans? Check. Hard-boiled eggs? Double check. Pickles? Check. So I was really surprised when we had to bribe them with dessert to finish their veggies.

The Sweetie Pie enjoyed his serving, and finished the Pickle’s serving (who decided that having dessert wasn’t worth the price of eating his beans). I’ve come to rely on my nose to “taste” these recipes for me, since my diet restrictions don’t allow me to eat eggs or mayo. My olfactory senses gave it a thumbs up, so I’m not sure what went wrong. But I present it here as a dish that pleased the adults at the table, if not the kiddos.

I came up a little short on mayo and substituted some plain yogurt. It worked great. I don’t think I’d go so far as to substitute all the mayo with yogurt, but if you’re wanting to cut calories, you could get away with swapping out part of it.

I also used my french cut green beans here, since I still had a bag in the freezer. They worked out nicely.

And I chose to use rice vinegar, since the recipe doesn’t specify which vinegar to use. I thought the little bit of sweetness would be a nice addition.

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title to import the ingredient list into your account.

Green Bean Salad

Source: More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre (adapted)

Ingredients

  • 3 cups cooked green beans, cut into 1″ pieces
  • 4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
  • 1 medium organic onion, diced
  • 1 large dill pickle, chopped
  • 2 Tbs vinegar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2⁄3 cup mayonnaise

Method

For instructions, see page 254 in More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre **

** While it’s technically legal to repost recipes, we don’t feel it’s ethical to post copyrighted recipes from the same source for weeks at a time. I’m providing the ingredient list to use in creating a shopping list. We here at the Plan to Eat blog apologize for any inconvenience. If you don’t already own the cookbook, and don’t wish to buy it, most libraries have a copy on their shelves. Thanks for your understanding.

Baked Lentils with Cheese

Posted on by Erin

This dish was a tasty little surprise. I didn’t expect much from a dish of baked lentils, but this recipe actually packs a ton of flavor into those little legumes. I had a friend over while I was making dinner and she commented that she never learned to like lentils.

“They taste like…….”

“Dirt?” I suggested.

“Yes!”

These lentils did not taste like dirt.

One thing I truly love about More with Less is that the way a meal is prepared is just as simple as the ingredients and the dish itself. I love that everything is mixed and cooked right in the baking dish. After making this dish I had 3 things to wash–a wooden spoon, a cutting board, and a knife. No mixing bowls or pots or pans.

The kiddos really like the cheese addition. I can’t have dairy so I left cheese off of part of the dish and topped mine with Daiya cheddar cheese shreds.

The only ingredient change I made was reducing the salt from 2 teaspoons to 1 teaspoon, using one onion instead of two, and I used a red pepper instead of a green pepper because that’s what was in the veggie drawer. The recipe ingredients below list the ingredients according to how I make the recipe. Feel free to make your own changes (I try to remember to note the changes I make in the comments section of the recipe).

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title to import the ingredient list into your account.

Baked Lentils with Cheese

Source: More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre (adapted)

Ingredients

  • 1 3⁄4 cup lentils, rinsed
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 whole bay leaf
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1⁄4 tsp pepper
  • 1⁄8 tsp each marjoram, sage, thyme
  • 1 large organic onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 cups canned tomatoes
  • 2 large carrots, sliced 1/8″ thick
  • 1⁄2 cup thinly sliced celery
  • 1 bell pepper, chopped
  • 2 Tbs chopped parsley
  • 3 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Method

For instructions, see page 106 in More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre **

** While it’s technically legal to repost recipes, we don’t feel it’s ethical to post copyrighted recipes from the same source for weeks at a time. I’m providing the ingredient list to use in creating a shopping list. We here at the Plan to Eat blog apologize for any inconvenience. If you don’t already own the cookbook, and don’t wish to buy it, most libraries have a copy on their shelves. Thanks for your understanding.

Fried Liver (Oh Yes, I did…)

Posted on by Erin

My kiddos are really good eaters. I know I’m fortunate. But really, I never expected to get away with this meal. I had two boxes of mac and cheese on stand-by in case of revolt.

First, an explanation. I know that liver is really, really good for you (don’t we all?), but I’ve never eaten it, and I’ve never wanted to eat it. I probably never would have…if we hadn’t bought our family a quarter of a cow last fall. Buying our beef this way gave us lots of local, organic meat in the freezer for a pretty low price. It also gave us a wide variety of cuts, many of which I’ve never cooked with before. Enter the liver. We can’t really afford to throw away perfectly good meat. So I stared at it for a few months, I stewed about what to do with it. The liver in the freezer occupied this little section of my brain designated as “Uncomfortable Things I Must Deal with at Some Point”

So while flipping through the More with Less cookbook, I noticed a little recipe titled “Our Children Love Liver”. I was intrigued. I tried it out. What do you know? My children loved liver. Well, except for the Sweet Pea, who commented “It tastes too much like cow”. Fair enough. She held her nose and swallowed the two pieces in her bowl, then filled up on salad.

A few preparation notes: I just don’t have the patience to individually place small sticks of liver into a frying pan and turn them one at a time. Sorry. I fried my liver in two batches, throwing a handful at a time into the skillet and kind of stir-frying it until it was nice and brown. This technique worked just fine for me.

Also you don’t really need the bacon here–especially if you’re watching your cholesterol–but it certainly made my kiddos more excited about eating liver. Serving it with generous helpings of bland mashed potatoes was also a good move. It helped to off-set the strong liver flavor. And we allowed them the use of ketchup–as much as they wanted.

Surprisingly, they even ate the leftovers–wrapped up into burritos with black beans and rice was pretty popular.

The verdict? I’m happy to have this recipe in my files–for the next time a cut of liver lands in my freezer. And I’m happy to know that my kiddos will not starve if we ever end up on a desert island…with a few cows and their livers.

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title below to import the ingredient list into your account.

Our Children Love Liver

Source: More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre

Ingredients

  • 1 lb partially frozen beef liver, thinly sliced and cut into “sticks”
  • 2-4 slices bacon
  • 1⁄4 cup flour or use GF flour mix
  • 1 tsp salt or seasoned salt
  • dash of pepper
  • 1 organic onion, sliced and separated into rings

Method

For instructions, see page 174 in More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre **

** While it’s technically legal to repost recipes, we don’t feel it’s ethical to post copyrighted recipes from the same source for weeks at a time. I’m providing the ingredient list to use in creating a shopping list. We here at the Plan to Eat blog apologize for any inconvenience. If you don’t already own the cookbook, and don’t wish to buy it, most libraries have a copy on their shelves. Thanks for your understanding.

Cucumber Salad

Posted on by Erin

I really struggle in the winter to come up with something fresh to serve as a salad. Those tasty baby greens get kind of pricey in January, and I can only serve so much spinach salad. This cucumber salad was something new and tasty for our dinner table, and we all loved it.

I used mayo in this version, which was yummy. But I know some people are put off by mayo, so you could also use sour cream (as suggested in the recipe) or you could use plain yogurt (whole milk yogurt is going to give you the best results). I also used about a teaspoon of dried dill in place of the fresh, because we lost the garden dill to the snow many weeks ago.

When I tasted this after mixing it up, it tasted way too salty and I made a note to decrease the salt next time. But once it sat for about an hour in the fridge, it was actually just perfect. I’m not sure what the science is behind that, but either reduce the salt to 1/2 teaspoon, or make sure to give yourself time to let it sit before dinner-time.

We had a small amount of cucumbers leftover and I was suspicious that it wouldn’t keep until the next day. Surprisingly, it was just as tasty. I mixed the remaining cucumbers and all of the dressing with some spinach and made a small salad to go with lunch. It was fabulous.

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title to import the ingredient list into your account.

Cucumber Salad

Source: More with Less, by Doris Janzen Longacre

Ingredients

  • 1 large cucumber, thinly sliced
  • 1-2 Tbs fresh dill, chopped
  • 2 Tbs mayonnaise, sour cream, or yogurt
  • 1 Tbs vinegar
  • 2 Tbs oil
  • 1⁄2-1 tsp salt
  • pepper

Method

See page 249 in More with Less. **

** While it’s technically legal to repost recipes, we don’t feel it’s ethical to post copyrighted recipes from the same source for weeks at a time. I’m providing the ingredient list to use in creating a shopping list. We here at the Plan to Eat blog apologize for any inconvenience. If you don’t already own the cookbook, and don’t wish to buy it, most libraries have a copy on their shelves. Thanks for your understanding.