Spaghetti with Vegan Alfredo Sauce and "Meat"balls

 Dammit these photos suck. My constant plight: do I make the food and then spend hours getting the right shot? Or do I eat it while it's still hot, in the company of friends, and bad lighting? Certainly for this meal I went with the latter.

I'm not vegan, but there is something I absolutely love about making something when you have restrictions. I had vegan friend for dinner, so I went all out. We made some kale salad, too, and had homemade peanut-butter cups for dessert (just buy vegan chocolate). The crowning glory was this pasta dish. The alfredo gains its creaminess largely from cashews, which are often substituted in place of dairy. The meatballs were fabulous. They benefited from putting a whole lot of flavors in. The great thing about vegan food is there's often a lot less cooking. The alfredo is raw: all you have to do is put everything in the blender! And the balls you just mix together, form, and bake. It was a really great meal. The one thing I would warn is don't go into this looking for the glory or taste of traditional, mother's alfredo or meatballs. It's a beast of its own accord.

Pasta with Vegan Alfredo Sauce and "Meat"balls
makes 4-6 servings
adapted from Vegan Yum Yum and My Vegan Cookbook

for meatballs
(note: sorry I haven't added in instructions for the lentil and brown rice! I'm a bit of a freak and I often have them leftover in my fridge and I'm too lazy to add cooking instructions right now. Neither should take too long though, especially if you use a pressure cooker.)

1/2 cup cooked lentils
1 cup cooked brown rice
1/4 cup old fashioned oats
1/4 cup wheat germ
2 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsps olive oil
2 tsps lemon juice
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp chili powder (optional)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
2 tsps molasses
2 tsps dijon mustard

Preheat oven to 300 F.

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. If mixture isn't sticking enough, add a little water. 

Measure out 2 tablespoons of mixture for each meatball if you want them big, or 1 if you want them mini (like I did) and roll into a ball with your hands. 

Spray cooking sheet and place meatballs on it. Place into oven and cook 15 minutes on one side and roll over and cook 15 minutes on the other side. 

After they are out of the oven, let stand for about 10 minutes to allow them to firm up. They may crumble a bit, but that's ok. They still taste great in bits.

for alfredo sauce

1 cup soymilk
1/3 cup raw, unsalted cashews
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
3 tbsps soy sauce (low-sodium is best)
2 tbsps earth balance buttery spread
1 tbsps tahini
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tsps dijon mustard
1/2 tsp paprika
1 sprinkle nutmeg
4 cloves garlic, crushed with the back of a knife
black pepper, to taste

Add all the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth. Strain if you want really smooth, but I personally like the crunchy cashew bits. Adjust flavoring as you see fit.

for spaghetti

2 lbs spaghetti
boiling water

Cook pasta in boiling water until al dente, 8-10 minutes (or whatever the box says) and drain.

assembly
In a large serving bowl, add hot pasta and alfredo sauce. Mix thoroughly, then throw in meatballs. Serve!

Original Kale Chips (Sweet and Tangy)

Wait. What? You've never had kale chips? Have I not explained the immense deliciousness and nutritional goodness of kale many times before? Kale chips are better than potato chips, in every sense of the word. They're crunchy, salty, curly, and a hint bitter. And you can eat twenty billion and still feel very, very healthy.
Original flavor stars cashews, red peppers, and nutritional yeast. Nutritional yeast has protein and is low fat, and tastes kind of creamy. It comes in yellow flakes that I sprinkle on many things. My granola, pasta, salads... It's yummy. To start this recipe off, you soak the cashes. (This recipe is raw vegan; raw cashews! Though if you don't really care, you can cheat and use roasted, and while I dehydrate the chips at a temperature that still counts as raw level, one can use an oven instead. More on that later.)

The next step is to blend all the other ingredients together to make the sauce.
And, after a serious destemming of the kale and a generous tossing of the sauce, you bake the chips up.
Believe me, this jar was full and I had extra before this picture was taken. I was too busy eating to take any pictures until much after. This again happened with my next batch, lemon-tahini flavor, so I don't think I can post it until I've made a new batch.

 In short, these chips were the bomb. Make them a day before you want them, though, because you have to soak the cashews and de-stem the kale (an awful  momentous task) and, if you're using a dehydtrator, dehydrate all night.

Kale Chips
adapted from love veggies and yoga
makes a real lot, but gets all eaten scarily fast.


note: while I dehydrated these chips, keeping them raw vegan and, I think, giving them that great powdery crunch, you can quite easily adapt this for a normal oven. Bake at 300 F for 20 minutes, flip, and continue for 10 more. Or experiment on your own. The lower the temperature for the longer gets you closer to dehydrator results.


1 medium bunch kale (size varies from bunch to bunch; this recipe works with any size)
1 cup cashews (soaked for at least one hour)
1 medium red bell pepper
juice of half a lemon (2 Tbsp)
1/4 cup (or more) nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt

Wash and destem kale. Put aside.

Chop the pepper and drain the cashews. Add to blender with the lemon, nutritional yeast, and salt. Blend until smooth.

Toss sauce with kale, which should have a fairly thick, uneven coating. You may have extra sauce, which you can put aside and use as dip or for other uses. I'm also someone who loves the bites with an explosion of flavor, so I do a very thick coating.

Put on dehydrator screens (or baking pans if using an oven) and dehydrate at 145 F for 2 hours, and then 118 F for 6 hours-overnight. The longer, the crunchier. If you feel up to it, flip with two hours remaining.

Keeps for over a month in an airtight container, if you can refrain from devouring them all for that long.