Woohoo!

With this post, this blog will finally be up to date for the first time in months. Hooray! And there's no better way to celebrate this auspicious occasion than with what used to be one of my absolute most favoritest foods ever: macaroni and cheese.

My first try at macaroni and cheese since going vegan was Shells and Chreese from the box. It tasted like dirt.

My second attempt was the Traditional Macaroni and Cheez from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook. It was good, but it was the baked kind and what I really miss is the orange crap out of the box.

Most recently, I tried Fat Free Vegan's Easy Macaroni and Cheeze, which is supposed to replicate the orange crap out of the box. This tastes about 473829 times better than Shells and Chreese and is just as easy.



This is my kind of recipe: throw pasta in pot. While pasta is boiling, mix all other ingredients. Combine when pasta is done. The end!

We almost always have elbow macaroni in my house, so it didn't even occur to me to check before I went shopping. When it came time to make this, I saw I didn't have any crappy elbows so I made it with whole wheat fusilli instead. I didn't have any white miso and didn't want to buy a container of it so close to Passover (as it was, I had to buy tahini), so I just used extra salt.

Here's the awesome thing about this dish: I don't particularly like nutritional yeast. I totally don't like tahini. I don't even like mustard. Put all of them together in this recipe, and I like it! Go figure.

The cheese sauce was a little strong for me, though, so I chopped and steamed some broccoli and mixed it in with the macaroni and sauce. Broccoli makes everything better. Even a perfectly good macaroni and cheese recipe.

The bottom line: This doesn't really taste like macaroni and cheese, but it does taste good. Especially if you like nutritional yeast. If you're not crazy about nutritional yeast, but tolerate it, I think the ease of prep and the low-fatness make up for the noochiness, making this a definite repeat dish. I'm still hunting for The World's Best Vegan Macaroni and Cheese, but in the meantime, I've found one I can make on a regular basis.