— Harvey Stein

I'm kind of wondering what spices you would be putting in that to make a vegan cheese sauce. 'cause the cashews, it shouldn't really have much sweetness to it if you're just using the cashews in it. Um, you're basically, as you blend those up, the nutritionally used will add a umami flavor to it as well, which is nice. Um, what I might recommend doing too is if you're soaking your cashews, definitely get rid of the water that you've soaked the cashews in and add new water to the Vitamix as well. Um, typically for like a vegan cheese sauce kind of a thing, you're gonna add nutritional yeast. A lot of times people do a sweet potato, but if you're getting away from sweet, probably don't do that. Um, salt a little bit of paprika to it as well, just for color. You could do turmeric for color if you wanted, but I think that the, the other one would be great as well. Um, so, um, I think probably switching out your water might be able to help you with that a little bit, um, to be able to get away from some of the sweetness. 'cause sometimes, uh, as you soak the cashews it can bring out some of the other flavors. Um, I would also add a little bit of white miso, um, because that will actually help bring out that umami flavor in it as well. Um, oh, and I see Harvey on the other spices are garlic and onion. Yeah, that should actually be just fine on that. So, um, I think the biggest tip is being able to take out, uh, just switch out the water. Um, and then I see Nancy's probably commenting on this as okay, Cuban powder on the, the last question as well too is, uh, different spices to be able to use. Cuban powders are wonderful to, uh, seed to do as well. And she's actually saying to use potatoes instead of all the cashews, which is actually the traditional way that I would do it is um, we actually at the cheese sauce that we make at our house typically has sweet potato and regular like a white potato. Um, and if you use white potato and no sweet potato, it'll definitely get rid of some of the, um, the sweetness from that as well. But adding a little bit of miso, you nutritional yeast should probably bring that flavor up to what you're looking for as well. Good catch there, Nancy. All right, so Nancy also saying the cumin powder would be a great spice to be able to use too, and the cumin idea for adding something interesting but not too spicy, correct on that. So, um, cumin powder's great. You can also use whole cumin seed as well. Um, give it a little toast in a pan and then blend that up to be able to get really a full aromatic flavor for that too.