VEGETARIAN LASAGNE

Pascal has been talking about cooking a vegetarian lasagne for about 4 years so we decided to take the bull by the horns and finally make one this weekend. I am feeling a bit down at the moment as Arabella has gone to my ex husbands for two weeks and I am missing her like crazy. Thank god for chocolate and TV!!

Anyway I searched through my numerous recipes and found this one in Fay Ripleys second book. Pascal was a little unsure as he was expecting a lasagne with vegetables such as aubergine and mushrooms rather than lentils and celery but like all Fay creations, it all worked well in the end. I did make a few alterations like using a cheese sauce as Pascal doesnt like white sauce and obviously adding more cheese!!

Ingredients for 4-6 people:

400g fresh spinach
1 x 300g pack of fresh lasagne (we did have 3 sheets left over)
2 x 125g ball mozzarella cheese
500ml cheese sauce

Lentil Sauce:
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 celery stick, trimmed and finely chopped
Splash of olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
150g red lentils, rinsed
2 tbsp tomato puree
2 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
150ml vegetable or chicken stock
Around 250g grated cheddar cheese

Preheat the oven to 180C fan / 200C  / gas mark 6.
To make the lentil sauce, heat some oil in a large pan and then fry the onion, celery and carrot for 5 minutes.

Then add the garlic and fry for 1-2 minutes.

Next pour in the lentils, tomato puree, tomatoes and stock and season well. Bring to the boil and then turn down the heat, put the lid on and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While this is cooking, cook the spinach in a microwave or saucepan with a splash of water, for around 5 minutes. Then drain out the excess water - I always find it amazing how much it shrinks!!

To assemble the lasagne, spread 3 tablespoons of the lentil sauce into the base of an ovenproof dish - the one we used was around 20 x 25 cm according to Pascals "hand measuring technique" - so that is a real guesstimate!

Then layer on the pasta.

Then 3 ladles of lentil sauce and cheese sauce. 

Spread over half the spinach.

Sprinkle 3 large handfuls of grated cheese.

Add the pasta again and then repeat the whole process until you have finished with all the ingredients. After my second layer of spinach and cheese, I added another layer of pasta.

Then I covered it with the remaining cheese sauce and tore over the mozzarella.

Finally bake in the oven for 35 minutes.

Leave to stand for 5 minutes and then serve and enjoy.

Another successful recipe from Fay Ripley, this was surprisingly very good and way exceeded our expectations. I was thinking about what I was going to do with the 350g of red lentils I have left over - I now know I will be using them again to make this. Delicious and kid friendly, a real triumph! 

Randomly as I was reading the Sunday papers after lunch, I saw a recipe in the Times from Jamie Olivers new book for a vegetarian lasagne with aubergines, mushrooms, squash, courgettes etc, just like Pascal was imagining. It looked good, but this one looked better and easier ;-)

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Vegetarianism and Eating Disorders

A study from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association hit the press in April of 2009 with a rather provocative association - young adult and adolescent vegetarians have an increased risk of eating disorders.

Let's examine the data for a moment. 2516 participants from Minnesota schools (in 1999 and 2004) aged 15-18 and 19-23 answered questionnaires regarding food, exercise, weight, binge eating behaviors, dieting behaviors, demographics, and substance abuse. A huge cohort was originally recruited in ethnically diverse high schools, but many of them (around 50-60%, depending on the cohort) were lost to follow up. The "EAT-II" sample (of 2516 participants) who answered both surveys were more likely to be female and were less ethnically diverse than the overall study sample, which is important to know, as the EAT-II folks were used for the article I'm reviewing here.

Of the 2516 folks, about 15% labeled themselves as current or former vegetarians, but very few were vegan, as 95% of them consumed milk products, 87% consumed eggs, 46% consumed fish, and 25% consumed chicken. Most were vegetarian because they wanted a more healthful diet, and a slightly lesser percentage didn't want to kill animals, didn't like meat, wanted to help the environment, to lose or maintain weight, or were vegetarian for family or religious reasons. In the older cohort, vegetarians were thinner (not true of the younger ones), and all of the vegetarians tended to eat more fruits and vegetables and ate less fat than non-vegetarians. Overall exercise patterns were about the same between vegetarians and non-vegetarians, and younger vegetarians were less likely to drink or smoke cigarettes, but more likely to use "non-marijuana" drugs than non-vegetarians.

Here's where it gets interesting - vegetarians were more likely to engage in "extreme unhealthful weight control behaviors" (p<0.005) and "binge eating with loss of control" than the nonvegetarians (p<0.001). The extreme weight control behaviors included use of vomiting, diet pills, laxatives, and diuretics, and approximately 1 in 4 current adolescent and young adult vegetarians admitted to using one or more of those methods to lose weight. Only 1 in 10 of never-vegetarians admitted the same. So what comes first - the decreased consumption of chicken or the semi-avoidance of eggs? Well, this article (or the abstract anyway - the original article is in Hebrew!) suggests that vegetarianism precedes eating disorders, though if one talks to patients with eating disorders, many will explain that they told people they were vegetarians so they could avoid eating in social situations.

The authors of the 2009 study, in an editorial in the same issue, expressed their belief that vegetarianism did not cause eating disorders, but could be used as a marker by concerned parents and health care practitioners to be more suspicious of an eating disorder in a young adult or teenager who is vegetarian. Lierre Keith (not surprisingly) has a different view in her book, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability (p230-4) Nutrition therapists at eating disorder clinics in in Indiana, Boston, and Los Angeles reported that between 30-50% of their patients were vegetarian. Julia Ross, a nutrition writer, thought the reason might be due to lower amounts of tryptophan in a vegetarian diet (1). Recall that tryptophan is the precursor to serotonin, so that without enough of it, we are vulnerable to anger, anxiety, depression, and addictive behaviors. Zinc is a mineral tough to come by in a vegetarian diet (it is found mostly in egg yolks and red meat), and zinc deficiency is known to cause depression, obsessive and compulsive behavior, and eating disordered behavior. Supplementation with zinc is a known and extremely helpful treatment for anorexia nervosa, helping sufferers regain weight faster than those without the supplement (2). Binging and vomiting can trigger an endorphin rush, which can temporarily mask anxiety and depression (bulimics given an opiate blocker, naltrexone, report symptoms of opiate withdrawal, according to Ross). Fasting and extreme dieting lower other vitamins, like thiamine, which can cause loss of appetite, making it easier to fast, on and on and on.

Lierre Kieth has her axe to grind, but I do think her book is an important counterpoint to the milder view (and worth a read for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike). Julia Ross' theories and her clinical experience are also intriguing. Vegetarians tend to be healthier and thinner than those who eat a standard American diet (which I'll say is not saying much), but there may be a hidden cost, and when a young person is a vegetarian, it seems that one should be somewhat suspicious that there is a darker reason than not wanting to kill animals.

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