pasta Archives - Page 3 of 4

Mac & Cheese

Apparently I can’t stop with the Daiya. I swear they aren’t paying me. Or even sending me free cheese. I’m not opposed to that though. 😀

How is it that there are so many styles of vegan mac & cheese that are so freakin’ good? You have ones based on nutritional yeast, cashews, whatever magic Soul Vegetarian puts in theirs, etc. So I had to see how Daiya would do. And the answer is, quite well thank you very much. Because I’m lazy, I used this recipe. I still had some lunch meat log so I chopped that up in place of the veggie ham. I also made a half batch so I wouldn’t be eating nothing but mac & cheese for two weeks, not that there’s anything wrong with that. When making it, I went with the lower amount of soy milk and I think I would like it saucier so next time I’ll try the higher amount at least. The taste was spot on though. I say this as someone that hasn’t eaten cheese in years, but I have been through a ton of vegan mac & cheeses and this one seems to hit closest to the blue box kind. I’d love to get the opinion of an omni or vegetarian on Daiya.

Seriously, how 70s does this plate look?

Lemony Cashew-Basil Pesto on Pasta

Last night I whipped out this recipe from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. You can find the recipe here. I admit that I drizzled in a couple more tablespoons of olive oil, but it still has way less than a standard pesto recipe. And doesn’t it look like Spring? Yeah, I know basil is a Summer thing, but work with me here. Also, I only used half of the pesto on half a pound of pasta. The rest I froze in a bucket for an even quicker meal some time in the future.

Date Night Food

Friday night we had a nice date night that started with Cafe Sunflower and then was followed by the symphony. We started with pear in a wine sauce with endive. No picture because I forgot. It was refreshing though. I had the ravioli with butternut squash (I think) and tofu ricotta. They’ve switched from using regular ricotta which rocks!

And Kevin got the lemon chicken.

Oh, and we split a piece of strawberry cake. But I was too interested in tearing into it to take a picture.

I’ve had pretty consistently good food at Cafe Sunflower over the years. My only complaint has been trying to find the hidden non-vegan items. But the server this night asked us right off if we were vegan and then gave us the whole rundown of the menu and what we could and couldn’t get or substitutions that could be made. Other vegetarian restaurants should take note if they’d like to gain the trust of vegans.

VeganMofo Droppings

Even though I had my camera stolen and essential didn’t post the last week while preparing for the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival, I still somehow managed to get in more than 20 VeganMofo posts. Go me!

Anyway, I have a couple of posts in me to catch up. This one will be the random assortment of food pics I took.

This was a quickie dinner thanks to the cheezy sauce I blogged about before.

Cheezy pasta & green beans with garlic bread

This lovely grill thali from Madras Chettinaad was a tasty break from baking for the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. By the way, this is one of my go to restaurants for mixed veg/non-veg company.

I had some pumpkin in the freezer that I’d roasted and some home made stock, so I thought a pumpkin soup would be a good way to use some of that up. I started with this recipe, veganized it and skipped the cream/honey part at the end altogether. Also, a lot of the comments complained about it being bland, so I added a teaspoon of cayenne, a tablespoon of cumin and used ground cloves instead of whole so I wouldn’t have to try and fish them out later. The whole teaspoon of cayenne made it pretty spicy, so go lighter or skip it if you’re not into that. Monday night we ate this with grilled teese sammiches, but I failed to take a pic. So here it is with the pj&j as I ate it tonight. If I wasn’t lazy, I’d type this up in a nice new recipe, but I am, so there.

Oh, there’s more coming. A whole pile of Boston pics and another fabulous vegan potluck.

Cheezy Soy Curls and Broccoli Pasta

I’m not very good at throw together dinners unless it’s something like veggies, fake meat & mashed potatoes. Every week, I go through my cookbooks, pick things to make, make a list, go to the farmer’s market once and call it good. Kevin is a lot more free-form when it comes to cooking at home. I usually handle those details, but last night Kevin brought over some Soy Curls and Chik-Style Seasoning and said “I want to use these.”

Hmm…okay. I had planned a pasta with beets and I didn’t think the Soy Curls would go very well. So we switched things up. Kevin was in charge of the Soy Curls. He followed the directions for using the Chik seasoning with them. I remembered seeing a cheezy sauce I wanted to try so made that up. And then I boiled up the tri-color rotini I had along with some frozen broccoli. It all came together fairly quickly and turned out super yummy! And bonus, I now have cheezy sauce powder that I can mix up quickly at some future date. Yay!

Kevin always makes his food look better on the plate than I do. And you know, we both augmented the drizzled cheezy sauce with piled on cheezy sauce. Yum!