Cauliflower Bean Alfredo (Vegan Day 1)

Today I began Day 1 of my 30 Day Vegan Challenge.  I had to add one day since the month of February has 29 days this year.  This has been something I've been looking forward to doing for a few weeks now.  I had to mentally prepare myself and saved a ton of vegan recipes.  I have never even tried to be vegetarian before, so this is going to be a bit of a leap for me.

Reasons why I'm going vegan for a month:
- Self-determination, no one's telling me or forcing me to do this
- Seeking a challenge
- Want to test my energy levels during/after this month, I'm still exercising frequently
- Forces me to eat more vegetables
- Forces me to stay away from more processed/artificial crap
- Going vegetarian is too half-assed, and I'm not doing this for animal rights reasons
- Want to see how the elimination of dairy affects me
- Putting myself in the shoes of vegetarians, vegans, and those with food allergies

What my Day 1 groceries looked like.
Many of these ingredients will be a staple for the next 30 days and I plan on making everything as delicious as it can be.

And so, for dinner tonight, I used cauliflower and cannellini beans to make a creamy-tasting "alfredo" sauce.

1/2 head of cauliflower, spinach leaves, 1 cup almond milk, 3 tbsp olive oil, 1 cup cannellini beans, 1/2 cup crushed tomatoes, whole wheat macaroni (or any pasta), nutmeg, salt & pepper, and onions

I use this to help speed up the boiling water!

Follow pasta instructions.

In the meantime, boil cauliflower for about 15-20 minutes.

After the cauliflower was done, I poured it out and quickly browned some onions in 1 tbsp of olive oil in the same saucepan.

Add the cauliflower, cannellini beans, almond milk, 2 tbsp oil,  and a dash of nutmeg.

Use an immersion blender (or regular one!) to blend everything to desired smoothness.

Pasta with crushed tomato, spinach leaves, and topped with cauliflower sauce

Add salt & pepper.  After this picture was taken, I added italian seasoning, and crushed red pepper.

The cannellini beans added a nice creaminess.

This was yummy.  I'm going to make this sauce again for sure.  I saved half for tomorrow's lunch, but I'm going to skip the crushed tomato.  Sun-dried or baby tomatoes would go better, as to not overtake the taste of the cauliflower sauce.

Recipe adapted from Cupcakes&Kale