CSA Salad

Wow this was a great salad, all fresh, all local, all good!!!
It is starting to feel a bit like summer in Kansas, warm and muggy. This is a nice change from the extended cold rainy spring we have had.
Every Monday I will be picking up our produce from the Rolling Prairie group, a farm collective that provides weekly distribution of the freshest picked that day produce. I like the variety of things that we get. Much of the produce is things that you would not find in the average grocery store, or in fact any store!!!! It is fun to bring it home and figure out what to do with it.
This week I received pea shoots, baby greens, sorel, chives, asparagus, leaf lettuce, shittake mushrooms, and radishes. I made a quick dressing with Extra Virgin olive oil, garlic, white vinegar and salt and pepper. All of the veggies are so flavorful on their own that the dressing really needs to be basic not to smother the other flavors. Soon we will start getting veggies that will be cooked, I will keep you posted!!!!

CSA Salad #2, Wasabi No Oil Dressing

Get used to it!!!!!
This is going to be something you will see many times of the course of the next few months. I will go and pick up the Rolling Prairie CSA produce on Monday's and we will have a big salad!! But these salads are local, organic and fresh picked!!!! I will be adding new dressings and toppings as we move along.
Local items: baby spring greens, with extra arugula, spinach, shitake mushrooms.
From the store: red pepper, green pepper, white onion, garbanzo beans.

I decided to do a light dressing to complement the wonderful greens, so I took a teaspoon of wasabi and mixed with a tablespoon of soy sauce, a half teaspoon of powdered ginger, and a quarter cup of water. I just mixed the ingredients until well combined. The dressing had just enough bite to stand up to the nuttiness of the arugula, but it did not overpower the rest of the salad.
I really like to make my own dressings, they really can take a boring salad and take it to surprising places! I made a sweet style choke cherry dressing once that was pretty and exciting. Let me know if you have any exciting dressing ideas to try!!!!!
The salads were topped with a Boca Chik'n Pattie, lazy but tasty!!!!

A Rueben for a hung over Leprechaun

This really was not left overs, we ate all of the "corned" tofu because it was so good!!!! Nikki had been talking up Reubens for a while so I made more corned tofu and we made Reubens, with kraut, Follow your Heart cheddar, and secret sauce(yeah ketchup and veganaise)

The salad was fun... quinoa, tomatoes, green onions, and kale. I dressed it with olive oil and lime juice.

The kids really liked the tofu, which had baked rather than cook in the Foreman, and they had fries.
I find it very interesting how many of the foods that I remember liking from my non vegan days really were more influenced by the accompanying flavors. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is nothing lost by eating a tofu Reuben, so there!!!! I like to dream that some day there will be faux Swiss Cheese!!!

Vegan Japanese Ginger Salad+Oven Stir Fry = Happiness!!!

Addison has been asking for sushi lately, she discovered it when she was in Denver over Christmas. We picked up some of the basics to make sushi, but we just have not had the time to make it this week. We will have to do so on a weekend!!!!
I did get to thinking about making a salad that was basically the same as sushi....maybe a ginger, wasabi soy sauce dressing?!??!
But as is often the case I went down a different trail. I started thinking about the creamy ginger dressing at Japanese restaurants... a bit too much!!
So I set out to make some, then make a salad to go with it(think "If you give a pig a pancake")
Here is what I did for the dressing, throw the following in the vita mix:

• Small thumb of fresh ginger
• 1 tooth of garlic
• 12 drops of toasted sesame oil
• 1/2 cup raw cashews
• 1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
• 1 teaspoon celery powder
• 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 1/2 cup seasoned (sweet) rice vinegar
• Salt or soy sauce to taste
• Black pepper

Process until creamy(the emulsification holds pretty well, but may separate overnight, just stir), It tasted just like the kind from the restaurants!!!

For the salad we had:

• Kale
• Romaine
• Shaved Carrots
• Cucumber
• Cilantro

I was going to top with the sushi rice, oven stir fry, or roasted onions, tofu and squash, but I decided to plate those separately, because the salad were already kind of busy and our bowls were getting crowded!!!!

Eating Like Rabbits?

Well.... you have heard it before.... You're vegan.... what do you eat? Bunny food????? Usually this comes with some snickers!!!!!
Well tonight Addison did just that she made a very nice bunny salad with carrots, kale, and parsley.


Padme the rabbit enjoying her artfully prepared salad!!

Jerry the giant and Padme sharing their salad.

Salad for lunch, Sandwich for dinner

Last night I made Creamy Tarragon Dressing, it was an experiment that went well!!! So Nikki added it to her lunch salad. She said the dressing tasted better the next day, it did separate, but not much, which is very exciting for me.
This is a pretty typical lunch for her, she is good about eating kale, spinach, romaine, cilantro, or anything else green, with some kind of beans. She also eats leftovers if there are any!!!
She went through a green smoothie phase that was interesting, the shade and intensity of the green was a bit frightening, but they tasted good!!!!! It is amazing that greens run through the vita mix produce shades of green that appear unnatural!!!!
We knew that dinner was going to be rushed because we had an Animal Outreach Kansas Meeting and an eighth grade enrollment meeting. It was sandwich night!!!!

• Good bread
• Tofurkey slices
• LightLife Bologna -(Pholoney - Phologna)
• Kale
• Spinach
• Follow Your Heart Jack
• Veganaise
• (I had wasabi mustard too!!!)
• Carrots
• Store brand organic corn chips

I find it interesting that our kids like Tofurkey, but do not like Phaloney (Phalogna). Addison likes the Follow Your Heart cheese, but Carter will not embrace any faux Cheese. I tried melting Tofutti on bread for him right after we became vegan so he is convinced that all fake cheese is like that.
I am really looking forward to trying the Dr. Cow Cheese at some point, they are nut based and are cultured. They are supposedly working on a swiss cheese.... I am smiling just thinking about it!!!!!!!!