DAY 39.

DAY 39!! Tomorrow is Easter so today is my last day of lent. I roasted some veggies today. They were really yummy and super simple to cook. I had some extra blue potatoes and just various veggies in my fridge.

I first chopped up my potatoes (blue & yellow), asparagus, broccoli and mushrooms.



Then I spread out all the veggies onto a baking sheet and drizzled it with olive oil and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I tossed all the veggies to make sure that everything was thoroughly coated.



Then I baked them at 425 for 20 minutes then lowered the heat to 350 for an additional 5-10 minutes or until the potatoes were cooked through.



This is SO easy to make and can be eaten as a side dish to pasta or with chicken, steak or fish for those of you non-vegans. :)




Today (tonight actually) I also made some vegan mac&cheese because I wanted to use the last of my daiya cheese shreds. When I first started looking for vegan recipes I stumbled across a lot of different recipes for vegan macaroni and cheese. I red the recipe and realized that I had all the ingredients to I decided to make it.

I got the recipe from this blog. The ingredients were as follows:

1 lb macaroni
1 Tbsp Earth Balance or other vegan butter
1 Tbsp flour
2 cups unsweetened soy milk
salt and pepper
2 cups Daiya shreds, plus 1/2 cup for the top
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp smoked paprika (optional)

Being fully stocked with vegan ingredients, I happened to have everything on hand. I also cut this recipe in half because I only cook for myself. Nobody every wants to try my vegan food lol!



I ended up using brown rice pasta. I cooked the pasta until it was soft enough and drain and rinsed the pasta. I put it into a buttered (Earth Balance soy butter) pan. Then I mixed most of the cheese with the pasta saving a little for the top.



On the stove-top I melted butter, added pepper and salt to taste and then added the flour to make a roux. Once the butter and flour were cooked I added the soymilk stirring constantly with a whisk to avoid clumps. I boiled this mixture and stirred until it became a thick cream.



I took this cream mixture and poured it over the pasta and daiya cheese mixture in the pan.



I mixed all of it until everything was coated in the cream sauce mixture. The recipe calls for panko bread-crumbs but I used whole grain ritz crackers (crushed) because that's what I had on hand. I topped the mixture with my bread-crumbs and the remaining cheese.



I baked this at 350 for 30 minutes. It browned nicely.



This probably would have turned out better if I used a different pasta. Brown rice pasta tends to be more chewy and has a lot of starch when you cook it. Also, I probably should have seasoned with more salt because it came out bland. When I looked at the reviews online, a lot of people said that the extra salt to taste was unnecessary because the daiya cheese is already salty. I think I'll try making this again someday with my modifications. Even still I think it turned out okay.



YAY! DAY 39 COMPLETE!!