Dairy free Lasagna

If you are a real lover of dairy products and foods which include milk products and can pack away the cheese and ice cream without even the slightest hiccup or tummy discomfort ... then you might just want to pass this post right on by.

I am not one of those people mentioned above. Well, I do love dairy products and I laughed at the commercial on tv about the woman who had to take a 'Lactaid' pill in order to enjoy her dish of ice cream while I shoveled a cheese sandwich and a bowl of cottage cheese into my mouth for lunch and topped it off with one or maybe two 16 oz caramel lattes. Hahahahah ... I would HATE to be one of those lactose intolerant people! I love this stuff too much!

A year later - I became one of those people. It's so bad for me that I'm not just lactose intolerant, I have an actual milk allergy - so there's no sneaking just a little and then popping a Lactaid to make it all okay. I just simply can not eat milk products - ever. It's been ten years now and the non dairy products out there have really improved over over the years and are quite tasty but there still really isn't a good substitute for some things like cottage cheese, macaroni and cheese ( a good one ) and real caramel.

My husband bought me this book called " Dairy Free Cookbook" by Jane Zukin when I first discovered what was making me so ill. It has been extremely helpful and over the years I've just experimented with different things to make recipes better without the milk or cheese. Lasagna was always my favorite food and I'd request it for every birthday dinner - it's also no good without the cheese. Until now! I've made several over the last 10 years, trying different things to substitute the taste and texture of cheese and I finally got a good one!

We have 3 lactose intolerant sisters, a few cousins, a few friends who are as bad off as I am and one brother in denial. This recipe is posted here for them! Enjoy!

Ingredients: 9 Lasagna noodles. 2 Jars or 2 16 oz cans of your favorite pasta sauce, homemade or store bought. 1 lb. Ground Italian sausage. 1/4 cup ketchup. 1/3 bag of tortilla chips. Soy Sour Cream. ( Usually found in the refrigerated case at your store where the soy milk and vegan, vegetarian meals are kept. ) Soy milk. White Cheddar cheese - aged over 2 years. ( Important! )

Boil the noodles, fry up the sausage, crunch all of the chips into tiny crumbles. Mix about 1 cup soy sour cream into a bowl with the tortilla chip crumbles, pour some soy milk into the chip mix and stir until it becomes like cottage cheese. Put some sauce on the bottom of your baking dish. Layer 3 noodles on top of small amount of sauce. Spread chip, sour cream, soy milk mix on top like photo above.

Layer 3 more noodles on top, then spread cooked sausage on top of that. You can grate a little aged cheddar into the sausage to bind it. Layer last 3 noodles on top and pour all sauce on top. Grate aged cheddar all over top. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 20 - 30 minutes. Note: Cheese that has been aged for longer than 18 months has lost most 0f the lactose in it so is okay for most lactose intolerant people to eat without any troubles. I and some others I know still have trouble with this age of cheese and need to use the cheeses aged for over 24 months. It is usually a bit more expensive but hey - if it's the only cheese you can eat??? If you can't eat soy products or don't like it there are also rice and almond substitutes for milk in the stores that will work just as well.