Toasted Almond Quinoa Salad

As I've mentioned on prior occasion, I'm a big fan of Nature's Bin, a natural-food store just a hop-skip-and-jump from my house, particularly because of their freakishly good (and freakishly vegan-friendly) deli selections. (You can witness the glory of their deli-food HERE.) And one of my all-time favorite things to get there is their quinoa salad--it is tasty, light, healthy, clean, and crisp. It is good good stuff. (Another favorite of mine is their delectable vegan spinach pie--I don't think I've ever been in that store without nabbing one.)

Anyways, as I've also mentioned before, one of the reasons I love Nature's Bin so much is that on the labels of most of their deli-dishes, they list out the ingredients. This is a vegan cooking-nerd's wet dream.

So this week, I finally decided to try duplicating their quinoa salad for myself. That way I could make it in bulk, I could make it whenever I wanted, and I could cow down on it for way cheaper.

And duplicate it I did. I will probably end up tweaking the soy sauce/lemon juice ratio the tiniest bit, but nonetheless, I was proud of myself for getting so close to the original. I *did* mix it up just a little by using both black quinoa and regular, and I recommend it. But it's not a necessity.

Either which way, this makes for the perfect lunch or the perfect picnic dish. And (almonds aside) it's fat-free.

NATURE'S BIN VERSION


MY VERSION


INGREDIENTS:

• 3 or 4 c. cooked quinoa--I used half regular, half black quinoa


• 1 c. slivered carrots (or shaved would work too)


• 1/2 c. thinly-sliced scallions


• 1/3 c. slivered or shaved almonds, toasted


• 1 handful parsley, finely cut


• 3 T. soy sauce


• 1 T. apple cider vinegar


• Juice from one lemon

DIRECTIONS

Mix the quinoa, carrots, scallions, almonds, and parsley in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients. Drizzle over the quinoa mixture.

Let sit for an hour or so to absorb the flavors. Serve.

Makes 4-6 servings

Two-Quinoas Salad

So I am back. In black. (In actuality, I'm black in lime green and mustard--it's spring, folks! I'm not wearing black when it's actually been nice and in the 70's finally all weekend!) Anywho, E, the boy, in all his diligence, patience, and computer-savvy wisdom, managed to finally fix my computer this weekend. So PICTURES!! HURRAY!! Long motherf-ing overdue, I must say.

Which means now it's time to play catch up, and I do that by starting with one of my favorite recipes from last week:

Have Cake, Will Travel's Two-Quinoas Salad.

Now one quinoa's good in and of itself--so just imagine how mind-blowing TWO quinoas would be in the same dish.

Yeah. You hadn't thought of the possibility, had you?

Anyways, originally I had just planned on making this dish with regular quinoa only (since I didn't have the "red")--but then I happened to be moseying past some grains and legumes and stuff at the WSM when I saw, guess it, BLACK QUINOA. I'm not sure that it's the same as red quinoa, but I figured, hell, close enough. So I nabbed some.

And lemme just say, if you can get your hands on some, you must, because it's SO. DAMN. GOOD. It's like the wild rice of the quinoa world. Regular rice rocks, but if you can mix it up with some wild rice, well, hells yes, your tummy will be hop-skip-jumping gloriously all over the place. Same with quinoa. The regular stuff is tender and yummy, but add in some black quinoa, and you've got a bit more texture and oomph, a bit more muscle, a bit more crunch, a bit more heartiness. It's good good stuff.

And so is this recipe. What first attracted me to it was the intermingling of fruit and veggies. I was like, Blueberries?? And fricking PEAS???? Um, what?!?? I didn't think it could pull it off, but it totally did. The blueberries and the dressing add a bit of springy sweetness while the veggies and beans add a bit more heft. Talk about good spring yumminess. This is totally totally it.

The only changes I made to the recipe were a) I left out the pecans (they're damn expensive, peeps--and I figured I could live without) and b) I halved the amount of oil. And truth be told, next time I make it, I am probably not gonna use ANY oil at all. Not because it tasted horrible WITH the oil, but mostly because it didn't add too much excitement for me, and I could just as easily do without the fat and calories. I definitely recommend though, if you ARE gonna use it, just using half the amount. Even then, it was a bit oily (though delish).

Variations have been included below...

INGREDIENTS:

Salad:


• 3 c. cooked quinoa [I used regular and black, but normal alone is fine if you can't find red or black]


• 1/4 c. raw pecan pieces (optional)


• 1/4 - 1/2 c. blueberries [I used frozen, just let thaw a little bit before eating]


• 1/4 - 1/2 c. green peas [I used frozen, just let thaw a little bit before eating]


• 1/2 cup cooked kidney beans


Dressing:


• juice of a 2 small lemons


• 2 t. grated lemon zest


• 2 T. rice vinegar (I used sweetened)


• 2 T. olive oil (next time I'd omit)


• 1/4 c. chopped red onion


• 2 garlic cloves, pressed


• salt and pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS

Place all ingredients in a medium sized bowl, and mix.

Prepare dressing in a small sized bowl, and whisk it well. Drizzle onto salad ingredients, and enjoy!

Thanks, Have Cake, Will Travel!

Peanuttified Coleslaw

On Sunday, I busted out the recipe for the Nappa Cabbage Salad with Peanut Dressing that I'd been eyeing in the Vegetarian Times--I knew I was gonna have to try it already after having seen it mentioned again on Two Vegan Sisters last week.

When I got to the grocery store, however, I realized I was feeling utterly lazy--so when it came down to the choice of either buying a head of napa cabbage (which the recipe called for) and the already pre-shredded bag o' various types of random cabbage (aka, instant coleslaw shreds), I opted for the latter. When I got home, I realized as well that I only had seasoned rice vinegar (which is SWEETENED rice vinegar), so I ended up making some adjustments to the quantity of brown rice syrup so that it wouldn't end up being overly sweet. I also only had regular sesame oil rather than toasted, regular soy sauce instead of low-sodium, and crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth, so I decided to suck it up and make do. I also realized I only had powdered ginger and didn't feel like running back out to get the fresh stuff.

Needless to say, the recipe ended up a wee bit different than the original, but after all was said and done, I really really liked it nonetheless. Granted, the original recipe could very well be leaps and bounds better than my version. But then again, my version was cheaper and lazier. And ain't nothing better than that.

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 T. chunky natural peanut butter


• 3 T. seasoned rice vinegar


• 1 T. soy sauce


• 1 t. brown rice syrup


• 2 t. water


• 1 T. sesame oil


• 1/2 t. powdered ginger


• A few dashes red pepper flakes


• 4 c. shredded cabbage/coleslaw mix (I used from the prepackaged coleslaw bags)


• 1 sm. red pepper, sliced


• 1 handful of slivered carrots (also bought in a bag)


• 3 green onions, sliced

DIRECTIONS

To make Dressing: Whisk together all ingredients in bowl.
To make Salad: Toss all ingredients with dressing in serving bowl.

* * * *
I am still skeptical about it only having 160 or so calories per serving, but if that IS the case, all the more power to them.

{{For some reason writing about this peanutty coleslaw got that old Kriss Kross song "Jump Jump" stuck in my head. I don't even WANNA attempt to figure out why.}}

"Daddy Mac'll make you... JUMP JUMP!
Kriss Kross'll make you... JUMP JUMP!"

(Adapted from The Vegetarian Times)

Buttery Kidney Bean and Avocado Salad

As any of you who've been reading this blog for more than five minutes knows, I've had a long-standing and torrid (and sexy, and kinda sweaty) love affair with the avocado. Quite frankly, if I had a harem list of foods like I do my harem-list of famous-people (see My Personal Harem list in the sidebar here for more), the avocado would be my Julian Casablancas, my #1 go-to food. It is sexy and it sets my insides all a-flutter. It is, dare I say it, the perfect food.

So although this is not any real complicated recipe, is not even really a "recipe" per se, I felt the need to share it with you today. Because over the past week, my love of avocado has been reaffirmed (I've been lucking out with perfectly ripe avocado after perfectly ripe avocado from the market for the past couple weeks), and I recently realized that, if I were into threesomes, it'd most certainly be the kidney bean that I'd invite to join me and Avocado.

Seriously. Kidney beans and avocado? Surprisingly damn good. I think it's because as beans go, kidney beans are one of the more buttery ones in consistency, just like an avocado. And they are rich-tasting and velvety in consistency, JUST LIKE THE AVOCADO! And they're damn sexy!!!! JUST LIKE THE AVOCADO!!!!! I mean, seriously, how could you NOT let them go at it with each other knowing all that?

So yes. Though this seems almost not even worthy of its own recipe, given the simplicity of it, I figure it's worth noting if for no other reason than to get you out there and dabbling with an avocado-kidney bean threesome. (And yes, it's healthy, it's super-easy, and it's MAGICAL to eat. MAGICAL!)

INGREDIENTS:

I've included guess-timated proportions for the anal-retentive of you, but truly, it all comes down to portioning it out the way that makes you most tingly in your nether-regions.

• Shredded/chopped lettuce (About 1 cup)


• Kidney beans (About 1/2 to 3/4 cup)


• 1/2 of an avocado, diced


• One plum tomato, diced


• Salsa (1/2 to 3/4 cup)

DIRECTIONS

Toss lettuce in a bowl. Heat up the kidney beans in a microwave until hot. Toss the kidney beans, avocado, and plum tomato on top of the lettuce. Top off with salsa (not pictured here, otherwise it'd make a really boring picture).

International Quinoa Salad

So I've been intrigued by quinoa for a while for several reasons:

1) it is spelled way differently than it's actually pronounced (my friend D's technique for remembering the pronunciation is to think of "Joaquin" of "Joaquin Phoenix"-fame and switch the syllables around: "keen-wa"--he is brilliant, yes, especially since I'd been referring to it as "kwi-no-ah" for weeks); and

2) it looks way too much like the little suction cuppy things on the tentacles of octupi:



Thankfully, it doesn't taste anything like them suction cups though!

For about three weeks I've had a box of quinoa sitting in my kitchen waiting to be used, and finally finally finally I was moved into cooking-action upon stumbling across Fat Free Vegan's International Quinoa Salad recipe--as soon as I saw them little octopi-suction cups in her picture, I knew that it was the quinoa recipe I was bound to tackle.

And I must say, there's a lot of chopping of vegetables, but short of that, it's a really simple recipe. The only change I made was to cook the quinoa in my rice cooker at a 2:1 ratio of water to quinoa (for this specific recipe, I used 1.5 c. quinoa and 3 c. water). And I used 1/2 t.'s worth of red chili peppers *in adobo sauce* (with the adobo-y-ness rinsed off) due to easy access.

The end result was a delicate and simple (but flavorful) salad with a clean and summery taste, perfect for a picnic or a family barbecue. I definitely think the avocado adds a lot to the dish (the creamy richness contrasts with the clean crisp flavor of the rest of the salad) but it is also a wonderful dish even *without* avocado garnishing it, given all the other contrasts housed within it--between the spicy peppers and the cool mint, the crunchy cucumbers and the softer quinoa. All in all, it's probably one of my favorite dishes I've made in the past few months or so...

THE RECIPE: Fat Free Vegan's International Quinoa Salad

And to top it all off, the box of quinoa I bought has this sweet little booklet in it that offers up recipes (some examples can be found HERE) and gives you about 15 billion different ways to cook it, from braised to quinoa-croquettes to alternatively-colored quinoa. And the recipes are arranged by the season: I got the Fall/Winter booklet this time around, so if you happen to be standing in the grain aisle and see someone fishing through all the boxes of quinoa, looking for the Spring/Summer edition, that'd be me. =)

Orange-Bourbon Shishkabobs w/ Tofurkey Kielbasa, Blueberry and Wild-Rice Salad, and Mint Juleps, to Boot!

As mentioned earlier in the week, Saturday night I had plans to party it up Mark-Twain-style, and so we busted out the barbecue, the mint juleps, and the Mark Twain and had ourselves a sweltering, church-going, plantation kind of night! Why, you ask? Well, mostly just because I wanted to try out this Orange-Bourbon Marinade recipe I'd stumbled across and wanted to use for shishkabobs, which meant buying some bourbon, which in turn meant finding uses for bourbon, which in turn meant finally trying a damn mint julep, which in turn meant (of course) reading some Mark Twain.

Saturday afternoon, I whipped up this extremely simple (but flavorful) marinade and tossed some baby 'bellas, onion chunks, and diced up tofu into it to marinate throughout the afternoon and into the evening. I also boiled up some red baby potatoes so that we could throw them on the skewers as well and they wouldn't take excessively-long to grill.


ULTIMATE INGREDIENTS OF THE SHISHKABOBS:

Extra-firm tofu, chunks of onions, and baby 'bellas, all marinated in the Orange-Bourbon Marinade
One red-pepper, chunked
One green-pepper, chunked
5 red baby potatoes (pre-cooked and sliced in two)

Orange-Bourbon Marinade: RECIPE

E also found himself with a hankering for kielbasa that afternoon, so he picked up some Tofurkey kielbasa for us to grill up as well, along with a homemade batch of peasant-bread that he'd made the night before.


To top all that off, I picked up some no-cook fresh ears of corn at the market on Friday--I love this corn way the hell up... It is so gloriously sweet and tender that you can eat it right off the cob without ever needing to cook it. If you haven't tried it, you must.

And finally, I whipped up a batch of Blueberry and Wild-Rice Salad that I'd also been eyeing all week, and damn was it good. The most complicated part about the recipe was the dressing, but it was well-worth the grating effort. The only adjustments I made (or would make in the future) were that I used a variety of dried fruit (since I didn't wanna spend $6+ on buying a bag of apricots and a bag of cranberries) and in the future, I would probably cut the amount of oil in the dressing in half (if not more) as it was much greasier than it needed to be, especially for a fruit and rice salad. But seriously, well-worth the time and effort as it was wonderfully flavorful and summery-tasting.


Blueberry and Wild-Rice Salad: RECIPE

And of course, the night wouldn't've been complete without some homemade mint juleps... Man alive, these babies were strong--I'd imagine there's a helluva lot of drunken southern ladies sitting out on their porches, fanning themselves desperately on a nightly-basis if these really are the cat's pajamas down south. =)


INGREDIENTS (For one mint julep):

Ice
3 oz Jim Beam bourbon
5+ sprigs of fresh mint
1 t. sugar

Mix and try to make it through to that last sip, as it is the best one.

All in all it was a very spirited and fun evening, and I'd definitely recommend both recipes for grilling out with friends or family. I'd've said all that in a mock-southern drawl, but you'd just end up making fun of me. =)

OBLIGATORY READING: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain

Road-Trip Noshes

So as I mentioned, I was in VA Beach this past weekend, which meant no cooking. However, I did manage to whip up a few goodies for the car-ride down. I had some pesto, cilantro, celery, and a jalapeno that were near the end of their lives, so I decided to utilize them so they didn't rot in the fridge over the weekend and made the following.

Pesto Pasta Salad

Macaroni Noodles
Pesto (preferably homemade)
Vegenaise (or some other vegan mayo)
Walnuts
Diced celery
Dried cranberries

Coat the noodles in a mix of pesto and mayo to taste. (If you make the pesto yourself, you may wanna just cut back on the amount of oil you use so your mouth doesn't feel like an oil-slick after you finish chowing down.) Then toss in the remaining ingredients, also to taste, and EAT IT ALL WHILE SITTING NEAR PORT-A-POTTIES AT A REST STOP WHILE A BIRD LANDS ON YOUR TABLE JUST INCHES AWAY AND TRIES TO STEAL SOME OF YOUR FOOD!

Black Bean Dip



1 small can black beans, drained (liquid reserved)
1/2 of remaining liquid
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large handful of cilantro
Juice from 1/2 of a lime
1 jalapeno, deseeded and diced

Throw all of the above into a food processor and BLEND THAT SHIT UP! This was a yummy recipe, but not nearly as spicy as I would've liked it to be (despite it being a fairly large jalapeno), so I'd recommend throwing in some cayenne pepper as well. Unless you're a wuss. You're not a wuss, are you? Huh, wuss?

Eat while driving through Pennsylvania or Maryland with a nice bag of Fritos Scoops. Well, not the BAG itself, but the Fritos inside. Otherwise that would probably taste like crap.

Roasted Couscous and Cranberry Salad

For a holiday cookout this past weekend, I decided to whip up a couscous salad of my own invention. Roasty stuff sounded good and fitting, so this was the end result:

INGREDIENTS:
1 box of plain couscous
1 bunch of asparagus
1 roasted red pepper
1-1.5 cups of toasted walnuts
A couple fistfuls of dried cranberries
Some homemade Roasted Red Pepper Dressing

Make the salad dressing the night before so that the flavors have a time to do their little copulative thang overnight. Whip up a batch of couscous according to the directions on the box or the bag. In the meantime, roast the asparagus for a few minutes in your broiler, with a little bit of olive oil. You can probably get away with roasting the red pepper at the same time, you'll probably just need to remove the asparagus before the red pepper. Post-roasting, dice up the red pepper into small pieces and cut up the asparagus into small chunks as well. Toss both over the couscous and mix. Crumble up your walnuts a little bit and then toast them. Toss those babies into the mix along with your dried cranberries and mix. Add the roasted red pepper dressing to taste and refrigerate for a couple hours to again let the flavors tango. Serve at room temperature.

A very nice mix of rich roasty flavor coupled with a sweetness from the cranberries will make your insides wanna make sweet sweet love to you. If insides could do that.

Makes enough to take to a picnic--about 4-10 servings, depending on how big of pigs folks are.

*Tip: Always roast your nuts. *Stifled giggle* It makes them a lot bigger *snicker* in flavor and brings out an even nicer, richer fullness on your tastebuds. Read some directions on how to toast 'em.

Topless Tofu-Salad Sammich

Click HERE for more topless pictures

Everything always looks better in a slight state of disrobement (except for old men in thongs), so I give you the Topless Tofu-Salad Sammich. As I've said before, I usually don't post about lunch-stuff, mostly because I'm usually lazy and just jam a hotdog or pbj in a sack with a piece of fruit and drag it in. But the other night I felt a bit more inspired, so I whipped up this sammich.

I have no exact measurements--it's kind of a "to-your-taste" kinda thing. But here's the ingredients anyways.

INGREDIENTS:

About 1/4 block of extra-firm tofu
About a handful's worth of diced up celery
A couple of tablespoons of Vegenaise (or some other vegan mayo)
Some dried basil
Some salt (but don't accidentally spill a bunch in there while refilling your salt shaker like I did or you'll end up dehydrated all afternoon)
A handful of walnuts
A couple slices of hearty grain bread

TO MAKEY:

Smoosh up the tofu in a bowl with a fork. Then add the Vegenaise and mix around. Then toss in the celery and basil, and swirl again. And then finally, take those walnuts and crumble them up between your palms and sprinkle the small bits and pieces in, and mix one last time. (The walnuts add a nice crunch.) Throw it all on a slice or two of hearty grain bread (I used a 7-grainer from the WSM)--you can leave it open-faced like I did if you wanna enjoy the flavors more, but just make sure the whole thing doesn't end up in your lap. Though it *IS* a topless sammich. So perhaps an afternoon rendezvous in your lap wouldn't be TOO terrible.

VERDICT: A

COMMENTS: A vegan friend who taste-tested said, "i remember having tofu salad at tommy's [a local veggie restaurant] once. i think i like yours better, though"--yip yip!

Half-Assed Strawberry-Avocado Salad

I rarely blog about my lunches because quite frankly, they usually suck. But this was pretty good...

Ingredients:

• Balsamic vinaigrette dressing (just some oil and balsamic vinegar thrown in together)


• Diced up strawberries left to sit in the salad dressing overnight


• Chopped up spinach


• Walnuts


• One dreamy avocado, scooped out seductively with each bite

Throw it all together. Eat. Marvel at the wonder that is the avocado. And then blog a little letter to it later, telling it how you feel:

Avocado, you rock my world. You make me tingle. You are sexy and smooth and suave and a bit feisty. You are the Strokes of the fruit world. I wanna marry you and have your babies. We will make sweet sweet glorious love for all the world to see because they're naughty like that too. Avocado, I heart you.

Seriously though, eating avocado always makes me feel naughty (and the combination of juicy, dripping strawberries didn't help any). I swear to you, it is the only food that actually has an aphrodisiacal (is that a word?) effect on me--sooooooooooooooo not good in the workplace. But if you ever wanna woo me into the sack, all you've gotta do is spend $1 at the Westside Market and you've got yourself a good start.

Pesto Rice Salad

On Sunday morning, I made this pesto rice salad I found on the internet for an Easter gathering I was attending. After my success with the pesto recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, I used that in place of the pesto recipe that came with the rice salad recipe. The dish is a fairly easy one to make, and it's perfect to take to gatherings or parties because it can be served warm, cold, or at room temperature. So it doesn't matter if it sits out all afternoon, and you don't need to reheat it before serving it. Room temperature seems to be its ideal condition though, as it seems to bring out all of the flavors.

It is a fairly tasty dish as is, I'd just recommend doubling the quantities of roasted red peppers and walnuts.

RECIPE: HERE

Verdict: B+