Absolutely No Cheese Mac'N'Cheese

I came home from a dumb rainy work day feeling the definite need for some comfort food. Oh mac and cheese - you'll treat a lady like she should be treated.

Looking for a mac'n'cheese recipe that doesn't require you to support the dairy industry? Look no further! Once you taste this Mac'N'Cheese, you'll be satisfied! Different from the original, but very delicious on its own.

3 cups macaroni
½ cup margarine
½ cup flour
2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon garlic powder
a pinch of turmeric
2 tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup nutritional yeast flakes
¼ cup oil
1 or 2 peppers, chopped (optional)
Paprika to taste

Preheat oven to 350F.

Start boiling water in a pot for macaroni. Also, boil 3 cups of water in a teapot for making the sauce. When water boils, cook macaroni, stirring occasionally.
In a medium saucepan, melt margarine over medium heat. Stir in flour. When it has reached an even, bubbly consistency, stir in boiling water from teapot. Reduce heat to low. Stir until smooth again and add garlic, salt, turmeric, and soy sauce. Then slowly fold in nutritional yeast flakes and oil and stir until smooth. Mix the peppers in.
When finished, drain the macaroni. In a casserole dish (or other dish that can go into the oven), mix the sauce into the macaroni. Sprinkle paprika on top
Cook for 15 minutes at 350F and then for 5 minutes on "broil".

So there were several pots going on at once with this recipe - noodle boiling pot, "tea kettle" water boiling pot (really, who has a tea kettle?), and the pot for the sauce - which made me mildly anxious. I am a two pot at a time (at most!) kind of girl. Anything more and I get panicky that I am nelgecting something. Considering that one of the pots was only boiling water, I think I managed.

I used whole wheat flour because that's what I had lying around. So I am wondering how that affected my roux. (ps - That's right, I totally made a rue. Rouxes are something the culinary superhero Aubrey Delaney always made and it made me pine for her and think that if she knew I was making a rue she would be totally proud of me). But the melted soy margarine and the amount of flour would not be described "even" or "bubbly". It looked like dry-ish mounds of flour. So into the pan went more margarine. And then when I added the boiling water from my "tea pot" I freaked. It was a lot of water. I was worried that it would never boil down enough to make a proper fake cheese sauce. But! Once the yeast flakes were added it was alllllll good.

I threw the noodles and sauce together in a cake pan (because it wasn't enough to properly fill my caserole dishes) and baked it.

Oh my. It looked good. It looked legit.

It tasted good too. I think there was a little too much garlic going on. I think I would half what the recipe calls for next time. The carnivor with whom I co-habitate like it too. Score!