I recently made some shrimp pot-stickers/dumplings that are going to be for an upcoming birthday dinner for my dad, and it got me to thinking about an idea I read about years back, subbing eggroll wrappers for the pasta to make an easy lasagna. Eggroll wrappers, won ton wrappers and pot sticker wrappers are all basically a flour “noodle”, similar to buying a fresh pasta, they’re just of different thicknesses.

Eggroll wrappers are the thickest (usually 15 per 16 oz package). Won ton wrappers are about half the thickness (they’re half the width, and you usually get 60 per 16 oz package). The round pot sticker wrappers are somewhere in between at about 36 in a 12oz package. I used egg roll wrappers here, and as you can see, I think it turned out pretty good…

To start out with, you need to mix up some of the cheese. I used cottage cheese, but try ricotta if you want. Take 1-1/2 cups (12oz container) of cottage or ricotta cheese and mix in 1/2 teaspoon of granulated garlic, and 1 teaspoon each of dried parsley flakes, dried oregano and dried basil. Set this aside. Oh, sorry I don’t have pics of this part, I didn’t think to grab the camera until I was nearly done putting my pans together.

In a large skillet, brown up 1 pound of ground beef, turkey, or Italian sausage. Once nearly done, drain off any excess grease. Stir in a 14.5 oz can of petite diced tomatoes and a 14.5 oz can of tomato sauce. Once I dump out the tomato sauce, I put about 1/4 cup of water in the can, swirl it around to get that bit of sauce still in the can and pour that in the pan as well. Then add 2 teaspoons of granulated garlic and 1 tablespoon each of the dried parsley, oregano and basil, but also add in 1 tablespoon of crushed red pepper flakes. If you are using sausage, you can cut back on or eliminate the spices here if you want.

Heat this up for about another 5 minutes over a medium-low heat, just long enough to start bringing out the spices.

You could make a larger pan of this, but I wanted to do smaller portions that I could toss in the freezer. Those foil mini-loaf pans seemed just right. This should make 5 pans worth… which at least around here is how many come in a pack of those. If you are using egg roll wrappers, grab five and lay them on a cutting board in a stack and use a long bladed knife and press down across the middle of them to cut them in half. You may also need to trim about an inch or so off the ends so they fit your pans. Same if you are using won ton wrappers.  You can drop those cut off ends in some boiling water and cook up some “noodles” with them if you really want.

Now why use these wrappers instead of regular lasagna noodles? A few reason. First, they’re much thinner, so you can basically get that layer of “pasta” without having all the much pasta in your dish. I suppose I could (and I likely will try at some point) making this with either zucchini or eggplant instead of noodles, but I don’t mind a bit of carbs in my diet. This lets me have that taste and a bit of the texture, but on a much more moderate scale.

Second, since a recipe never seems to use a full box of lasagna noodles, you always have little bits left over. With these wraps, it’s no big deal. They freeze wonderfully. Just wrap them in smaller portions and lay in the freezer. Yea, you can freeze the whole thing, but then you have to thaw (and use) the whole thing. I’m working on some other ideas on how to use these wraps and will share them with you as I get them down… so this is a way to have some “pasta” around in a small quantity for those times where you don’t mind having some.

Lastly, since it’s more like a fresh pasta than dried, you don’t have to cook them before using them in a recipe such as this. I could probably come up with some more “thoughtful sounding” reasons as well, but this should be enough.

Ok, where were we?

Oh, yea… you’re ready to start making your pans of lasagna. Scoop about 1/3 cup of the meat sauce and spread it out in the bottom of each pan. Top this with 1/2 of your egg roll wrapper. Just remember too, if you are using won ton wrappers, they’re half the thickness, so each layer will have two of them, not one (or rather one half?)… and it’s fine if they are a little larger than the pan, I did mine so they sort of curled up the side of the pan a bit.

On top of this, spread another 1/3 cup of the meat sauce, then spread a couple tablespoons worth of the cottage/ricotta cheese mix, then a couple tablespoons worth of the shredded mozzarella.

Follow this up with another noodle layer, more meat sauce, more cottage cheese, more mozzarella. You basically end up with three layers of meat sauce and two layers of everything else. Do this for all five of your pans. You could also try this in a larger pan… maybe something around 9×12. If you try it, leave a comment how it turned out and what size pan you used.

Once they’re done, you have to decide if you are going to bake them up now, or freeze for later. If you’re going to freeze for later, I suggest putting a piece of waxed or parchment paper over the top before wrapping with foil. this will help keep stuff from sticking to the foil.

If you can’t wait… heat your oven to 375 and put one or more on a baking sheet (leave a couple inches between pans if doing more than one). Loosely cover each pan with foil and once the oven is heated up bake on the center rack for about 25-30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake about 10 minutes more to brown the top layer of cheese. One of these fit perfectly in my toaster oven by the way.

I knew I was going to eat one of these right away, so I made it in a silicone mini loaf pan I had – why waste a foil one, right? It turned out really good, and like I said, using the wrappers gave just enough of a pasta hint to it with out overloading it for me.

Oh, at over 18 months out, I had no problem eating one of these for my dinner. But the whole thing did fill me up pretty good, and between the meat and cheese, it’s got a pretty decent protein punch. If you can’t eat as much for whatever reason, try making these in half-pint, wide-mouth canning jars. This would be perfect for using the round pot sticker wrappers with, or just use some sort of biscuit or cookie cutter to cut rounds from the other wrappers and layer it in the jar. This would also be a good single portion if I was having something else with it I suppose.

This jar and my other loaf pans went in the freezer. When I’m ready for another, I’ll take the foil off, remove the waxed paper and loosely recover with the foil. Bake at the same 375, but go for about 40-45 minutes, then remove the foil and give it another 10 to brown the cheese… unless you thaw it out in the fridge, then bake the same as when fresh.

Now if you’re still wondering about the whole “Lasagna Through a Straw” title… well, I didn’t exactly eat mine through a straw, but I did have an idea. See, I didn’t do five of the loaf pans, I did four and the jar, so I had some meat and cheese mix left over. I was just going to mix it up and have that as part of my lunch when it sort of hit me… “What about early post-ops?”

So, I took the bit of meat and cottage cheese and blended it up in my Magic Bullet blender until it was a pretty smooth paste, then heated it up in the microwave for about 20-25 seconds and dropped a few shreds of mozzarella on top.

Bada-bing, bada-boom. Lasagna puree, perfect for those post-ops not quite ready for regular foods yet. There’s no pasta in it, but it has all the cheesy, meaty flavor of lasagna. And while I did use a spoon, I suppose I could have used a straw, well, cept you’re not supposed to use straws when you’re early post-op. But you get the idea, right?

So if you are early post-op, here’s a great recipe you can whip together to have some of now… and make some portioned out meals to freeze for later. Sure, it may not look the best, but I’m sure it would be a welcome change from refried beans. Win-win!

If you try it out, let me know what you think in the comments.

Originally published November 29, 2008

I don’t know the last time I tried cottage cheese, before yesterday. But, it’s on the list of foods that is good to have both as part of my pre-op weight loss, and one of the first foods I can have post-op.

My aversion to it has been mostly phychological. When I was a kid, maybe 4th grade or so… we took a weekend trip down to see my mom’s friend in Albert Lea area… “Aunt Betty & Uncle Jim”. When we got back we discovered a bowl of mostly eaten cerel had been left out… and what was now left in the bowl looked like cottage cheese. After that, I couldn’t look at the stuff without that memory coming back to me.

Yesterday I had some cottage cheese with breakfast, mixed in a spoon full of lingonberry preserves I had picked up at Ikea. Afterwards, I couldn’t help but think of the deer hunting scene from the movie Red Dawn – “It wasn’t so bad.”

Even though it was Black Friday, I braved the stores a bit. At Target I bought some new dishes. Not that I don’t already have dishes.. actually have a nice set that I’ve had for over 15 years that I’ve supplemented with a few things like cereal bowls, pasta bowls and such in the ensuing years. Problem is, everything is HUGE. The cereal bowls hold about two and a half cups of food. And just the regular plates… well, 3 oz of meat and a half-cup of cooked veggies get kinda lost on there. Even my small wood bowls hold over a cup… looking at a quarter-cup of cottage cheese in there, well would get rather… disheartening.

So I bought some salad plates, they are a bit bigger than the side plates from my main set, but square, so I dunno… they’ll be ok. I think my other plates would have been almost too small for an entree. But the bigger deal is the bowls. Some matching “dipping bowls”. They hold just over a half-cup, so they’ll hopefully make it easy to maintain some portion control.

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I’m going to have to cut out the Gatorade mix. While I drink it fairly dilluted, it has sugar. Post-op, not sure how that will go down, might cause dumping. Dumping is bad. If you haven’t heard of it yet, dumping basically occurs after WLS if you eat food that is sugary or has too much fat, not with lap-band, but with RNY. That’s because these sugars and fats are usually absorbed in your stomach, now they go right to the intestines. The effects of which can vary, but none are pleasant – abdominal pain, cramps, gas, bloating, and diareah.

There are lots of sugar-free options, but I got the Gatorade powder cause it’s cheaper. Buy in bulk, right? And while the directions call for one scoop (bout a tablespoon) for 12 ounces of water, I do that for about 32. Just enough to give the water some flavor. I actually use old Gatorade bottles, they hold up well. While shopping yesterday I bought a bottle of G2 (the lower-sugar/carb version) and stright from the bottle, it tasted too sweet. That’s a good sign, no?

The big thing is these individual packets, Propel fitness water, Crystal Light, even sugar-free Kool-Aid. They’re nice, but spendy, around $3 for 6 or so. Still cheaper than a bottle of pop I suppose. And I’m fine drinking tap water, so it’s not like I’m spending a ton on bottled water. I picked up a couple of Lipton green tea and white tea ones yesterday at Target, and then at the Dollar Store found some Hawiian Punch ones. May have to go back there and stock up.

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I found a site yesterday that could be pretty handy – SparkPeople. It’s a social networking site geared towards fitness, diet, and general health. I found it while trying to find a way to figure out the nutritional value of the bread I made for Thanksgiving. They have a meal planner/diary feature that will figure out how much you are getting in calories and other stuff, let you keep track of how much water you’ve been drinking, a weight tracker and stuff I haven’t even played with yet. They also have various “groups” you can join based on various interests/topics. It’s going to take awhile to get through everything here… but I am going to use it to help track my meals. I can make notes in my phone throughout the day, then transfer them there to get my daily calorie count, etc. One problem, the site refreshes a LOT as you do different things. They need to incorporate AJAX in to the site, speed it up a bit.

This is based on my instant-oatmeal pancakes… the recipe for which is being tweeked over time and I’ll post in full here soon.

Tonight though, I wanted something different for dinner and made chocolate waffles with a cherry sauce topping. The chocolate taste comes from protein powder, and with mine was fairly subtle. Which is fine, I wanted just a hint of chocolate. This was dinner, not dessert.

What’s In It:

1/3 cup rolled oats (regular or quick should work fine)
1/4 cup no-fat cottage cheese
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 scoop (about 1 Tablespoon) chocolate flavored protein powder
2 tablespoon milk (I generally use soy milk)

The Magic Bullet style blender works great for this. Use it or a similar blender to puree all ingredients together until smooth.

Spray a heated waffle iron with butter flavored no-stick spray, pour on the batter and close it up. It should take about 7 minutes to cook, but follow the directions for your maker. Me, I have a 4-in-1 Grill Station (look for a review sometime later) that has waffle plates that are too shallow, so I “raised” the top plate a bit using a couple bamboo skewers. It seemed to work pretty good.

After the waffles come off the maker, plate them up, top with some of the cherry sauce (or your other favorite topping) and enjoy.

I get about 4 waffles that are slightly bigger than your typical toaster waffle, and I figure get about 7-8g of protein per waffle. Want to boost it up? Add more of your protein powder.

For the sauce I took bout half-dozen fresh, pitted cherries. I sliced a couple of them in half, the others I pureed with about a teaspoon of SF blackberry preserves. Use what-ever flavor you have, it’s just to add a bit more sweetness to it. Add the halved-cherries back in and microwave the sauce for about 30 seconds before pouring over the waffles.

That’s all there is too it. The left overs freeze well, and can be reheated just like your store-bought toaster waffles. If you don’t want chocolate, use plain/vanilla flavored protein powder and top with some sugar-free syrup. You could also try adding fruit to the batter, like mashed banana or some blueberries.