CTTVCC: Pantry Raid Pasta

This recipe is on page 163. This recipe is phenomenally delicious. It tasted like I had put a bunch of effort into it when really, you just throw it together. This honestly tastes better than some restaurant Italian food I've had, and it's ready so much faster, and costs so much less. Even my non-vegan family members fell in love with this. I foresee making this a lot in the future.

The recipe calls for:

• 1 (16-ounce) box elbow pasta
• 1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 2 (8-ounce) bags vegan chicken strips
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Okay, so I didn't use elbow pasta. But isn't that the point of the pantry raid? I had gotten a sampler box of a bunch of random gluten-free foods from Vitacost, and the company had sent a gluten-free penne the month that I bought it. The package was, most appropriately, almost completely in Italian, but lucky for me, there was also a French section, and I was able to figure out that the only ingredient in the pasta was corn. It was all just made of corn. I found it a little hard to believe, but I figured that I wouldn't die from it. After I cooked it, I realized that it probably was entirely made of corn because it lost all structural integrity, and basically shredded itself, so obviously it didn't  have a very effective binding agent. It tasted great though!

I used generic diced tomatoes, but I used ones with Italian seasonings mixed in with the tomatoes. I would definitely recommend using  tomatoes with Italian seasonings because you don't want your pasta to taste bland.

For the faux chicken, I used a mix of Beyond Meat Grilled Strips and Beyond Meat Lightly Seasoned Strips, just to mix things up a bit. Actually, I just didn't have enough of the lightly seasoned strips to make the recipe, so I opened the other package to augment it.

I tried not to use too much salt, but I was very generous with the pepper. I am a firm believer that pepper helps enhance the flavor. Also, I've heard that eating spicy foods boosts your metabolism. Maybe it'll counteract some of those pasta-carbs. 

Here is my finished dish:

Mmmmmm. That stuff was crazy-good. Can you see all that shredded pasta? Even though it's molecular integrity was compromised, it still tasted amazing! I just can't get over how delicious this was. If I wasn't trying to cook through the whole cookbook, I'd probably stop and just make this over and over for at least a week. It's that good people, it's that good. Let me know how yours turned out, and if you liked it as much as I did by leaving me a comment below. Comments are always welcome!