Mac and cheese lands firmly in my comfort food category, and I do my best not to feel guilty about biting into that cheesy, gooey pasta—especially when I make a pan that feeds eight people for our household of two. As I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon, one way I decrease the guilt factor while boosting the flavor is to load vegetables into the dish. This works in summer and fall with the garden harvest and in winter and spring with homegrown produce that I preserved for just such uses.

In fact, I originally wrote this recipe for frozen cherry tomatoes, frozen cubes of basil pesto, and grilled and frozen onion. Sometimes I use home-canned tomatoes instead or, when I deplete my stash, store-bought cans of diced tomatoes. Dried basil works well too. Still, when you have fresh in-season options, they give the best flavor and the prettiest meal.

Learn more about year-round variations and get the complete recipe for Tomato–Basil Mac and Cheese in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

The upgrades to any version of macaroni and cheese can continue depending on what you have at hand.

• The same garlic that you make soft and creamy for Roasted Garlic Hummus
• A touch of smoky heat from Home-Smoked Chili Peppers minced into the sauce or scooped in when blended into a paste
• Alternatively, one of the hot sauces in my pickling cookbook, like Scratch-Made Sriracha
• Sharp Cheddar cheese that you’ve given the cold-smoke treatment

Any of these upgrades can land in the other mac and cheese recipes on the blog: Homemade Baked Mac and Cheese and Cheesiest Mac and Cheese. Explore the recipe index for more ways to put such upgrades to use.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.