mac & cheese & nachos!

A vegan cheese sauce used two ways.

This recipe offers a great "alternative" (rather than substitution) to some "cheesy" favorites. While it looks like  the real deal and the finished flavor was remarkably similar, the ingredients were pretty surprising. Made up entirely of "whole foods"like potatoes, carrots and red pepper, we used Veggie's Don't Bite's Ultimate Cheese Sauce (adding a little more garlic, mustard and nutritional yeast, then thinning it out with some almond milk and Earth Balance).

People interested in a plant-based diet often ask how it's possible give up cheese. Eliminating cheese lacked the intense moral implications associated with straight meat (I know they're still there, but it's different), and the taste was always something I liked. In the end I found taking an apples and oranges approach was the best method. When I tried to simply substitute cheese with faux alternatives I was left disappointed (or worse, repulsed). It wasn't until I switched out cheese for something entirely different that it began to be easy.

This cheese sauce has some of the flavors and essence of the real deal--the textures and look as well as the zip of cheese, but it's also entirely satisfying on a different level. Tortilla chips covered with fresh cilantro,  homemade beans, diced avocado, tomatoes, pickled jalapenos, fresh onions and of course, cheese sauce, made this far heartier than any traditional take on nachos.

We used fresh Farmer's Market yellow beans and thinned the sauce with almond milk and a little Earth Balance to give it more of a "nacho cheese" sauce-feel.

And it made for a perfect baked mac and cheese--we used quinoa pasta and finished it by tossing in raw broccoli and crumbled bread crumbs and melted Earth Balance  in a casserole dish and baking at 350 for about 25 minutes (Tip: we suggest covering with foil for the first 15 minutes and removing for the last 10 to brown the bread crumbs to avoid drying out the cheese sauce). A garnish of cashew cheese made it as decadent as the traditional counterpart and just as filling. The broccoli steamed nicely, the bread crumbs browned--delicious.

Of course adult-friendly recipes don't always make the transition into kid-world. My incredibly picky three-year old took one look at the sauce and informed me she only likes crumbled parmesan (she's the only non-vegan in our household, but that's her choice to make if she ever wants to). She ate quinoa pasta with a little olive oil and steamed broccoli, and of course, her parmesan.