Do you remember the Baz Luhrmann song “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” that was popular in the late nineties? I remember it well because it was released a couple years after I graduated from high school.

(I’ll save you the trouble of doing the math and tell you right now I’m 45. But according to my 8-year-old daughter, I “look good for a woman in her 40s,” so there’s that.)

Anyway, the song riffs on an essay that Wikipedia tells me was written by a columnist named Mary Schmich, though the version that went around via email for a while credited it to Kurt Vonnegut.

In the song, the speaker tells the audience that the only advice his audience should really depend on is in the first lines — to wear sunscreen, of course — and that the rest of the advice is based only on his “own meandering experience.”

You see, this column is a lot like that song. I’m about to give you a recipe that has been invaluable to me… in my own meandering experience.

But the only piece of food advice I can really give you, the thing that I know to be truer than true, is this: roast your vegetables.

Steaming is for health nuts. Boiling is for your grandma. Frying is for people who run diners or like to clean up their kitchens.

But roasting vegetables is for anyone who likes veggies with a nice soft interior and a few salty, crispy browned bits on the exterior.

Roasting is for people who think tossing a piece of parchment paper after dinner sounds better than scrubbing a pot. Roasting is for me, friends. And I think it’s for you, too.

Is roasting healthier than other cooking methods? I don’t know. Wikipedia does not appear to have a page for that.

But I can tell you that scientists agree that eating vegetables is healthier than not eating vegetables, so for me, roasting them is a win.

Now for my own meandering experience.

I love alfredo sauce. Always have. Well, “always,” after I tried it for the first time in an Olive Garden while I was in college. Holy wow.

That pasta changed my life.

A few years later, I figured out how to make a pretty good alfredo using all the real ingredients: cream, Parmesan. Butter, of course.

That discovery, too, was life changing.

But then… life changed me. I grew older. My stomach rebelled against the very notion of digesting a bowl of cream and cheese.

The jarred alfredo was also not an option. As my friend Mookie says, I’d rather eat a jean jacket.

Enter: this “Guiltless Alfredo” recipe from Our Best Bites.

It’s only slightly fussier than real alfredo sauce, and it is much easier on my old-lady tummy. It also freezes well and reheats beautifully.

That’s something I definitely cannot claim for traditional alfredo, which tends to separate and clump in the microwave.

This is one of those recipes I always double. I freeze the extra sauce in a quart sized freezer bag, flat. If I have enough cooked chicken to go around, I mix that in. If I don’t have enough chicken, I just freeze the sauce by itself.

When I need a quick meal later, I peel the bag off the frozen sauce, place the sauce into a pan or skillet over low heat, and cover. The sauce melts and heats through in about the same amount of time it takes me to boil water and cook pasta.

I hope you’ll like this recipe as much as we do. Maybe you will; maybe you won’t.

But trust me on the roasting.

GUILTLESS ALFREDO FROM OUR BEST BITES

Note: the recipe below has already been doubled from the original recipe; it fills my standard-sized blender to the top.

Ingredients
4 cups milk (any fat level of dairy milk is fine; I have not tried with a milk alternative)
8 ounces cream cheese
4-6 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons butter
6 garlic cloves
2 cups grated Parmesan cheese (I use the traditional kind, but the shaker jar kind will work here, too)

Directions
■ Pour milk, cream cheese, flour and salt into blender. Blend until smooth.
■ Place a large, deep skillet or saucepan over medium heat. Melt butter and add garlic. Cook just until garlic is fragrant, less than a minute. Pour contents of blender into pan. Heat mixture, stirring occasionally, until sauce comes to a simmer. Continue to cook a few minutes more until sauce begins to thicken.
■ Turn heat to low and add cheese. Mix. Remove from heat when sauce is just a bit thinner than desired, as it will continue to thicken upon standing.

Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].

Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.