Mmm... looks deliciously cheesy, eh? Guess what? It's VEGAN!

Hello, lovely readers! One more day until Thanksgiving Break! You know what that means… time to complete assignments before making the two-hour haul in your beloved Volvo up to Grandma’s house for some yummy (vegan: well, in my case. Haha.) macaroni and cheese! (BTW: My favorite vegan macaroni and cheese is made by Soul Vegetarian.) My glands are salavating just thinking about it! Anyway, I will be sure to write a super elaborate post this evening… once I get off work and finish my homework. School first! Haha.

What do you have to do before leaving for Thanksgiving Break? Hopefully, not much.

Happy homework,

Dani

Lola Jones’ Kitchen

Fresh-Tasty-Diverse-Colorful-Nourishing-Nutritious Food!

We care about the community that we live in, our global community,

and feeding our sacred bodies nourishing food!

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”  -    Gandhi

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights.  That is the way of a whole human being.”  – Abraham Lincoln

“The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.” – Deepak Chopra

“Creating peace, one plate at a time.” – Lola Jones

“A truly hungry person eats, but does so with full knowledge

of what theyare eating and feeding their bodies, inside out.”

- Lola Jones

For questions about catering or Lola Jones’ Kitchen projects, contact:  lolajoneskitchen@gmail.com

As the summer is winding down and the leaves are just starting to change, its time for some comfort food! This week’s Vegan Recipe of the Week is Vegan Mac and Cheese! This delightful dish can be served along side end of summer BBQ’s such as Labor Day and can carry over to the cooler months as some nice warm comfort! So end this summer right with the classic American dish, gone vegan! Enjoy the last of the summer days.

Vegan Mac and Cheese

1 Package of Organic Macaroni Pasta
2 Cups of Soy Milk (or other non dairy milk)
1 Cup Nutritional Yeast
1 Cup of Water
1/4 Cup Flour
2 Tbls Soy Sauce
1 Tbl Garlic Powder
1 Tbl Paprika
1/4 Tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/4 Tsp Salt
1/4 Tsp Black Pepper

First, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large pot, bring water to boil and cook pasta completely. While the pasta is cooking, place all other ingredients in a blender or food processor and mix completely. Drain the pasta and in a large casserole dish place the pasta in and pour the cheese sauce over it. Mix all ingredients together and bake for about 15 minutes or until the top of the dish is a little browned and crispy. If you would like to make the dish a little healthier try adding veggies such as broccoli, spinach, peas, or corn. If you’d like to add a little protein,  add some crumbled tofu or garbanzo beans. To top it off for that old fashioned feel, sprinkle vegan bread crumbs on top before baking. And finally to convert it into a “hamburger helper” style meal, add a package of Ground Round and BBQ sauce.

This recipe is adapted from Dreena Burton’s mac and cheese recipe using raw nuts as a base for the cream sauce. I know what you’re thinking. Gross. I thought that too, I promise. However, I decided I can’t really call something gross until I have actually had it on my tongue and been grossed out by it, so here goes.

I’m going to recommend that you use a bread crumb topping as it TOTALLY adds to the comfort food yumminess factor.

OH, and we all effing LOVED it. Aside from it needing a crapload of salt, it was creamy, dreamy goodness and I WILL be making it again. And it tastes nothing like cheese, so don’t kid yourself. But it was still a wonderful creamy sauce that I had been missing for some time now. Here’s the recipe with my adaptations. You may visit her website for the original.

Pasta:
10 ounces of whole wheat (or some other healthy-ish grain) dry elbow macaroni

Sauce:
1/2 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup raw brazil nuts (I thought these were going to be expensive, but I found them at Trader Joe’s pretty reasonable, along with the cashews. They have a whole nut wall, it’s pretty amazing.)
3 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 large clove garlic (I used 4 cloves of garlic. You can never have too much garlic!)
2 tsp arrowroot powder
1 tsp sea salt (Yeah…you may want to double this. Just sayin’…)
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1 cup water (Iused the pasta water from before I drained it. It helps to get the sauce to stick to the noodles. Ask Giada.)
1 1/2 cups plain non-dairy milk (I used rice milk, all my other non-dairy beverages are flavored with vanilla or chocolate.)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Breadcrumb Topping:
1 1/2 cups dry whole-grain breadcrumbs
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Get all ingredients ready to blend for sauce, then start cooking pasta. While pasta is cooking, blend all sauce ingredients in a blender. Begin blending the nuts and other ingredients with enough liquid to come just over the nuts mixture. Then, once it is smooth, add the rest of the liquid. Get it? This helps to make sure that your nuts are totally pureed. (Hehe Heh…your nuts are pureed. Ahem, anyway.) If you just put it all in together, you will get chunks of nuts and that’s not what we’re going for here. Think…creamy…smooth… You will still have itty bitty bits of nuts and that’s unavoidable, really.

Once pasta is almost tender, fully drain (don’t rinse). Pour noodles into 8×12 baking dish lightly sprayed with no-stick then pour sauce on top. Mix around a little if you want. (It will look like there is a lot of runny sauce – it will thicken up, fear not! trust the pasta!) Mix breadcrumb toppings in a small bowl, then sprinkle over top of casserole. Cover with foil and bake for 18 minutes. Then, remove foil cover and bake another 6 minutes or until topping is golden brown and crisped. Don’t overbake or sauce will get too thick. Remove from oven.

Serve! And don’t ask how much fat and all that crap is in there. If you’re vegan and you’ve been missing creamy sauces, just shut up and eat it. I like to put crushed red pepper on mine because I love things spicy. and not just a little heat, either. I want it to pretty much burn my face off as I’m eating it.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did! Until next time…

I was just about to publish this post when my internet closed the page unexpectadly and I lost the entire post. So here’s take two.

::shakes fist at WordPress::

Josh and I have been making seitan like nobody’s business lately. We use the seitan cutlets recipe from Veganomicon and then we cook it on the grill pan with some grill seasoning (tonight we used a garlic pepper grinder) and a little margarine. It makes it all moist and grilly and delicious.

My Nanna always likes to make “1-2-3″ dinners, which is “meat,” a starch like pasta or potatoes, and a vegetable. Josh and I have been making 1-2-3 dinners more than ever lately, now that we’ve been finding new ways to cook up seitan. Josh bought some steak sauce, which for me was a very different flavor then anything I’ve ever had, but as soon as he tasted it with the seitan he said it was almost scary how much it tasted like, well, you know. It almost looks like the real thing too, which is kind of eery.

We also ate brussel sprouts for the first time a few days ago. Brussel sprouts have such a bad reputation but I personally believe it’s all in the way you cook things. I bet the people who say they hate brussel sprouts probably steam them and throw some salt and pepper on them, if that. We opted to grill them with some olive oil and some grill seasoning, and we think brussel sprouts are absolutely delicious.

The parts that are really grilled taste a lot like cashews, and for us anything that tastes like cashews is going to be a new favorite food. So for anyone who thinks they don’t like brussel sprouts, try cooking them like this and you may decide you like them!

So another thing that my Nanna is famous for is her baked macaroni and cheese. She used to cut up veggie dogs into coins and bake them in with the macaroni, and it was always one of my family’s favorite recipes. That was actually the last non-vegan meal I ate. I thought I’d go out with a bang.
Josh and I have had a few different vegan macaroni and cheese dishes, and as so many of you know, it never really leaves you saying holy crap this is exactly what I’ve been missing. So we decided we’d take a crack at recreating Nanna’s baked macaroni and veggie dogs.

Now I haven’t had macaroni and cheese in almost 3 years (May 20th will be my 3 year vegan anniversary!), but this baked macaroni dish satisfied my cheesy cravings and Josh’s too (that says a lot right there). The veggie dogs gives it a little smokey flavor, and the bread crumbs on top get all golden brown and delicious…it’s just awesome.

This recipe will be in our recipe zine which is still in the works (no we haven’t forgotten about it!) so as soon as we finish that it’ll be for sale for like 5 bucks and then you can make this amazing macaroni every night like we do (well, almost every night).