Return of the Mac

Bring pot of salted water to a roaring boil over high heat. Add macaroni noodles and cook until ready, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, wash and dice zucchini.

Once pasta is cooked through to your liking, strain the pasta while reserving about 2 Tbsp of the cooking water in the pot. Add coconut oil (1 Tbsp) and mix in to pasta, then add nutritional yeast (3 Tbsp), spices (1 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder), and zucchini and mix thoroughly.

Stir in milk (1/4 cup) and keep mixing for another 3-5 minutes until zucchini is lightly cooked.

Add pepper to taste and serve warm.

Return of the Mac is a spin on one of our favourite hiking camping meals of Annie's mac n cheese. Nutritional yeast is surprisingly similar to parmesan cheese when mixed in with pasta, and using non-dairy milk makes us feel a little safer about having milk in the bottom of the backpack, unrefrigerated for a day or two before consuming. We like to mix our spices in a ziplock bag and pre-cut our vegetable of choice (this summer has been zucchini) ahead of time. This makes an already quick to prepare meal even easier for when you've been hiking all day but still want something tasty for dinner.

You can easily add more protein (nutritional yeast has some), different vegetables, or freeze dried ingredients.