Easy Cashew Cheese

Hope you all have had a great 4th of July!!

My parents and grandma were in town this weekend, my friend flew in from CA, and I was in another friend’s wedding. While it was a great weekend, it was also a busy weekend, to say the least! I'm left here pretty exhausted and when everything calmed down, I took a nice long nap, and have left the mess in my house to clean up at a later date, ha.

Cashew Cheese

I promised a cashew cheese recipe, and a cashew cheese recipe you shall get!

Since beginning to eat a predominantly vegan diet, cheese is the one thing I thought I would miss the most. I mean, what was I going to eat with, well … everything??

After making cashew cheese, I don’t miss dairy cheese at all! As you can see, we’ve been adding it to our normal dinner dishes with things like quinoa and roasted veggies, salads, wild rice and sauteed veggies, potatoes, etcetera. The below meal consisted of veggies lightly sauteed in hemp oil, wild rice, topped with cashew cheese. (And after I took the picture, I added more cheese!)

Yum!

We’ve made several variations, but here is our so far tried and true simple combination:

Ingredients:
-- 1 C raw cashews
-- 1 C water
-- 3 heaping Tsps. nutritional yeast
-- 1/4 ts salt (we use Himalayan)
-- Juice from a lemon (optional, to taste)

Directions:
-- Blend together in a good quality blender, or use a food processor, until smooth.

It turns out creamy and delicious! Make extra to store in the refrigerator for easy, “cheesy” go-to meals throughout the week.

You can make different variations (i.e. creamier, thicker, or thinner, etc) by adding more or less of each ingredient.

We use a similar, thinned down version for summer salad dressings as well, and it’s pretty wonderful!

What’s one thing you would miss the most eating a diet devoid of meat and dairy?