If I Had a Million Dollars, We Wouldn't Have to Eat Kraft Dinner (as the Canadians call it)

...but we would....we would just buy more expensive ketchup to go with it, say the Barenaked Ladies.

I'll raise your fancy ketchup and see you two cups of cashews to multiply the cost of "Kraft dinner" eightfold.

My friend and former California running buddy (who finished a half-marathon at the Wild Animal Park and is to be commended!) Jessica Antoniades found this recipe for a cashew-based faux cheese sauce in a back issue of the cookbook put out by the Pacific Beach Food Coop (or some other such name...I probably have it entirely wrong, since I never visited it myself, sadly).  It called for a few ingredients that are in a faux alfredo I saw in another cookbook and thought a mashup might be in order, but I have a strict cooking pact with my hubs that I will not fiddle with a recipe until I try it *as written* and I tried this one as written today.  It came out fairly well, but it will need tinkering.

In the interest of this post's longevity, we will call this Vegan Mac With Pantry Staples because most people probably have a lot of this stuff in the cupboard already, if they cook much.

Here is what the recipe (as written in the coop cookbook) calls for:
WARNING:  CONTAINS NUTS.  (With the saucy title of this post and the recipe, the inclusion of nuts thing isn't super clear so there it is in all caps.)

3 cups macaroni (cooked al dente, however your pasta box directs you)
1 large red bell pepper (I'll admit:  I didn't have one, so I left it out;  I imagine it would have mellowed the pickley tang of the next ingredient...
1.5 tsp turmeric (the great panacea which has the added benefit of naturally turning this confection Super Cheez Whiz orangey yellow)
2 cups cashews (Trader Joes has a bag of Raw Cashew Bits and Pieces that is two cups precisely, to make this simple)
2.25 cups water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tbsp sunflower oil (I only had sunflower seeds on hand, so I used those)
1 teaspoon onion power (not something I have around so I just threw in a quarter of a small onion)
1.5 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
(Hubs might be a tad disappointed with all the substitutions)

For topping if you choose to bake in the oven:  2 cups breadcrumbs

If you are going to bake this up, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  You can cook your macaroni while the over preheats.
Whiz everything but the pasta in a blender.  We have a fairly large blender, and it filled the whole thing;  the volume of the sauce is about 1 quart.  I turned on the blender and busied myself with other things;  you want to give it time to get smooth.

When the pasta is done, drain it.  Combine the sauce with the pasta in an 8x8' baking dish, cover an bake for 45 minutes.  Uncover and top with breadcrumbs and bake for 5 more minutes.

I made the sauce and poured it directly on raw julienned zuchini "noodles" and warmed it in the microwave and it was great.  I think the red pepper would have added more depth to the flavor.  I want to experiment putting some nutritional yeast flakes in,  too;  they have a cheezy flavor sans fromage.  Expect that as part of my next tinkering.

If you try this, post and tell me how it turned out!

My Apologies to Jesus, My Accountabilabuddy

Dear Jesus,

I know you know I have been coming over to one of your branch locations in Natick lately.  At my uncle's funeral, I connected the dots and found the man who was wearing the glow necklace, talking to my dad about my grandfather's death.  It's a great story, but it's a little off-topic at the moment.  I've been at his church for the past several weeks, in case you were worried I was signing in to the wrong homeroom.

Back to focus.  First of all, I must confess that I have sinned against you, as we say we at mass together "by what [I] have done and by what [I] have left undone."  I have left this project undone.  I am truly sorry, and I humbly repent, but I also MUST explain.

You see, we moved back home to Massachusetts, and that was quite an undertaking.  I won't get into the gory details.  You are omniscient.  You have license to see these things as you want to see them.  You must have been as bored as an editor who watches installed camera footage for a lesser-scripted reality TV show, much as you love every sheep in your flock.  You know it was a lot of shuffling boxes and getting dirty and yelling at movers for various transgressions (which I asked for you to forgive at the time;  I hope those applications are moving through the absolution review process swiftly but one couldn't actually pick up the stuff and the other wouldn't let me check my inventory-I think it was fairly righteous anger).

Anyway, since Easter was mostly synched to pagan holidays as a way of making the conversion process more natural (if the history I have been told is to be believed), I was hoping I could get a do-over and devote the NEXT 40 days to the project.

I have a recipe some friends are interested in seeing, and I am going to send them here to find it and we can renew our commitment.

What do you say?

Much Love,
Abby

P.S.  I am reading Living Biblically for One Year right now and really learning a lot from it about the origins of our traditions.  Faaacinating.