Creamy Vegetable Nut Sauce

This no dairy thing is tough! But I'm surviving. And as they say, "necessity is the mother of invention" so I've been inventing some stuff lately. Yesterday was an attempt at coconut yogurt. I'll let you know how that turned out once it ferments

(doesn't that just sound wrong? Ferments. . . )

One thing that has turned out is a Creamy Vegetable Nut Sauce that I figured out how to make the other day. I had leftover chicken and was craving chicken and rice casserole, but of course, the Cream of Celery soup was out of the question. So I did some thinking and this is what I came up with:

1/4 cup of sunflower seeds
1/2 cup of almonds
1 cup of cashews

Soaked for one hour

I placed these in a blender

with 1-2 tbsp of lemon juice

 

3 small cloves of garlic

1 tsp of onion powder
1/2 tsp of salt
(about, that is. I tend to approximate ;)

1 1/2 to 2 cups of coconut milk

Blended until smooth and the consistency of undiluted cream soup

Then I got really creative. :)

I added in some tiny diced veggies ~ onions, celery, and carrot.

Placed this over my Basalmi rice, chicken, and broccoli

 

and baked at 375 for 45 minutes.

It was delicious!

 

It had a different taste than the usual chicken and rice casserole but it had an awesome taste and was as much a comfort food as the traditional dish is. Honestly, if I served it to guests, they would have never known it was made out of nuts. 

I figure it will make for an excellent dairy free alfredo sauce and probably a white lasagna sauce as well. It will just take more coconut milk for that, to make it a bit runnier--and the ingredients would have to be tripled.

I'm sure there are many other uses for it, I just have to come up with them. Until then, it's definitely my new base white sauce until I have weaned little man and can once again, consume dairy--and even after that--it's so yummy I'll probably continue using it in addition to the usual (very missed) white sauce.