This is an easy and simple vegan spinach fettuccine alfredo made with a deliciously creamy cashew sauce. It’s a healthy and light alternative to it’s very rich counterparts made with cheese and heavy cream, but is still just as tasty!
Todd and I have been on a super frugal grocery budget challenge this month. Like… under $150! I had no idea how it would go but we are 19 days into a total of 30 so far for September and we are looking good. We’ve spent $95 out of the $150 I budgeted for us.
I see two potential obstacles to our challenge however. The first is that we of course live in Alaska where food is priced a lot higher than most other places in the states. We are almost on par with Hawaii (though they get all that wonderful fresh fruit which is not the case up here). If you’ve ever bought groceries there; you may have had sticker shock! The second is that Oliver drinks his weight in soy milk. And we can’t buy off-brand soy milks because they all have sugar added. Silk is the only brand I have found that offers an unsweetened version and it comes at a premium for the brand-name. We are trying to get him to drink less milk and eat more. It’s going… so so.
I think the problem is that he has inherited my gene for being constantly thirsty and Todd’s gene for not caring about food whatsoever and also somehow being a picky eater. The middle bit of that ven diagram of those two proclivities is, yep, milk. So, our soy milk budget is kind of eating up the vast majority of our grocery budget. Alas, I’ve been finding ways to make it work.
This is a somewhat wallet-friendly vegan dish. Cashews are pricey but we still try to get a variety of nuts in our diet and I use less than 1/2 cup in this recipe; that’s less than one serving of nuts per serving of this meal. Everything else is dirt cheap. We buy whole-grain pasta which normally costs slightly more than regular white pasta but we get the store brand so it ends up being about the same: $1.20 per box. If you so choose you can use olive oil (or no fat at all) to replace the butter, and bottled lemon juice is always less expensive than fresh lemons. There are lots of ways to save and we are challenging ourselves to rediscover them all!
What are your frugal food tips? Would you like to see more budget friendly recipes and be updated on how we do with our $150 per month grocery budget? What are your favorite cheap meals?
Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.
Vegan Spinach Fettuccine Alfredo
By Katie Henry - Produce On Parade
This is an easy and simple vegan spinach fettuccine alfredo made with a deliciously creamy cashew sauce. It’s a healthy and light alternative to it’s very rich counterparts made with cheese and heavy cream, but is still just as tasty! Adapted from The Vegan 8.
Ingredients
- 8 oz dry fettuccine
- ½ tbsp vegan butter
- ½ large white onion, diced
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp onion powder
- 1 ½ cups vegetable broth, divided
- Scant ½ cup raw cashews
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp salt
- Dash of ground white pepper (black pepper will do)
- Dash of freshly ground nutmeg
- 1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to boil for the pasta. Cook according to package until al dente. Reserve ½ cup of the cooking water; drain pasta and return it to the pot; set aside.
- Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat and stir in the onion. Add 1 cup of the broth and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in the garlic and onion powder. Reduce over medium-high to high heat until all the broth has dissipated, about 10 minutes; stirring occasionally.
- To a blender add the remaining ¼ cup broth through the nutmeg. Add the onion mixture when done cooking and blend on high for about 1-2 minutes until very smooth and creamy.
- Pour the sauce over the pasta, add the spinach and pasta water and stir until well combined. It will look like a lot of sauce, but let the pasta rest for a couple minutes; this will allow the noodles to soak up the sauce. Serve hot.
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Yield: 3 servings
Save Money!
I’ve been using this vegetable broth and I really like it. I get it here. It’s way more economical than buying fresh broth and it also has less impact on the environment.
I pay $0.57 per one cup of broth that I usually buy from our local grocery store, Fred Meyer but one cup of this broth equals only $0.10!
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