First off, for sake of clarification, I want to emphasize that this is the "Gluten Free & Dairy Free" version of the vegetable lasagna, Amy's makes several lasagna entrees, and this is the only one that's vegan. They even have a tofu lasagna that's make with a soy cheese that still contains dairy - how frustrating! In general, vegan lasagna can be hard to come by, it's a dish that requires advanced preparation and so often the noodles are made with eggs as well. So unless you're making it yourself, good luck!
I was quite thrilled when I found out that one of Amy's bazillion lasagna varieties was vegan, so I snatched it up, eager to try! Almost everything I've had from the Amy's brand has been pretty awesome, but I can be pretty leery of gluten free goods, so how does this lasagna stack up? Let's find out!
Buying. This entree should be priced the same as any other Amy's entree, around $3-5. I found this particular lasagna at Fred Meyer for $3.49. Any store that carries a good selection of Amy's products, particularly the dairy free and/or gluten free stuff should hopefully have it.
If you're willing to buy online, I found it at Vegan Essentials, but it's almost $7 before you even add the cost of ice packs and shipping.
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| Still frozen out of the box. |
Packing & Prep. It comes packaged the same as pretty much all the Amy's entrees: inside the cardboard box, it's in a cardboard tray with a plastic overwrap.
The directions printed on the box give us the option of heating in the microwave for just a few minutes, or almost an hour in a regular/toaster over. Do I look like the sort of person who wants to wait almost an hour for this?! Heck no! In the microwave it goes!
Microwave preparation did leave it slightly burned around the edges, but it's nothing to worry about.
Nutrition. The ingredients can be simplified thusly: rice pasta, veggies, Daiya shreds (which contain titanium dioxide - boo!), tofu, olive oil, a little more veg & seasonings. On the whole, not too terrible, between the pasta and Daiya though, it is a fairly processed dish.
This entree is 320 calories, less than half from fat, not too bad. It's 14g of fat overall, and 3g are the saturated variety. There is a lot of added fat in this dish, thanks mostly to the Daiya. It's got 680mg of sodium which is a bit higher than I would prefer as well.
It also has 3g of fiber and 9g of protein, which is decent but nothing to get excited about.
Overall, it's not a particularly healthy dish. Then again, I don't really expect something like lasagna to be healthy. I pulled up info on a similar, non-veg variety from a well known name brand for comparison sake, hoping that Amy's would at least be better than that, and it sadly wasn't really much better.
Tasting. It does look tasty, doesn't it? I was even hoping to show off a nice cross-section view of it, with all it's filling, but... shortly after I took the photo of the heated entree, I ended up dropping it on the floor! :( I did manage to salvage a decent enough portion for tasting purposes, thankfully.
This lasagna, along with so many other dishes that Amy's offers, is really damn good! I loved it! Even with the top few layers missing, it was plenty tasty. The tomato sauce is rich and flavorful, the layers of pasta are crammed with spinach and zucchini. The bits of tofu added a pleasant, "meaty" chewiness throughout. There was just enough Daiya (I think I lost most of it on the floor though) to make it cheezy without being overpowering.
The flavors and textures are well balanced. You can't even really tell that it's gluten free, rice pasta makes for an excellent stand-in to the semolina variety.
Final Notes. Amy's website. This lasagna was quite delicious, I would very much buy it again. Personally, I'm not too terribly concerned about nutritional negatives on this, since I don't really think of lasagna as a healthy food to begin with. I only hope that the next time I get it that I get to eat all of it!
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