What Lent taught Nona about feeding the 5000

Every year , Lord forgive her, Nona dreaded the coming of Lent. She had gained a secret reputation for making lasagne at Lent! it was a secret shared between the women of the village who would come in like cats and hang by the back door and ask for "Lent Lasagne". Now as everyone knows there is no meat during Lent, and lasagne being lamb was doubly unthinkable, but what were the ladies to do to fill up their men folk with their favourite dish! And for years Nona had had the answer , the women of the village would, with Nona's help, do what was necessary to protect the immortal souls of their men folk , while still providing the dish they liked and so Lent in their little village would be free from hangry spats at the kitchen table.
However as Nona would be the first to admit , this little white lie came at quite a cost, and hence the regret, it was A LOT of cooking. Just making and drying all the pasta sheets , which though it only took a day , ended with kitchen impassable for all but Nona herself, on account of ribbons of pasta hanging everywhere. This made working on bechamel (another two days work) , assembling the 'ragu' nearly two more a job only Nona could work on. Then, when it finally came time to assemble everything, the ingredients were cold and so hard to work with. It all added up to Nona thinking of Lent with trepidation, she didn't even feel that she could confess her sin to the priest as he was , unwittingly, one of her customers , his house keeper had an understanding with Nona for as long as either of them could remember!
But it was while mulling over this problem two weeks before the ominous Lent preparations would normally have to begin Nona was having her hair done. Perhaps it was that her head was encased in a space age dryer and hair in rollers that caused the flash of inspiration to come to her! Nona was flicking through one of those glossy magazines , the sort with slips of girls lolling about in too few clothes in what passed for 'fashion', that her eye caught an article about how a fancy restaurant BOUGHT IN the ingredients for the sauces for which they were famous . Of course they didn't call it sauce they'd call it 'Jus' or some such foolishness. Nevertheless reading this was enough to make Nona nearly sit up and get a concussion, had she not had the presence of mind to restrain herself, her hair still in the contraption. This was perhaps heaven sent! - if it was good enough for Chez Bamboli's in the big city then it was surely good enough for her ladies.
As soon as her coiffuring was complete Nona was marching back to her kitchen, her 'do all aglow, and finding the name of the supplier in the phone book she placed an order for the finest (pre made) cough pasta sheets, and bechamel, all nut free and plant based. The helpful gentleman even suggested that if she might want to make the lentil ragu herself from pre-cooked lentils (who knew such a thing existed!) and tomato sauce as slow cooking this would be better and more cost effective.
Lent was never the same again, more time for prayer which is as it should be, and now Nona almost never makes her lasagne the old way , except for very special occasions , and the truth is no one notices!


Building Nona's Famous Plant-Based Lasagne: A Tale of Choices & Attestations

Here is a sketch of how we describe this using ECRL so that Nona, or anyone could have "Famous Plant-Based Lasagne." in its various configurations The process below outlines how she might decide on components, guided by her overarching Kitchen Policies and specific Constraint Sets for different situations (e.g., a special family dinner vs. a large batch for a Lenten village feast).