Sequestration Meal #684

 

Still focusing primarily on what I have on hand, I opened up a can of baked beans and doctored it up a bit with some extra veggies (onions and peppers). With that, I made some cheesy pasta (it's a cashew-and-sweet potato-based cheesy sauce) and steamed some broccoli.

This was wonderful, but that's no surprise; I've had some variation on this meal dozens of times. Learning to make vegan cheese sauces, early on in my vegan transition, was really soothing to me. It held the promise of familiarity and comfort. The cheesy sauces I make now are a lot better than the ones I made then, but there is still something nostalgic about them. I think pasta and cheesy sauce was my first foray into that feeling of vegan wizardry.

This gentle leaning into using things up is slow going because of the gentleness. I would replace both the cashews and pasta if I ran out, but the canned baked beans I won't need to buy for a while, even though it's gone. Somehow, this feels like progress. In any case, I'm trying to calm the nervous panic that had me over-replenishing the stocks that dwindled when I couldn't go to the store after injuring my shoulder, so I can't do anything drastic. I hope that if you see a few months of me in use-what-I-have mode that it doesn't end up boring you to tears. But in any case, I'm glad to have you here, for those of you who are interested.