Lotsa Pasta and Mmm Mmm Good Muffins!

This is a picture of the meal we ate this past Friday. It is a pasta with cheezy sauce adapted from the recipe for Fettucine Alfreda from VWAV. Two years ago, during the time I was pregnant, I used to make the Fettucine Alfreda recipe all the time. In fact, I think it was the first non-sweet thing I made from VWAV. It is definitely a very hearty and filling pasta dish and one that we thoroughly enjoy. When I revisited this recipe last week, I made some changes to suit both the ingredients I had on hand and what I thought my daughter might like taste-wise. Here is the recipe including my adaptations:

1 bag of Trader Joe’s Mulitgrain Fusilli Pasta with Flax (in my and my husband’s opinions, the best pasta available!)

1 bag of frozen organic broccoli, thawed in a pot of boiling water

Cheezy Sauce
2t olive oil
1t onion powder
4t minced garlic
1/2 cup water
1/2 t vegetable broth powder (I can’t remember the name of the brand!)
2t yellow mustard
2t Bragg’s
3/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 salt
a little bit of black pepper

I realize that I didn’t include the pine nuts called for in the VWAV recipe, but that’s because I didn’t have any. I’m sure some pine nuts or cashews would only make this sauce taste better!

I put all the cheezy sauce ingredients into my blender and whirred them together until well-mixed. I then poured the mixture into a small saucepan and simmered it over medium heat. The sauce thickened up just a little bit, so I took about two tablespoons of the boiling pasta water to thin it out. When the pasta was cooked, I drained it, put it back in the pot I cooked it in, added in the broccoli and poured the sauce all over the pasta and broccoli and mixed them around until they were well-covered.

I served the pasta along with some mashed squash I had quickly made:

1/2 kabocha squash
1t Earth Balance
1/2t cinnamon
salt to taste
almond milk or other milk as needed

Put the kabocha squash face down on a microwave-safe plate. Microwave on high for 3 minutes or until the squash is soft. Remove the squash from its peel (let the squash cool down a few minutes first) and put the squash in a bowl. Add in the EB, cinnamon and salt and mash it all together using a potato masher. Add in almond milk until the mashed squash is your desired consistency.

This was a fabulous meal and an easy one to pull together on a Friday night. The cheezy sauce was a quick alternative to the actual (and very delicious) VWAV recipe. The squash was as sweet as can be and I can’t wait to make some more mashed squash with the other squashes I’ve received recently in my CSA veg box.

My daughter didn’t like this meal and I think I’m going to try to stop giving her pasta with nooch-based sauces for a while. She’s a dairy cheese girl through and through – at least for now. On that same note, a HUGE THANK YOU!!!! to everyone who left comments and advice yesterday regarding the challenges I’ve had with feeding my daughter. I have a new perspective on the situation now and some new ideas to consider. She ate a weekend’s worth of food at my Mom’s house yesterday and ate half of the cheese ravioli with marinara sauce I gave her for dinner last night, which pleased me very, very much!

Lastly, I just want to give a shout out to Celine for coming up with the best peanut butter muffin recipe ever. The recipe is INCREDIBLE and I encourage everyone to give these muffins a try! Her recipe yielded about 16 mini muffins for me. Here’s a pic:

Edit: Not that you all haven’t seen it before, but I keep forgetting to put up the logo for VeganMoFo.  Here it is and this post was my Tuesday contribution to all the MoFo-ness.