pasta so easy it hurts!

We’re leaving for vacation on Saturday so I’m trying to use the food in the house and not make too many grocery purchases before we go. I hate wasting food and I also realized how much mula we’ll be spending in San Francisco, so I’ve had to get a little creative in the kitchen with the little bit that I have on hand. This means pasta–because pasta is cheap, fast, easy, and you don’t need much to make it pretty delicious.

I experimented with adding nutritional yeast to a quick “buttered” noodles recipe last night. It was so yummy that I replicated the pasta again tonight, this time adding broccoli (I was low on veggies the night before and the pasta was really missing something without the veg component!)

Vegan Buttered Noodles with Nooch
Serves 2-3

Whole wheat shells ( about 1/3 of a standard box of pasta)
1-2 tbsp Earth Balance
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tbsp oregano
1 tsp garlic powder
1-2 tsp coarse ground black pepper
salt to taste
1 crown broccoli (or whatever veggies you feel like adding–zucchini comes to mind as a great alternative)

Prepare pasta per box instructions. I steamed my broccoli in the microwave while the pasta was cooking but you could stirfry your veggies with a bit of oil just as well. After straining pasta, add broccoli, earth balance and stir until melty. Add seasonings, stir, and voila!

This meal takes literally no time and requires no preparation whatsoever. It’s so simple, so easy, so cheap, and so good. My boyfriend, who previously thought that nutritional yeast smelled not unlike feet, thought this was fantastic…and I did too!

shnoodles, minus the broccoli. without the veggies, it looks a little like a fancier version of mac ‘n cheese

shnoodles WITH broccoli. ah…much better

What’s your go-to pasta recipe?

pasta, pasta, pasta!

I’ve been eating a ridiculous amount of pasta the past two days. Carbo overload! Yesterday’s chickpea piccata turned into today’s lunch, and then I borrowed ANOTHER recipe from Turning Veganese–vegan alfredo! So yummy and satisfying. And super bizarre that the protein content of the recipe all resided in the sauce. I’m still getting used to these vegan oddities.

Super delicious and I’ll be eating another heaping serving for lunch tomorrow. It’s a good thing I’m still keeping up with my workout routine or else I’d have to feel really guilty about all the pasta I’ve been consuming!

I also rewarded myself when I got home from my workout with a beer (yikes, that’s a bad habit). I need to start looking up calories BEFORE finishing the beer because man oh man, my beer was 200 cals! At least I only had one. And at least the UFO Hefeweizen I consumed was vegan (I think), which I was unsure of since I couldn’t locate it on Barnivore. I went straight to the source and visited the Harpoon website, which had this to say:

3. Is Harpoon beer suitable for vegans and vegetarians?

Yes, the only animal products used in beer production is isinglass (which is a dried swim bladder of a tropical fish from the Sea of China) or gelatin. These products are used typically in the production of ‘cask’ ales, the unfiltered ones served through a beer engine at bars that cater to beer connoisseurs. They’re very, very rarely used otherwise, although some brewers will use them to prepare a particularly hazy beer for filtration. At Harpoon, we never use either for our regularly produced beers.

So I don’t know… the beer WAS unfiltered, and they’re saying they don’t use isinglass/gelatin, but I suppose this statement could be open to interpretation. And, shucks, my favorite beers are the unfiltered ones. I don’t like the sound of this. 😦

I have a little bit of silken tofu left over from the sauce I made, and since I’ve never used the stuff before tonight, I’m saving it so I can experiment with smoothies this weekend! I already made my smoothie for tomorrow’s breakfast (I make my smoothie when I get home, freeze until I go to bed, then stick in the fridge and it’s the perfect temperature and consistency when I drink it at 6:30 am!) but I’ll see what I can whip up on Saturday morning in the smoothie department. I’m warming to the magic bullet, especially after the success of the alfredo sauce this evening. I’ve found that the kale in my smoothie combination blends really well if I give it time, but I’ve been adding blueberries the past two days and the blueberry skins never really blend. Ah well. It’s just fiber. 🙂