Citrus sweet potato salad

Happy Monday!  What a wonderful weekend it's been!

I enjoyed the company of friends at a brunch potluck yesterday.  Alicia hosted us at her new home, meaning I had a chance to see many of her beautiful projects in person, and catch up with her and Najma, another good friend.

An added perk to attending the potluck was a chance to do some more kitchen experimenting.  When I began work on a sweet potato salad, I aimed for something both savory and sweet, something with a citrus edge and a foundation of vegetables, something healthy, and something that jointly appeals to the paleo diet and the vegan diet.  Here is the result!

Citrus Sweet Potato Salad

Ingredients
Salad
5 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 small cucumber, diced very small (optional*)
3 tbsp. pepitas
1/2 c. dried cranberries

Dressing
1 1/2 c. fresh squeezed orange juice (no added sugar)
1 tbsp. dijon mustard
1/2 tbsp. maple syrup
juice from 1/2 of a lime

1.  Steam the peeled and cubed sweet potatoes in a steamer basket until soft.  You should be able to easily pierce them with a fork.  Remove from steamer basket and place in a large mixing bowl.

2.  While steaming the sweet potatoes, make the dressing.  Combine all ingredients and put through a blender or food processor for a quick 10 or 20 seconds.  You could try whisking vigorously, but it is difficult to get the dijon mustard well incorporated by hand.

3.  Pour 3/4 of the dressing over the steamed sweet potatoes.  Use a bean masher to mash some of the sweet potatoes, while leaving other sweet potatoes in tact.  Doing this after you add the dressing should be fairly easy.  Stir.

4.  Add in the cucumber, dried cranberries, and pepitas.  Pour the remaining 1/4 of the dressing into the mix at this point. Stir until everything is well-incorporated.  Refrigerate overnight, allowing flavors to fully soak in.

*I am currently working on getting rid of a large number of cucumbers from our garden, so expect them to show up in my recipes over the next few weeks. In my personal opinion, you probably don't need them in this recipe, though I liked having a raw veggie in the mix.

Uncommonly Good: Creamy Dilly Chickpea Salad

In my last real post I mentioned that I drove my at-home family to UIUC to visit three of my brothers who live in the area (in case you are keeping track, I have six hermanos all together).  I made the silly mistake of going for a quick three and a half mile jog before we hit the road.  Obviously, I stretched after my run, but what I didn't do was refuel... at all.  When we finally arrived at the university, I was beyond hungry.  My hunger transformed from an occasional growl to something unbearable!  Luckily, our very first stop was meeting up with the brothers for lunch.  Whenever I visit my UIUC family, we always eat at Common Ground Co-op.  On my first visit, I fell in love with this place.  They have a huge selection of vegan and gluten-free options.  Thanks to sibs who know how to share, I've tried almost everything from the house-made sweets section.  They have a huge selection of vegan scones, muffins (the gluten-free pumpkin chocolate chip muffins are addictive), and cookies (peanut butter cookie FTW!).  Though I shamelessly admit that my true motivation in life is obtaining and consuming vegan baked goods, the food food at Common Ground is just as good as the sweets. Please don't tell anyone I said that. They have vegan quiches, vegan brekky burritos, vegan sweet potato and black bean tamales, vegan soups, vegan sammiches, vegan pizzas (yes, plural! "I'd like a slice of the vegan pizza, please." "Which one?" "!!!!!!!!!!") and, essentially, vegan everything! Plus, all of it is on point.  College towns are where it's at.  Suburbs, catch up!!  You're totally embarrassing me, and I want nothing to do with you.

Vegan peanut butter cookie from Common Ground.  Uncommonly good is beyond accurate.

Vegan cranberry orange scone.  The best scone I've ever had.

On my most recent visit to Common Ground, I was ravenous.  So so so ravenous.  Then, I was overwhelmed with options, thus preventing me from acquiring food efficiently.  Vegan cardboard would've tasted good by the time I finally settled on a house-made chickpea salad that looked and tasted more like potato salad and house-made cajun spiced tofu. Though it might have been the hunger, I couldn't handle just how great the chickpea salad and tofu were. I kept raving.  Perhaps my company wanted to talk about other things.  Unfortunately, I had food on my mind and finally entering my system.  I vowed to myself that as soon as I had the opportunity to get into the kitchen again I would remake the chickpea salad.  A busy storm struck, and it wasn't until dinner today that I had the time to get to work on re-creating the salad.  

My brother, Dan, who is also vegan, told me that the co-op used veganaise in the chickpea salad.  I've never purchased veganaise and really was not in the mood to start today.  I've made a vegan potato salad without it before, so I knew it could be done.  I drew on Detoxinista's potato salad recipe for inspiration.  Avocado for creaminess? That sounds stellar. When all was said and done, I decided my salad was better than the one from Common Ground!  Blasphemy!  ...but actually.

Creamy Dilly Chickpea Salad

Ingredients

2 cans of chickpeas/garbanzo beans (16 oz/each) rinsed and drained

1/2 avocado

1/3 c. dijon mustard

3/4 c. cucumber (1 small cucumber) diced very small

3/4 c. celery diced very small

1/3 c. onion diced very small

juice from 1/2 lemon
1 heaping tbsp. dry dill weed 

black pepper to taste

1.  Place the finely diced veggies in a large mixing bowl and add one can (16 oz) of drained chickpeas to the bowl.

2.  Put the avocado and dijon mustard through a blender or food processor until smooth.  This will be a thick mixture, so use a rubber spatula to get it all out of your blending apparatus and into the same mixing bowl as the veggies.

3.  Without cleaning your blending apparatus, blend the second can of drained chickpeas.  Do not blend until the mixture is pureed.  This would be difficult to do since there is no liquid, but don't try to force it.  Remove the chickpeas from the blender when the mixture is chunky -- some chickpeas should still be partially in tact.  Once again, use your rubber spatula to add the broken down chickpeas to the mix.

4.  Add lemon juice, dry dill weed, and black pepper.  Mix.  Take a bean masher and mash all of the contents of the bowl.  At this point, alternate mixing and mashing until everything is well incorporated.  Your final product will be chunky (because of the generous amount of add-in vegetables and the whole and near-whole chickpeas that remain) and creamy.

5.  Enjoy immediately or refrigerate.  This would work well in a pita, on top of toast, or wrapped in large leafy vegetables such as collard greens or romaine.  But for my personal favorite, all you have to do is turn the camera a bit:

You should probably do this.  If you're smart that is.  Cut off the tops and remove the seeds from red, orange, or yellow baby bell peppers and stuff them generously with the salad.  Crunch away!

No-greens salad: a salsa salad

Just two short weeks from now, I will board a plane flying to Honduras.  Mentally, I'm situated in a horrible mess of nerves and stress.  From packing to talking with my boyfriend about the move (a never ending dialogue, as it should be) to learning all about bilingual education and the brain development of six-year-olds, I feel like I don't know where to begin, when the preparations end, and why I can't get a decent amount of sleep on any given night.

I've tried to compartmentalize my fears and anxieties and to organize the way I am approaching each task -- be it the physical act of creating a packing list (and actually packing) or the mental preparation associated with a serious life change.

Since mental preparation itself is daunting, I've decided to put it on a shelf, to forget it.  Packing for 10 months suddenly sounds like a dream.  When I  think about packing for this next chunk of my life, I think about utility and, ideally, multiple uses of any given item.  A flashlight will be useful if electricity goes out (which it does, about once weekly) and it will be useful if I want to play flashlight tag (with all of those friends I'm sure I'll have).  Bam, useful!  A towel, great for after showers but also a necessary accessory if I go to the hot springs right outside of town.  Bam, also useful!  So, I've made a rule for myself: if something just has one use, it's staying stateside!  Clothes? Bam, bad example!

But there's something about knowing what I'm packing has multiple uses (aka will definitely come in use in some way!) that makes me feel, I don't know, fulfilled, relaxed, at ease?  It makes me feel good.  Bam, words.

The recipe I'm sharing today also has multiple uses.  Create the recipe as is and eat it plain, like a salad, and you will not be upset.  Dip some tortilla chips in here and, friends, you will also most definitely not be upset.  Add the salad to a big old bowl of farro, quinoa, or bulgur and stir that guy up, and... bam, still no one is upset!  The first time I made this salad, I ate it with a fork as dinner (I lead a balanced life), had it with some chips as a snack the next day, and mixed the remainder into a bowl of bulgur and brought it to work for lunch for the next two days.  Now that's utility.

Mango, Cilantro, Black Bean Salsalad (see what I did there?)

Ingredients

2 mangos, peeled and diced

1 orange bell pepper, diced

1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

1 cup of cilantro, coarsely chopped

1 cup of diced red onions

Juice of 4 limes

Salt to taste

Put all of the prepared ingredients together and mix, evenly distributing lime juice and salt.  Bam, done!

No-greens salad: greek salad

I've woefully decided to separate M&A (see mango and avocado say I do for a full recap) for the next two no-greens salads I'll share.  After all of the hype, I decided it was important that each went out into the world and asserted themselves as significant individuals.  And I'm sure you'll understand why.

One half of a 10k-running, vegan, craft-beer-loving couple is totally different than the other half.  Each person has his own unique qualities, idiosyncrasies, and interests.  Where the couple's interests or lifestyles dovetail is beautiful and is probably what made the relationship sustainable initially.  However, where two people (or fruits) diverge is profound, and that is the space where each can grow and develop and learn.  Within each power couple, there are two power people and each of them should be recognized in his own right.  It's your turn avocado.

Greek (no-greens) Salad

Ingredients

1 avocado

1 small cucumber

1 tomato

1 red bell pepper

1 can of garbanzo beans

black pepper to taste

1.  Dice cucumber, plum tomato, bell pepper, and avocado

2.  Combine all chopped ingredients and garbanzo beans in a bowl, mix

3.  Add black pepper to taste, enjoy while mistaking cucumbers for avocados and vice versa

I've never snapped a picture of this salad, but this morning out in my garden I found a cucumber waiting to be picked.  My eyes are also on my tomatoes; it won't be long now!  I'll be making some backyard-garden-to-fork Greek (no-greens) Salad soon enough.

No-greens salad: mango and avocado say "I do"

Let's be real, there are some couples you see and you're just like "YEAH! ... YEAH!"  They are perfect. They are made for each other.  Have they ever even bickered?! (Answer: yes, probably all of the time.)  You know what I'm talking about, right?  It's like when you see two vegans holding hands, frequenting microbreweries while complimenting one another's taste in porters, and running 10ks together, you're like "wow."  Or nauseous.  Power couples make me queasy sometimes, too.

Not this one, though. Never this one.  Mango and avocado are the least vom-inducing power couple I know.  They are one of plant-based-foods greatest pairings.  So much so that if they televised their wedding, I would go find a T.V. with channels (mine only gets Netflix) somewhere and watch it.

This salad celebrates M&A's happy union.

Mango and Avocado Salad

Ingredients

1 mango

1 orange or red bell pepper

1 avocado

1/2 cup cilantro

1/4 cup green onion (optional)
1 serrano pepper

juice of 2 limes

salt to taste

1.  Peel and dice mango, dice bell pepper, and remove avocado from skin while cutting into small cubes.  Place all ingredients in bowl.

2.  Chop cilantro and green onions.  Finely chop the serrano. Add to bowl.

3.  Squeeze lime juice directly into salad, toss to evenly distribute.  Add salt last and to taste.

4.  Enjoy immediately, or put this salad in the fridge for an hour or so and be delighted.

Notes:  I've had to improvise with this salad before.  No cilantro, no green onion? It's totally fine.  A little mango, bell pepper, and avocado bathing in lime juice is equally delicious.  I had just that over quinoa for lunch one summery afternoon and I felt satisfied and full.

Speaking of couples that belong together forever, today is my mama and papa's wedding anniversary.  36 years, 7 kiddos, and still kicking it together watching westerns on Netflix (because we have no channels).  I used a little sidewalk chalk, in lieu of the traditional card, to mark the day significant, celebratory, and colorful.  Both my parents loved it, but for some reason, it really cracked my mom up when she got home from work... there was an unusual amount of laughter out of her.  

Here's to all of the happy unions!

No-greens salad: who needs leaves?

I fall in and out of love with the standard as-we-know-it salad.  There are days that all I crave is the predictable hard crunch of romaine or the intricate bitter depth of arugula, and then there are days when I want to say "bump you romaine and arugula, oh and totally forget you spinach, I'd rather pop an iron supplement than chew you for even a minute."  Seriously. I'm so up and down with how I feel about salads.  Sometimes, I know it's pure boredom.  I'm the only one to blame for that.  Instead of opening one of my many cookbooks filled with exciting salad recipes (or hopping on my all time favorite recipe-finder: google.com), I retreat to the same old, used, and tired salad recipes I've been eating for the last few vegan years of my life.  It's not only the boredom, but it's this boredom coupled with my stubbornness and laziness.  Here's how I know:  the second I have the option of ordering a Carribean Jerk Kale Salad from Native Foods complete with coconut shavings, mango, avocado, and grilled tempeh, suddenly I don't despise salads so much. As soon as this precious was sitting in front of me, I loved salads all over again.

Last time I mentally (and potentially verbally) declared, "aghhh get away from me you slimy healthful leafy greens," I coped with it in a new way.  I became obsessed with making no-greens salads. Inspired by a recipe from the Vegan Stoner, I started slow, and later worked my way to making my own creations.  Over the next few days I'll share with you my no-greens salads.  To get started, here is the first recipe that I snagged from that aforementioned blog.  You should totally check out the Vegan Stoner, if not for the Apple Tahini Salad, then for the adorable by-hand-sketches each recipe includes and the simple ingredient, straightforward cooking it encourages. No frills, no measurements, so good!

Apple Tahini Salad

Ingredients

Green apple

Red bell pepper (above, I used an orange bell pepper)

Can of chickpeas

1 tbsp (original recipe says "spoonful") of tahini

1 tbsp agave

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

juice of one lemon

1.  Dice green apple and bell pepper in to similar-sized chunks.  Combine with chickpeas in a large bowl.

2.  To make dressing, mix together the agave and tahini, add the balsamic vinegar and the lemon juice and mix in as well.

3.  Pour dressing over the apple, bell pepper, and chickpeas.  Mix in to evenly distribute.

4.  In Vegan Stoner spirit: munch!

Keep an eye out for more no-greens salad recipes this week!