Vine tomatoes, big juicy-bright-orange, but firm were on sale, so I thought I'd make a tomato sauce, and a vegetarian lasagna for dinner.  Also bought spinach, although spinach doesn't normally go into lasagna, but what's the point of being a cook if you can't use bright ideas from time to time, a little something out of the ordinary.  Spinach, after all, goes very well with ricotta cheese, and I figured I'd layer the spinach over the ricotta.

First, the chopped jalapeno, garlic cloves and onion in a little olive oil.  And then in went the chopped tomatoes, green bell pepper, celery and carrot.  And I let the tomato sauce, with the addition of tomato paste and a little bit of water, simmer for a few hours while we went off to enjoy a lovely mid-spring ramble in the woods.  Oregano and basil made their entrance into the sauce somewhat later.

I used whole-wheat pasta, and sliced lots of aged white cheddar cheese, and began the layering process an hour or so before dinnertime.  This was to be a collaborative affair, my husband planned to whip up some vanilla ice cream, and we'd have that with the date squares left over from Friday's dessert.  When my vegetarian-loving brother and sister-in-law arrived, driving straight from Point Pelee, dinner awaited them.

We first had a small mixed-vegetable salad; baby carrots, snow peas, red bell pepper, cocktail tomatoes, lettuce and avocado.  The meal, accompanied by an animated conversation of birds heard and seen, and reunion with old university peers from 35 years back who just coincidentally happened also to be there that week-end, along with members of the Nature Conservancy made this a little trip my brother hugely valued.

As for us, we could report seeing a phoebe (fly-catcher) in the ravine during our walk, the same bright, perky little bird that has returned to the very same spot in the woodland where we've seen it for the past three years.