Best Vegetable Lasagna Recipe

Seeing how my latest vlog on YouTube features a day at our beach house in which I cook a vegetable lasagna, I thought I'd right the detailed recipe here, in case any of you actually decides to give it a try, which I highly recommend! I know "best" is a subjective word, but to me this really is the yummiest lasagna I've ever eaten, no matter homemade (it took me a while until I got the PERFECT recipe), or in a restaurant. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. This is the video I'm talking about btw:



Ok, so here we go, let's get this Lasagna started!

VEGETABLE LASAGNA:

Serves 4:

Ingredients: 

- Spinach (200g)

- Zuchini (1)

- Carrot (1)

- Eggplant (half)

- Tomato sauce (100g)

- Dried No-boil Lasagna Sheets (200g)

- 100 g Cheese (Emmental or Gouda, in slices or grated)

- Flour (75g)

- Butter (40g)

- Milk (1.5L)

- Salt

- Olive Oil

Utensils: 

- A pot

- A pan

- An oven-proof recipient to bake the lasagna (mine's 10x25cm glass)

1. Start by boiling the spinach leaves (with a pinch of salt). 10 minutes will do. Reserve.

2. Cut the zuchini and the carrot in slices or pieces, and sauté in the pan with olive oil and some salt until soft. Reserve.

3. Cut the eggplant in pieces and boil for about 5 minutes (with a pinch of salt). Then dry and sauté in the pan with olive oil for another 5 minutes. Reserve.

4. At this point, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

5. Take out the lasagna sheets you're going to use for your recipient (count 5 layers) and place them, one by one, on a hot water container, so that they can soak for around 10-15 minutes.

5. Bechamel sauce: Put the flour in a pot and keep moving until melted. Add the flour little by little until all blended in together. When this mixture is of sandy consistency, add milk, also little by little until, not adding more until the previous is already blended in. Add a pinch of salt in the process. The final consistency for this bechamel sauce should be liquid. 

6. Get the eggplant we reserved and put it in the blender. Add a bit of bechamel sauce and blend together. Reserve.

7. Time to start layering the lasagna!

7.1. Put the bottom lasagna sheets layer.

7.2. Place the spinach evenly.

7.2.1. Pour some bechamel sauce randomly on top

7.3. Second lasagna sheets layer

7.4. Place the zuchini and carrot evenly

7.4.1. Pour some bechamel sauce randomly on top

7.5. Third lasagna sheets layer

7.6. Pour the mixture of eggplant and bechamel sauce evenly

7.7. Fourth lasagna sheets layer

7.8. Pour tomato sauce evenly

7.9. Fifth and last lasagna sheets layer

7.10. Pour all the bechamel sauce evenly

7.11. Place the cheese on top

8. The lasagna is ready to go into the preheated oven. Bake for 30 minutes.

If you want to see the recipe demonstration, I recommend watching the video I made. It wasn't originally intended to be a step-by-step demonstration, I just wanted to put it in my weekend vlog above, but it turned out really long, so I decided to fast-forward it in the vlog and just upload the recipe as a new video.

Enjoy!!!

New AMWF YouTube Channel

Some months ago, one of my friends mentioned a YouTube channel to me that, she said, I might be interested in. Knowing as she does that it is my dream to have four kids, she recommended channel Verdeliss, the life of a stay-at-home mom who has four kids and expecting twins #5 and #6, even though she's our age! If you speak Spanish and you're interested in seeing how to run a house with 4 kids, I strongly recommend her channel to you. I myself got addicted to it and have been watching sooo many videos these last few days. I loved the idea of recording the everyday life of our family, so I decided I'd give it a shot, too! That's why I've just opened a YouTube channel, where I plan to feature our life as a (currently) AMWF family of 3, and eventually (hopefully) a family of 6! 

I love going through my old blog posts and seeing what I was up to some years ago, and I think videos get even more personal, and I will enjoy watching them later on even more. I don't have many videos of Liam's first year of life, and it's something I regret deeply. Hopefully this new YouTube project will put an end to the lack of videos! I hope you like this first video I've prepared, in which we feature our 24-hour routine on a regular day. The video was recorded on Tuesday November 10th, and it shows how our family spends a normal school/workday. 

If you do like it, please give it thumbs up, and SUBSCRIBE! <3

Cactus Garden Barcelona

This is apparently one of the most unheard of gardens in the city. Yet, given its beauty, it's hard to understand why! The Mossèn Costa i Llobera gardens feature an amazing selection of cactus from all over the planet, mostly Mexico (duh!), and South America. It's pretty amazing that the cactuses get to make it here in Barcelona. I mean, I know it is a relatively warm city, but it's no desert either!

The cactus garden, as it is known, is located at the top of Montjuic, a bit out of the way, wich may explain why not that many people know about it. 

The most perfect plan if you decide to visit, is to stay for lunch at Martinez, an amazing restaurant located right at the entrance of the gardens, from which to enjoy awesome sea-views while having a yummy paella. Ask for a table by the window to make sure you get the most out of it!

I was wearing TRF dress and Elvio Zanon boots. Liam was wearing Zara baby clothes and Privata boots. 

Mossèn Costa i Llobera Gardens

Crta. de Miramar / Plaça de l'Armada

Barcelona

Yellow Autumn

If you've been reading the blog for a while, this scenery may ring a bell. We took some pics here exactly a year ago, when Liam was just a couple months old. Even though I'm not one to think time flies, {contrary to everyone around me!}, it's truly amazing to see how Liam has changed during this year. 

I remember taking these pictures a year ago and feeling Liam trying to reach for my breast. Now he doesn't even remember about it {he was weaned a month ago}, and runs faster than myself! Luckily there's no cars in this area, otherwise this photo session would have been risky! 

This location is in our beach house neighborhood, and it looks absolutely stunning at this time of the year, making it a must to take pictures here every year! :)

I was wearing dress from TRF; hat from Parfois (old); boots from Privata. Liam was wearing clothes from Zara baby and shoes from Privata.

Two-Child Policy

Big news for China yesterday as the end of the one-child policy was announced after being in force for 35 years. As a political scientist, China business specialist, and also as a woman with family in China, I of course have something to say about it.

First, as a liberal, I have never approved of government intereference in the private arena. Child bearing is far too important a thing to be left to the government to rule upon. It's about human freedom, and more specifically, women's rights. Yet, looking back at the situation in China in the 70s, I understand why this one-child policy was implemented by the Communist Party in 1980. The one-child policy has granted children born in this era more ressources their parents and grandparents could have ever hoped for. We need to bear in mind, it's not only the ressources of the parents, but those of the four grandparents that go directly into providing for every need the child may have. The one-child policy, by providing demographic stability, has helped Chinese be better off in terms of education and economic prosperity. Yet, everything comes with a price. Forced abortions and sterilization are only some of the horror stories this policy has generated. Others include babies in drainage pipes, or parents whose world comes to a complete end if their only child happens to die or becomes disabled, for the sustenance of parents after retirement relies exclusively on their children, as I will explain below.

With Liam's cousin, Hang Hang, in early 2013. He was two months younger than Liam is now.

As I mentioned at very beginning, this policy change affects me in a personal way as well. Even though I married a Hong Kong man and not a mainland Chinese one, both of J's parents come from China (his dad was born there, and his maternal grandma too), as do many other Hongkongers. Liam's little cousins from Guangdong are an example of some of the craziness this one-child policy generated. In a country with no retirement funds for the elderly, the only hope to a decent retirement is the money children provide their parents with. You may not know this and it may come as a shock to you if you're not familiar with Chinese culture, but it is customary for Chinese kids, once they start working, to give a percentage of their salary (around 20-30%) to their parents for the rest of their lives. It is only reasonable that some Chinese families would prefer having two kids rather than one. 

It's amazing how much Hang Hang and Liam look alike :)

When my cousin-in-law gave birth to her precious baby boy, (Hang Hang pictured above), in early 2012 (the first month of the Dragon year), we couldn't be happier for her family. Yet we soon discovered that she and her husband were planning to conceive again as soon as possible hoping they could somehow make the two kids appear officialy as twins, the only way to legally have two children without having to pay a fine. Said and done, she was pregnant again just two months after giving birth, and her second son was born on the last month of the Dragon year. If you're familiar with Chinese culture, you may think they were so lucky, for they got two little Dragons, the best zodiac there is. Yet, there is so much more to the story. These so close pregnancies posed a strain on my cousin-in-law's health, for a woman's body is not fully recovered to experience a new pregnancy until at least 18 months after giving birth. Her second pregnancy left her with little strenght to look after her first son, who spent most of the time being taken care of by his grandma. I know she's not the first nor the last woman in the world to have two kids less than a year apart, but I do believe this should not be a decision based on an unfair government regulation. You must know that the plan to make the two brothers pass as twins never succeeded. It was not possible for them to find a way to bribe an official into falsifying the birth papers, and they ended up charged with a fine that amounted to almost all of their live savings. As if this was not enough, Hang Hang was diagnosed with autism some months ago. I do not know if this had anything to do with the fact of his mom being absent during his first months of life as a result of a new pregnancy and a new child, as well as not being able to breastfeed him for the same reason, but I do know I can't prove the opposite either. 

I must admit reading the announcement of the end of the one-child policy made my eyes wet. I couldn't help but think about our Chinese family, not only how my cousin-in-law's life could have been different should this announcement have been made some years earlier, but also about other cousins who have one child and will probably try to welcome a new one anytime soon. I can't deny it, yesterday was bittersweet.