Mac & Cheeze

Growing up, I loved macaroni & cheese. My mom made a really good casserole with fresh pieces of ham and Ritz cracker crumb topping. For the last 4 years of my wonderful, fun-filled marriage, macaroni & cheese has also been a staple. When I don't really feel like cooking but know Cody won't settle for just a sandwich, I make macaroni & cheese. It's so great because you can really get creative. Throw in tuna fish, peas, green chile (now that we're in New Mexico), and whatever else you need to get out of the fridge. Alas, those days have been over for me for a while.

Not anymore, my friends! The beautiful women of How It All Vegan! have brought this tasty meal back into my life! I found a recipe for Easy Breazy Cheezy Sauce that I made for a fondue party a while back. It was quite cheezy, so I decided to make some and mix it over some shell pasta that I had in the pantry. With a little bit of Frank's Red Hot on top, it was perfect and made leftovers for days!



Mac & Cheeze
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 10 minutes

1 box pasta of your choice
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
3 tbsp flour
4 tsp arrowroot powder or cornstarch (I used cornstarch)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup water
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp dijon mustard

1. In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook to desired texture.

2. In a small saucepan, whisk together the yeast, flour, arrowroot powder (or cornstarch), and salt. Add the water and oil and continue to whisk thoroughly. Stir over medium heat until sauce becomes thick, then stir in the mustard. Heats for 30 seconds more and serve.

That's it!!! Can you eve believe how simple that is?? Now let's take a look at it's nutritional value...I'm going to do a little comparison for you so you can see the nutritional value of THIS mac & cheeze vs. the blue box of mac & cheese.

Here is the nutritional value for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese...


...and here we have vegan Mac & Cheeze.


I would like to point out a few things:
Serving Size is a bit larger for my mac & cheeze...
The calorie count is lower...
The saturated fat is lower...
The sodium...holy crap, is the sodium lower...
The cholesterol is higher, but that's because nutritional yeast contains HDL, which if you know your stuff, is the good cholesterol that reduces LDL, the bad cholesterol...
The iron count is a lot higher, too, but the the vitamins are a tad on the lower side.

Which would you rather eat or feed to your munchkins?