Kickboxing crash!

Hello everybody!

Boy, I really felt done in at kickboxing today. We're on a new routine, which is pretty hard, but what really did it was lunch. SOMEbody ate all the avocado pasta last night, so there were no leftovers to fall back on. So I tried the vegan options (of which there were very few) at the office cafeteria.

I wound up having a veggie pocket with hummus and pita bread. Doesn't sound too bad. Want to know what was in my veggie pocket? Iceberg lettuce, chopped tomatoes and black olives. If it were a salad, I would have laughed at it. But actually at the time, I ended up slathering it with hummus as I ate it, and it filled me up pretty nicely. Didn't stick though. If only they'd had avocado. Sigh.

Today I'm making something very interesting. It's something I'd NEVER heard of. It's called 'Butternut squash cheeze sauce'.

So here's the recipe! It's from Angela Liddon at OhSheGlows.com. What really makes me excited to try this sauce, is that many faux cheese sauces use cashews. They're delicious, but expensive and have a lot of fat. This recipe drastically cuts the fat:

Roasted Butternut Squash Mac N Cheeze

• 1 fresh butternut squash* (peeled and chopped) or 1 cup canned butternut squash
• Extra virgin olive oil, S & P
• 1 tbsp Earth Balance (or other non-dairy butter replacer)
• 1 cup unsweetened & unflavoured almond milk (I used plain soy milk)
• 1 tbsp cornnstarch
• 5 tbsp nutritional yeast, or more to taste
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 3/4 tsp kosher salt (or to taste) & ground black pepper, to taste
• 4 servings of pasta. (I used whole wheat rotini)
• Mix-ins of choice (e.g., kale, spinach, broccoli, peas, pumpkin seeds, etc)

First step is roasting the squash. I peeled it, chopped it in to 2" or so blocks, used about 1 Tbsp of olive oil and a sprinkling of kosher salt, and roasted it at 425 degrees for 40 minutes.

Then whisked together the milk and cornstarch in a small saucepan. Put the heat on medium low and added the rest of the ingredients. Cooked for about 5 min, whisking until the sauce thickens.

When the squash is ready, blend or food process 1 cup of it with the sauce on the stove. Pour on top of pasta and enjoy!


One of the first new items I learned about when I became a vegetarian, was nutritional yeast. Unfortunately, you can't make this sauce without it. I find it in the bulk section of Whole Foods, and you can probably find it in health food stores. I can't find it in my Kroger, but then, I can't find a lot of veggie food in my Kroger. It's NOT the same thing as Brewer's Yeast, and you will definitely regret it if you try to use it as a sub. It's what gives the 'cheeze' it's cheesy flavor. It's a complete protein with 18 amino acids and vitamin B12, the one vitamin most vegetarian food lacks.

My review: I can definitely tell this sauce is lighter, but there is a greater depth of flavor due to the roasted butternut squash. I think it needed just a little more salt, and next time I would put a sprinkle of pepper over the top. (whispers: and it's good with ketchup!)