Day 15: I've got the mac-gic in me

There's no time for an intro! You need to get this recipe into your brain immediately - no pointless Allie ramblings beforehand. Tonight I attempted - no, conquered - my first batch of Vegan Mac & Cheese. As Murphy's Law would have it, I shopped for one recipe's ingredients on Sunday, then got three drastically different recipes sent my way in the next 24 hours. There was no turning back now - after all, I had bought shallots.

It's a strange recipe, but I'm realizing that is a common theme for all of the best vegan dishes. I've learned to trust the process. There's no fake cheese, just a boatload of incredibly random ingredients that end up tasting cheesy due to science or sorcery that I'll never comprehend. Here's how it goes:

Vegan Macaroni & Cheese 
(serves two adults without any self control, or 4 normal people)
Follow this link to view the original recipe & ingredients list. If you're crazy enough to sift through my ramblings, read on and I love you.

Photo credit: This Is Vegan.
Additional note: this is vegan!

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. The recipe won't tell you this until step 3, so you'll invent some new curse words under your breath as you wait eons for your ancient oven to warm up later. 
2. In a large pot, bring water to a boil. Add salt if you want. Once boiling, add noodles and cook until al dente (because cooking isn't confusing enough without Italian instructions). Drain pasta and rinse with cold water. Set aside. Or eat the cooked noodles like a bowl of popcorn while you stare blankly out the window. Then set aside. (You should really get more sleep.)
3. In a food processor, make breadcrumbs. Despite the promise of the $10 price tag, the food processor you bought only holds about 6 teaspoons at a time. Instead, you'll tear up 4 slices of bread and add 2 tablespoons of Earth Balance (or whatever non-butter you have) to your Ninja blender. If anything can turn bread into crumbs, it's gotta be something called a "ninja," right? You are correct.
4. In a saucepan, add 2 tablespoons of chopped/peeled shallots, 1 cup of chopped/peeled butternut squash (or potatoes), 1/4 cup of chopped carrots, 1/3 cup of chopped/peeled onions, and 1.5 cups of water. Bring it to a boil. Cover the pan and simmer for 15 minutes until the vegetables are very soft. Now that your eyes have swollen shut from the trauma of shallot gas, your other senses will heighten. (Side note: don't our senses exist specifically to keep us alive? Who was the first person to cut open a shallot and say to themselves "wow, my eyes feel like they're bleeding now, so I should definitely eat this!"?) Feed your dog the leftover carrot bits. Thank your fiance for wrestling the squash into cubes for you. Yell at your cat for batting onion skins around the house.
5. In a blender, process 1/4 cup raw cashews, 2 teaspoons salt, 1/4 teaspoon minced garlic, 1/3 cup margarine, 1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, and 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne. Take a moment to be honest with your feelings at this point. "I bought a whole jar of dijon mustard so I could use exactly one dew drop?" "Do people really have devices that can measure 1/8 teaspoon?" "How many times did someone royally screw up this recipe while inventing it the first time?" Now let those feelings go, because greatness is nearly upon you, young squire.
6. Add the cooked vegetables (with the cooking water) to the blender. Process until perfectly smooth. You won't have to worry about that, because the Ninja wouldn't dream of leaving you with clumpy sauce.
7. In a large bowl, toss the cooked pasta with the cheese sauce until completely coated. Cautiously try a noodle. Watch as the world goes dark and you can practically see how good your concoction tastes. Shamelessly shovel a few dozen forkfuls into your face before yelling "no more!" through a mouth full of cheesy greatness.
8. Spread the noodles into a 9x12 casserole dish, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, and dust with paprika. Because this recipe was written by Tinkerbell.
9. Bake for 30 minutes or until the cheese sauce is bubbling and the top has turned golden brown.  Or until your separation anxiety grows too overwhelming and you can't help but reach your fork into an oven for just one more bite of scalding hot deliciousness.

Have I made it clear that I am in love with this yet? I can't count how many times I said gave my expert opinion of "this is so good... no seriously, this is SO GOOD." We stood at the oven and ate straight out of the pan for a while. Scott kept saying "This is really good. I feel like we shouldn't be eating it." His mind almost imploded when I told him here wasn't a single ounce of fake cheese in it. If Pad Thai was invented as a frat house prank, I can only assume that vegan mac & cheese was created by NASA. No one else on this planet could have set out to create this dish from scratch and successfully nailed down the recipe before they died. I would LOVE to see the vault of failed attempts. "Boil one mango, add thirty packets of ketchup, hand-squeeze 63 ounces of beet juice, add 1/4 teaspoon of Dijon mustard - OH MY GOD THAT ACTUALLY WORKED."

If you're like me, you'll want access to gallon drums of this stuff. I suggest preparing multiple pans, keeping the extras in the fridge, and simply grinding up breadcrumbs before you put it in the oven later in the week. One last thing: If you access the original recipe that I linked to above, do pay close attention to the ingredients list. Margarine, salt, and water are all on there multiple times, so it's easy to get confused in the heat of battle. Or maybe you're just a fully functioning adult who doesn't confuse the need for 4 quarts vs. 1 cup of water. Some of us still have trouble getting hot pockets right, ok?!?! (Just kidding, no one can get a hot pocket right. It's always scalding hot and frozen solid at the same time. Probably a NASA invention that wasn't meant for human consumption.) I'm done now.