A nasty rumour has been circulating around the fitness community for years… ‘if you want to build muscle and become ‘ripped’ don’t be vegan!’

While it’s certainly easier to load up on protein when it comes from animals, if you take the time to get to know what is in the food you eat and learn some creative culinary skills, your muscles and gains will not be disadvantaged!

A protein intake between 0.8- 2.0g of protein per kilogram is important for fitness and building muscle no matter if you are keto, paleo, raw, vegan, or something between. Your main aim is to ensure you are getting at least 20g of protein at each meal. This is not difficult if you take your time to get to know plant proteins and learn how to put them together to create flavour explosions.

And this is why we are loving Asha’s Cheesy Pasta Bake in our upcoming Meal Prep Handbook. It contains all the good stuff; mushrooms, beans, peas, cashews, nutritional yeast and red lentil pasta. And the result? 23g of protein per serve!

Cheesy pasta bake

Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 50 mins

Serves: 5

Cals 404/ C 52g/ P 23g/ F 14g

Ingredients

• 1tbsp olive oil
• 1 brown onion, diced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 2 medium carrots, diced
• 1 cup pumpkin, diced
• 2 medium zucchini, diced
• 100g button mushrooms, quartered
• 400g tinned cannellini beans/white beans
• ½ cup peas and corn, thawed if frozen
• ½ cup vegetable stock
• For the sauce
• ½ cup cashews, soaked in vegetable stock for 1hr or boiling water for 20 minutes
• 1 ½ cups coconut milk (canned)
• 25g nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• ½ tsp smoked paprika
• ½ tsp salt
• 250g Barilla Red Lentil Pasta

Method

1. Put the cashews in to soak.
2. In a pan, fry the onion in the olive oil for 5 minutes, add the garlic and salt to taste and cook for a further 2 minutes. 
3. Add the carrot, pumpkin and stock and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the vegetables soften. 
4. Add the zucchini, mushrooms, peas and corn and cook for a further 5-10 minutes. 
5. Add the cashews and all ingredients for the sauce to a blender or nutribullet and blitz until smooth. Add cornstarch to thicken or water/stock to thin as required. 
6. In a pot cook the pasta per instruction.
7. Combine vegetables, pasta and sauce in an oven proof dish. Bake at 180 for 10-15 minutes.

Our Meal Prep Handbook will be release mid-July 2020. Head to our website to check out previous recipe ebooks.