This refreshing salad is packed with extra crunch from 4 crunchy veggies that are tossed with a sweet, tangy, and very slightly spicy dressing.

It is the perfect kind salad to put together for a picnic. It stays crunchy and the dressing remains lightly coating everything because it doesn’t get watered down by all the crispy veggies. It pairs as well with Thai curry as it does with taco. Add some raw pepitas on top for extra crunch and to make this salad a satisfying lunch entrée all on its own.

All that, and this salad is loaded in Vitamins A & C with a good amount of Vitamin K!

The Stuff: Dressing

• 1 mango, peeled and sliced into large pieces
• juice of 1 lime
• juice of 1 blood orange
• 1/4 sweet red bell pepper, de-seeded
• 1/4 Anaheim chili, de-seeded
• 1/4 Poblano chili, de-seeded

Combine all ingredients into a food processor, fitted with an S-blade*. Process on high until you have a thick sauce, scraping down sides as needed until smooth. Set aside.

*If you have a powerful blender (e.g., VitaMix) you can just throw everything into the blending vessel and blend until smooth.

The Stuff: Salad

• 1 small jicama, peeled and sliced into 2″ matchsticks
• 3 medium carrots, sliced thin (slicing blade on food processor works great!)
• 1/4 sweet red bell pepper, finely diced
• 1/4 purple cabbage, chopped small
• 5-6 sprigs of fresh coriander (cilantro), leaves removed and shredded by hand

Toss all ingredients with dressing in a large bowl and serve.

Makes 6 vitamin & fiber packed servings!

Nutritional Info

Serving Size: 1 cup
Calories: 71
Total Fat: 0 g
Sodium: 27 mg
Carbohydrates: 17 g
Dietary Fiber: 5 g
Sugars: 10 g
Protein: 1 g

This is one of those recipes that when I finally made what I had in mind, the dish came out exactly what I was hoping for. Crunchy and tangy with a creamy, cilantro dressing. It is great as a side salad as well as making a great topping for tostados, your favorite vegan burger, or tacos.

Not only is it very quick to make, even if you’re also making the Creamy Cilantro Lime Ranch dressing first, but it is also packed with Vitamins C & K!

The Stuff

• 1/2 small head white cabbage
• 1/4 small head purple cabbage
• 1 small orange bell pepper
• 1 cup Cilantro Lime Ranch Dressing

The Making

Quarter the half head of white cabbage. For each cabbage quarter cut at an angle along the bottom to remove most of the core and remove outer leaves. Slice cabbage very thinly and add to a large bowl.

Core pepper and cut in very thin, 1″ julienne slices. Add to bowl with cabbage.

Give all the veggies a toss together to mix. Add in the salad dressing and toss to coat evenly.

Makes 8 servings.

Nutritional Info

Serving Size: 1 cup
Calories: 83
Total Fat: 6 g
Saturated Fat: 0.5 g
Cholesterol: 0 g
Sodium: 133 mg (6%)
Carbohydrates: 6 g
Dietary Fiber: 2 g
Sugars: 3 g
Protein: 2 g

File under effin’ EASY! If you happen to have all the ingredients prepped, this comes together in minutes and makes for a delicious dinner.

On Sunday I’d gone into a kind of Mise-en-Place Production Frenzy. Setting up the ingredients to make tofu salad, chickpea salad, split pea soup (for Christie and I), and a braised portobello sandwich (for Mom, who hates peas).

In addition to all the chopping we’d been cleaning up and doing errands, so I found I was pretty tired and put the ingredients for the chickpea and tofu salads in the fridge. I also put half the carrots int he fridge after deciding to use up a parsnip that had been lurking in the veggie drawer for a while in the soup. The next day Christie made up her awesome tofu salad, but the rest of the onions and celery went back into the fridge with the chickpeas.

Having all the ingredients prepped for this dish meant all I had to do was throw stuff in a pot, simmer for 25 minutes, chop up the tomato and kale, throw in the kale and tomato, simmer for another 15 minutes or so. I had some with a toasted English muffin for dinner and it made my whole lousy day better. Good soup can do that.

The Stuff

• 3 stalks celery, diced fine
• 1 medium to large sweet onion, diced fine
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 2 t diced garlic
• 1 large tomato, diced small
• 1 bunch of kale, in thin ribbons
• 2 cups cooked chickpeas
• 2 cubes veggie bullion
• 1/4 nutritional yeast
• 1 T poultry seasoning
• 2 T champagne vinegar
• freshly ground black pepper
• 5 cups water

The Making

Heat a 6 qt. pot on medium-high heat and add a spray of canola oil. Add onions and saute 5-7 minutes before adding garlic. Saute together for another 5 minutes and add carrots, celery, and chickpeas. Mix together bullion cubes with water, add to pot along with the poultry seasoning.

Simmer on low for 25 minutes.

Add kale, tomatoes, nutritional yeast, vinegar, and pepper. Simmer for another 10-15 minutes until kale is tender.

Enjoy the chilly autumn evening!

This delicious and hearty stew is so easy to pull together and let cook in your slow-cooker while at work. It makes a great one-pot meal that we love so much that we often double the recipe so we have leftovers for lunches.

The yams give this stew a sweet flavor and the addition of peanut butter gives it a creamy, rich taste. You can use canned chickpeas, or homemade. Prep time is about 20 minutes, which is why we tag it as a “Quick Meal”.

This recipe is adapted from ‘African Peanut Stew’ in Becoming Vegetarian. We’ve modified it to include more chickpeas and greens, and to use quinoa instead of rice. The recipe would work well with cashew butter in place of peanut, and we’re curious to try it with other grains like amaranth or teff.

The Stuff

• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 cups peeled, diced yams
• 2 cups cooked chickpeas
• 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
• 1/4-1/3 cup smooth peanut butter
• 2 bunches of kale or collards, chopped
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• tarmari or braggs, to taste

The Making

Sauté onions on medium heat until they are translucent, about 5-7 minutes. Transfer onions to your slow-cooker pot.  Add chickpeas, yams, and veggie broth. Mix in peanut butter and add quinoa.

Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 4.

30-60 minutes prior to serving, add chopped greens, lemon juice and black pepper.

Season with tarmari or Braggs aminos, to taste, at the table. Also great with a little hot sauce added!

This post also could be titled, “What I ate for my birthday picnic”, but there’s also a recipe for a dry rub that I’ve been tweaking with and using all summer on an abundance of summer squash, tofu and tempeh.

The idea started in a cookbook for The Grit restaurant that our lovely friend, Michael, sent to us as a surprise gift. The recipe involved taking cubed tofu and sauteing, adding more stuff, sauteing, more stuff, etc. Since I have my moments of being a lazy cook…. Alright, I’m mostly a lazy cook despite what my forays into Japanese and Indian cuisine might lead you to believe, so I started doing a kind of dry rub with nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and freshly ground black pepper.

Then Dave posted a link for a short article about what to do with all that summer squash you might have laying around. This year we planted too many and they’ve done so well that I’ve been seen at a local pub begging strangers to take a zucchini (seriously). What caught my eye was a little recipe that very similar what I’d been doing with tofu for a while, only baked and with the addition of polenta. Dave noted it was a bit too gritty and crunchy, but the corn flavor was really great, so I played around a bit more and now have a recipe to share!

The Stuff

• 1/2 c fine corn meal
• 1/4 c fine flake nutritional yeast
• 1 t poultry seasoning*
• 1/2 t granulated garlic
• 1/2 t onion powder
• 1/4 to 1/2 t sea salt
• 1/4 t freshly ground black pepper

*While visiting New Orleans I made use of the Jack Miller’s Cajun All-Purpose Seasoning and have used it instead of the poultry seasoning for a spicy, lip-smackin’ good version of this rub. When I do that, I usually reduce or just skip the sea salt since the seasoning mix has salt in it.

The Making

A Pile of BBQ Goodness!

Mix it all together in a bowl. Store in a small, air-tight jar. Keeps for a few weeks, longer in the fridge. You can use it as you need it, a whole recipe will coat a large block of super-firm tofu (20 oz.) AND a few zucchini, cut up, as well.

To use, put some in shallow dish or on a plate. Dredge tofu, veggies, tempeh, etc. in the mixture, coating well. Let sit for 15-30 minutes to really get stuck on and soaked in some (honestly, you can skip this step and you’ll still have tasty food).

Get a BBQ or cast iron grill pan on medium-high heat (*if using cast iron, bring pan up to heat, then reduce to medium-low to keep the pan and perfect searing heat). Spray a nice coating of high-heat Canola oil.

Throw your dredged stuff on the BBQ or cast iron grill pan for about 5 minutes each side. Spray the dry side before flipping.

Pack it up, take it on a picnic!

Fresh Peach Galettes for Dessert

The past few years I’ve really loved these fresh fruit galettes from Sweetpea Baking Company. The peaches have been especially delicious this year, so these galettes were extra wonderful. Not that I don’t love a good slice of cake, but there’s something about these simple, hand-formed tarts that really make me think of my birthday and summer.

Happy Hearts (Dora and Sherri, August 26, 2012, Tryon Creek State Park)

Chickpeas might very well be our favorite legume. We love them on salads, in soups, in “monk bowls”, as snacks, as hummus, roasted… well, you get the picture. A real lunchtime crowd-pleaser is my fabulous chickpea salad. This recipe has even had rave reviews from my step-father, who claims to hate chickpeas!

We’ve been more mindful of our diet lately, so I’ve been wanting to find a way to make this for us without all the extra fat and calories that are in the usual way I make it with Vegan mayo. Recently we’ve fallen in love with one of Susan Voisin’s recipes for a tahini dressing, made with chickpeas, and I found it works perfectly in place of the mayo!

Using Vegan mayo adds about 53 calories and 6 grams of fat to each serving. Using Susan’s dressing to replace the mayo makes this a far healthier dish at 112 calories and 2 grams of fat per serving.

The Stuff

• 2 c cooked chickpeas
• 1/2 c small diced onion (preferably sweet, about 1 small onion)
• 1/2 c small diced celery (about 2 medium ribs)
• 1/4 c either Vegan mayo OR Fat-Free Tahini Chickpea Dressing
• 2 T stone-ground mustard (very grainy)
• 1 T yellow mustard
• 2 t dry dill weed (or 4 T fresh — which is extra-tasty)
• 1/4 t dill seed
• 1/4 t celery seed
• freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 5 sheets (or 1 packet), of snacking nori snipped up into very small bits (optional)
• 3 T dill pickle relish (optional, I recommend Bubbies)

The Making

Pulse chickpeas in a food processor until they are well broken up, but still coarse. Pulse for just 2-3 seconds at a time, stop, check the consistency before pulsing again. Watch carefully, the idea is to have crumbly chickpeas, NOT the start of hummus.

Put chickpeas in a bowl and add all of the remaining ingredients. Mix together well until all ingredients are well incorporated. You can serve immediately or let sit, which lets the dill flavor really come out more.

Serve between two slices of bread, on a bed of greens, or rolled up inside of a collard leaf! We’ve made sandwiches and collard wraps of this salad as food for long airplane trips, and it travels very well.

Makes 6 1/2 cup servings

Snacking nori adds a great salty “sea” flavor we find reminiscent of tuna salad from our pre-vegan days. We like it a lot just by itself for a snack, so I usually have some on hand and often add to the chickpea salad. I’m sure there are lots of taste and mineral benefits to other popular sea veggies in this salad, but I tend to use the snacking nori because it is on hand and ready to go.

Be sure to check ingredients as some snacking nori contains fish, in the form of Bonito extract (usually), or shrimp. When I use it, I snip the little snack sheets into 4-5 long strips, then snip the ends off of those into very small bits directly into the bowl.

Just before Vida Vegan Con I was contacted by Emily from PureFit asking if I’d like to try out some of their vegan nutrition bars. I told her I would since I occasionally have a bar before going to the gym or pool and sometimes if I’m running too late to get breakfast in the morning. Eventually a pack of bars came in the mail with one of each flavor bar to try out.

Peanut Buttery

They went up into the cupboard for a little while because I just hadn’t had a situation come up where I’d usually have a bar. Then along came the first morning of VegFest and I overslept! I was scheduled to volunteer at the membership booth for NWVeg both mornings of the event and I went flying out the door on the first morning, grabbing up a PureFit Peanut Butter Crunch  bar as I went.

Uniform texture, very smooth, but not pasty.

The bars are the kind with a smooth texture and consistency, I think that’s because they are based on a soy protein isolate. There’s little crunch bits, soy crisps, here and there. The bar was very peanut butter-y, a good thing in my book, and not overly sweet. I enjoyed it between processing waves of new members (hurrah!) during a very busy 4 hour shift. The bar kept me from being hungry until 1pm when I finally got to enjoy lunch from Homegrown Smoker.

Wish this had more of an almond flavor!

I had the Almond Crunch bar a couple of days later at my office, again as a breakfast stand in when I realized I was out of something. This time I found the bar a little too sweet for my taste and I’d prefer a more intensely almond flavor coming through. This bar also has the little soy crisps, which I like (and was happy to discover is a common feature in all the bars). The little crispy bits helped balance the sweetness. The peanut butter one was a real hit that I’d really hoped for more from this one besides just candy-bar-sweetness.

Sweet + Maple Intensity

Next up was the Granola Crunch bar and I have to say this one was the one I liked least. I did finish it, mostly because it also was my breakfast option that morning and I didn’t want to face my busy morning hungry. I found the maple flavor in this bar to be way too sweet and nearly artificial. It just overwhelmed the whole bar with overly intense, overly sweet maple flavor. Little soy crisps — check… but I just couldn’t get past the taste.

Mildly Sweet and Chocolaty!

After the sweetness of the Granola Crunch I was a little put off and worried the final two flavors would follow the “too sweet” route, particularly because I’d been told the Berry Almond Crunch was the sweetest of the bunch. However, these really have made a great, quick breakfast option and in on the next very busy morning I grabbed up the Chocolate Brownie bar on my way to the office. I was really pleased by the rich chocolate flavor of this bar and was happy it turned out to be much more mildly sweetened. It was really pretty satisfying.

Nice Berry Flavor!

I put off the Berry Almond Crunch because of the comment about it being the sweetest. I’m also very picky about berry flavoring in food; most times this flavor tastes way artificial to me. This bar turned out be far less sweet than I feared and had a pleasant berry and almond flavor. It faintly reminded me of mixing granola into yogurt. I found myself really enjoying the flavor of this last bar.

The Pros:

The bars totally kept me from getting hungry, cranky and less-than-functional. They were generally tasty and nice to eat; no pasty or stickiness about them. I like that I can get them on Amazon, where they work out to $2.05/bar — which isn’t bad (I have an Amazon Prime account, so for me a box of these would be shipped Second-Day for free). These ended up making a good breakfast on-the-go for me, which is probably how I’d most likely use them. I liked 3 of the flavors quite a bit, with the peanut butter being the leader and the berry second. I found the chocolate one very satisfying and could see having it as part of my lunch or to enjoy after a good workout.

The Cons:

Only in 3 shops in the Portland Metro area right now, and I stress “metro area” — they’re out in the burbs. I admit that I’m not a huge fan of the whole “soy protein isolate” approach. It is pretty seriously processed stuff and I tend toward the more “real food” approach, which is to say less processed and closer to a whole food. I found two of the flavors, the almond and the granola, to be far sweeter than I like for something that’s supposed to be an energy bar.

I’d also note that these shouldn’t be considered a low-calorie snack. Most are 200 or more calories and the peanut or almond ones have a fair bit of fat in them. That’s why I tended to put these as a good breakfast option, augmented with a little fresh fruit.

The “Cons” aside, I’d pick these bars up once in a while. I will certainly keep them in mind while travel as something I could pick up and take with me on long flights.

I appreciate PureFit giving me a chance to try them all out!

Pictures taken entirely with my DroidX phone, which didn’t always know how to handle close-up shots of shiny wrappers!

I know a lot of you probably had some variation of “Spanish Rice” you grew up with. My Mom’s recipe very possibly came from some kind of “international cooking” type of book or article in magazines like Redbook or McCall’s. White rice in a tomato-y, sweet, salty and overall bland sauce. Maybe with a bit of chopped up bell pepper, celery and onion. Mom often would serve this with ground beef mixed in and then stuff it all into bell peppers and bake. Certainly not Spanish and not really quite reminiscent of the rice dishes from South and Central America. Really one of those Tex-Mex dishes that have become popular throughout the years.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This was a favorite dish growing up and I still like making stuffed peppers. Lately I’ve been stuffing them with quinoa instead of rice and pinto beans instead of meat.

This weekend we decided to have fajita tacos with lots of bell pepper, onion and Soy Curls. Christie also made some great homemade mashed black beans. I was kind of wanting the Tex-Mex rice and we happened to have some quinoa on hand. In fact the quinoa had been in the rice cooker on warm for a couple of days and was actually getting a little dried out. I just love finding a way to extend the life of leftovers like slightly dried-out qunioa so I was struck with inspiration.

This is a recipe I almost feel guilty for calling a recipe. It is just that simple. However, it turned out so darn tasty I’m writing it up and posting it!

The Stuff

• 2 cups cooked quinoa (preferably a couple days old so it is dried out some or just don’t put in quite enough water to fully cook it)
• 1 14.5 oz. can Muir Glen fire-roasted, petite diced tomatoes in Adobo sauce
• 1 4 oz. can of diced mild green chilies

The Making

Put all of the above into a saucepan and simmer on low heat for at least 20 minutes. You want the undercooked/dried-out quinoa to have time to reabsorb all of the moisture from the tomatoes & chilies.

Top with a pile of beans, sauteed veggies, and maybe some salsa & avocado slices too.

Delicious and easy!

The Adobo sauce is mildly spicy. If you are spice adverse go with diced tomatoes with garlic or just plain. I’m not sure all areas carry the petite diced in Adobo sauce, so you can wing it by using diced tomatoes and adding some chili powder, cumin, powdered garlic

The petite dice and the fire-roasting of the Muir Glen brand make for a great flavor and the tiny tomato bits really blend in well.

If you want it hotter use diced hot chilies instead of mild. I’m sure it would be damn tasty!

Although rich dishes are enjoyable once in a while, our favorites tend toward simple soups, stews, stir-fries, and “monk bowls”.  We were inspired to make these simple bowl meals from a dish once available at Blossoming Lotus. Really it was a bowl of whole grains topped with steamed kale, legumes, and a tasty sauce. Truly simplicity and just what we want some meals.

Tonight, after all the Thanksgiving inspired dishes, we had a monk bowl variation for dinner. Brown rice topped with chickpeas and some broccoli crowns that had been chopped up and sauteed with a clove of elephant garlic.

I made a variation of my Ginger Miso Dressing as the sauce to top, with a few slight variations. I added more nutritional yeast, some garlic pepper, and about 2 tablespoons of some leftover toasted walnuts. I didn’t use any other oils or the Bragg’s, but I did have more white miso. The little bit of toasted walnuts gave the sauce a faintly pink hue and a rich flavor.

Delcious Monk Bowl

Have I mentioned the utter chaos of our house? The fact that 2/3 of the kitchen, if not more, has been moved largely into boxes in our dining room for the past couple of days. Today I got to start put the kitchen somewhat back together, but that was after I destroyed some of the ugly shelves in the kitchen that came with the house.

So by dinner tonight I did not feel like cooking. I barely felt like eating. We’re trying to keep close tabs on the budget right now so I didn’t want to get take-out. Ugh!

What to do on a night when I felt uninterested in food? It was very nearly an PB&J kind of night. What I wound up with was essentially dinner from the freezer, mostly. Thus proving it is always good to have a few things on hand that are easy to make when you just don’t feel like cooking.

Dinner, when I don’t want to deal with dinner. November 11th version.

Pan fried veggie poststickers sauteed with seasoned age (fried tofu – this one had carrot & seaweed in it) and a bunch of edamame. A little vegetarian hoisin sauce and a little sweet chili sauce. Toss in a bowl and consume with chopsticks until the crankiness subsides a little. After all my aversion to eating, it was really pretty tasty and quick.

And then back to unpacking the kitchen and moving furniture out of the house.