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The Easiest Carrot Mac & Cheese

01.27.2020 by veggieTOT // Leave a Comment

The Easiest Carrot Mac & CheeseHaving a small kid is rough. I don’t mean small as in young; I mean small as in small. We’ve spent a whole lot of time since Sweet Pea came home dealing with GI visits, speech therapy (which, fun fact, also deals with eating), and nutritionists.

There’s a special kind of guilt that goes along with being a parent of a small child. On one level, you know you’re doing what you should, and it’s just your child’s body that’s not cooperating. But on another, more primal, more lizard-brain level, you also know that keeping your kid nourished is the most basic job a parent has. It’s hard not to feel defensive when you go to the doctor and they ask you, “Well, can’t you feed her one more bottle a day? Why aren’t you waking her up twice in the middle of the night for feeding instead of once?” It feels like an accusation. It also feels like they have never tried to force-feed a sobbing, squirming baby six bottles a day.

Sweet Pea has always struggled with her bottle, but things got better after she had surgery in October to remove a cyst that had been blocking her airway. Then things got worse again, but luckily it was around the time that she was supposed to start solids. We were given a list of high-calorie solid foods to start giving her and she loves eating them. Loves.

Solid foods have totally been a game-changer for us. We recently had our FIRST POSITIVE VISIT with GI, where they were happy with Sweet Pea’s growth. And then I Googled and realized she’s still 4 pounds less than the average baby at her adjusted age. Insert laugh/cry emoji here.

But still: we’re really happy that she’s finally gaining at a faster clip and seeing her delight in eating peanut noodles and tofu and pancakes is just amazing.

This Carrot Mac & Cheese, well, it tastes like carrots. So picky preschoolers? Like my Little Pea? They might not like it. But Sweet Pea loves this recipe. The size of macaroni is perfect for her to pick up and since she’s still toothless, pureed or boiled-to-mush are pretty much the only ways she’s eating carrots anyway.

I adapted this recipe from Food & Wine; it’s a pretty loose adaptation because I mercilessly hacked away at anything that required, like, effort. Hence the name: Easiest Carrot Mac & Cheese. Gone is the orange zest! Gone is the cutting of carrots! Just buy a bag of pre-cut ones! Fresh marjoram? Ha! As if. I did add some garlic, though. Garlic makes everything more delicious. (If you’re feeling ambitious, you could roast it first. In which case, just put a whole head in.)

The Easiest Carrot Mac & Cheese

Lately I’ve been feeling kind of isolated and alone, something not uncommon for preemie moms the first winter after bringing their babies home from the hospital. I kind of went through this funk where I was depressed about having to work morning to bedtime and take care of Sweet Pea; it felt monumentally unfair that I couldn’t just spend time with her, that I had bills to pay so I had to work, etc. Spending 14 hours a day writing about dental implants while your baby cries for attention really, really sucks. But I feel guilty for complaining, too, because: at least I work from home! I AM LUCKY and I shouldn’t complain!

It always feels like the weight of everything is on my shoulders and I just want someone to swoop in and save me. Can a social democratic government please give me a proper maternity leave? Can Andrew Yang send me a freedom dividend? Any benevolent millionaires want to pay off my student loans? But, obviously, that’s not how the world works. And, ultimately in this world, we’re all in this alone. OH MAN THAT IS SO DEPRESSING. I don’t mean that. Or maybe I do. I don’t know. It just feels that way sometimes. You feel like the world just forgets about you; that no one wants to hear that you’re struggling. Everyone just wants us to be this MICRO PREEMIE SUCCESS STORY, and of course, we are in a lot of ways, but I feel like people want to tune out what it takes to get to this point. It’s just: YOU’RE GREAT, EVERYTHING’S GREAT, YOU’RE DOING GREEEEEAT! And it feels isolating; it feels like no one’s listening.

If you’re reading this, and you have people telling you you’re doing great and you don’t feel like you’re doing great, let me validate your feelings and tell you that: you’re not doing great. You’re struggling. It sucks. I wish I could give you a freedom dividend.

The Easiest Carrot Mac & Cheese

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Ingredients

  • 3/4 pound julienned carrots
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 8 ounces elbow macaroni
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 ounces shredded sharp cheddar

Instructions

  1. Place the carrots in a small saucepan with 1/4 cup of water and a generous pinch of salt. Bring the mixture to a boil, then cover and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the carrots are tender. Transfer the carrots and cooking liquid to a blender and puree until smooth.
  2. While the carrots are cooking, cook the macaroni according to the package instructions, until al dente. Reserve a cup of the cooking water before draining.
  3. Melt the butter in the pot you cooked the macaroni in over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for about a minute, or until it’s fragrant. Stir in the carrot puree, then the macaroni. Add the reserved pasta water a little bit at a time, stirring constantly, until a nice, thick sauce has formed. Fold in most of the cheese, reserving about 1/3 cup for garnish.
  4. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper to taste. Divide into bowls and top with the remaining cheese.
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Categories // Baby Food

Hey, I Started a Meal Planning Site

01.19.2020 by veggieTOT // 1 Comment

I’ve had the idea to start a vegetarian meal planning site for years, and now seemed like a good time to finally commit to doing it. It also seemed like a crazy time with everything we have going on, but if the site is successful, it’s going to make things a lot easier. (If it’s not successful, then everything will be exponentially worse. But let’s be positive! Let’s not catastrophize!)
The site is called Green Plate Club because it’s all about plant-forward meals that are simple enough for a weeknight dinner. When you sign up for Green Plate Club, you’ll get:

  • 3 nutritionist-approved meal plans to choose from each week: Vegetarian, Plant-Based, and Flexitarian (a 3-day plan for people who want to eat less meat)
  • Meal plans that are meticulously planned for maximum efficiency and minimum food waste. Seriously, I spend a ridiculous amount of time agonizing over these plans. I don’t just throw 5 meals together and hope for the best!
  • A database of tried-and-true recipes, many of which can be made in advance
  • Printable shopping lists to save you time
  • Prep and cooking tips in each meal plan to make dinners a breeze

…and you get all of this for only $6 a month. Or get a full year for $50!

What else have I been up to? I’ve just been plugging away at the whole freelancing writing and editing thing. Losing my job right after bringing Sweet Pea home from the hospital was terrifying, but luckily I’ve built a big network over the years and they were my safety net, helping connect me with gigs, providing me with advice, and lending an ear when I needed it. I’m a strong believer in women supporting other women professionally and being on the receiving end of such support has been really encouraging.

Sweet Pea will be 11 months old this week, which is definitely…weird. It’s weird because she looks nothing like an 11-month-old. Or even a 7-month-old, which is her adjusted age. She is teeny tiny! She’s able to feed herself, sit up on her own, crawl, and even pull herself up to stand on furniture and even though these are (adjusted) age-appropriate things, she’s so small that it feels like you’re watching a much younger baby doing them. It’s just strange! And then it’s weird that she’s approaching a year old because it doesn’t feel like she’s been here that long? I suppose being in the hospital for four months factors in there too, but the past year has gone by so fast. Not a day that goes by that I don’t have a moment where I have to pause because I feel so overwhelmed with gratitude.

Anyway! Back on topic. Please spread the word about Green Plate Club. Tell everyone you know! I don’t have a huge platform to share it, so word-of-mouth is everything. I feel pretty confident that it’s worth the $6 a month.

Categories // This Week's Eats

Sweet And Sour Mango Tempeh with Cashews

07.31.2019 by veggieTOT // 2 Comments

Sweet Pea came home on June 14th, pretty unexpectedly–we thought she was going to be transferred to the children’s hospital to have a bridled NG tube put in, but at the last minute, her doctors decided we were capable enough to handle a regular NG tube on our own and that should could leave the hospital the next day. Leaving the NICU was pretty anticlimactic, as was settling into our new life as a family of four. It has just felt right and easy–much easier than you’d expect for a baby with 2-3 doctor’s appointments each week, oxygen, and 4 different medications.

Throwing a wrench into everything was being laid off a week after bringing Sweet Pea home from the hospital. I had to dive right into finding freelance work because I have a family to support–but it was hard to conduct a job search with all the doctor’s appointments and needs of a new baby in the home. If this year has taught me anything, it’s that despite all my control freak, über-planner tendencies, life will always be unpredictable.

Sweet And Sour Mango Tempeh with Cashews

One thing I’ve been trying to keep predictable is our dinner times. We ate out a lot when Sweet Pea was in the hospital. I’ve found that with her home, I actually have more time and motivation to cook. And obviously, with my job situation, we can’t afford to get takeout half the week anymore. I’m rediscovering how much I enjoy cooking–not just the act of putting together meals, but the fact that it’s something I can do for my family, to care for them. I’ve felt powerless a lot over the past several months, so I think that things I can do feeling is a powerful one for me.

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Categories // Main Dishes, Vegan Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes Tags // mango, tempeh

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