Vegan Mac n Cheese

Hello everyone!

The finals are over, and you know what that means!!! I have time to cook!!!

I'm not vegan, and I'm not gluten free.  Also, mac n cheese is definitely not one of my favorite dish esin the world... I know.. how could I not like this All-American dish?! but anyway, I stumbled upon this recipe from Minimalist Baker, and it just seemed so interesting!  I mean, cheese sauce made of eggplant?  How cool is that? and the photos looked so good!!  So I decided to try it out  =)

Even though I grew up eating the Korean eggplant, I have yet to successfully incorporate the American kind into my cooking...  It always catches my eye though when I'm in the grocery store, and I was glad for a chance to actually go ahead and grab it and take it home this time ;)

I also grabbed some brown rice pasta because,, well, it's made of rice.  so it can't be bad, right?  haha

Oh, and I had to get nutritional yeast, and boy that was an adventure.  Who would've thought Trader Joe's would not have nutritional yeast!  I mean, that sounded like something TJ's would definitely have!  Danielle was helping me locate it, and eventually, we had to go to Whole Foods to find it, but find it we did!

The recipe is not too complicated, but it did take an hour and a half or so to make... I think it might have been because it took FOREVER to caramelize the onions, but it was totally worth it!

mmmmmmmm   so. yummy.

all I had to do for the eggplant is slice it, salt it, broil it, and peel it!  I may have eaten a few just roasted like this before I could peel  it...  and it was glorious. 

I followed the recipe pretty closely, so I won't reprint it.  just check it out here, but I did make a few changes, of course ;)

For one, I added fresh garlic (2-3 cloves) to the sauce before putting it through the blender, and I loved the taste.

and instead of leaving the pasta like this,,

I added kale and baked it for 10 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees!

The resulting dish was surprisingly good!  As a kale lover, I loved the added texture and flavor that the kale gave to the dish, and I have to say, I actually prefer this mac n cheese to the normal super cheesy ones!  =)

Hope you are having a great day, and let me know if you try this recipe out!  =)

--Janny

4 Ingredient Chocolate Chip Cookie

Hello everyone!

The thing about moving out is that it takes more than 1 day to pack everything you own and move out of your house. But while you are packing stuff away, you still have to live...  so it's the art of balancing what needs to be packed away first, and what needs to be packed away last, and etc.  However, there comes a point where the interests clash, like yesterday when I wanted to bake cookies.

I don't have butter, I don't have eggs, I don't have flour (they've all been given away last week because I didn't think I would need them anymore.. I should have known better!), but I still wanted cookies.  I suppose I could have just gone to the store to buy those ingredients, but it seemed wasteful to me to go and get new boxes of all of the ingredients when I knew I would only have time to make 1 batch of cookies!  So I just had to make do with what I had (plus a new bag of chocolate chip cookies, but I know I'll go through that before I leave.  I mean, it's chocolate.  haha)

And thus, this 4 ingredient chocolate chip cookie was born.

I really wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I'm happy to say that it's actually surprisingly good! and the best part?  it's pretty darn healthy!  =)

So this is what you are going to need.

• 3 ripe bananas
• 2 cups of oats, blended in the food processor
• 1/2 cup of almond butter (could also use peanut butter)
• 1 cup of chocolate chips!

yup, that's it.  could not be simpler, right?

so let's begin by preheating the oven to 350.

then, pulse those 2 cups of oats in your food processor.  You don't have to do this step if you don't want to, but this kind of makes a substitute 'flour'.

Mash the 3 bananas with 1/2 cup nut butter of your choice, then mix in the oats.

Lastly, stir in the chocolate chips!

I must say, it looks pretty legit, doesn't it?

After that, all you have to do is shape the dough into a cookie shape.  Remember, the dough isn't going to expand or flatten out, so really make it into the final shape you want

Pop it in the oven for 12-14 minutes, and voila!

I've tried my hand at 'healthy' cookies before, but this is the best one so far!  AND I got my cookie fix without having to go buy a whole lot of ingredients before I left town  ;)

I hope you enjoy the recipe as much as we did!

Thanks for stopping by!
--Janny