Salad Oh Salad.

I have to say, being a vegan I am not a salad person. I like vegetables and leafy greens but I just can't get all excited about salads. In order for me to order salads at restaurants (especially vegan restaurants where I can get any kind of indulgent meat free option), it has to be chock full of enticing stuff with a really good dressing. Tonight I made this salad because my friend Maile at work always brings these amazing kale salads with tofu, nuts, cranberries and other greens. I kind of wanted something similar to that. I raided my fridge and tossed together romaine, arugula, edamame, bell peppers, corn, walnuts, cranberries with a teriyaki-sesame dressing. And to top it all off, I added sauteed mushrooms and caramelized onions. Now this is a salad worth getting excited about. I ate it all. :)

Miso Mac

Yes, the macaroni is green. And here's why, the sauce is made from broccoli! In The Veggie Lover's Cookbook, there's a recipe called Miso Macaroni that uses cooked broccoli and onions as a base for a sauce in which you add white miso, nutritional yeast, vegan margarine and tamari. I made a quick version by steaming broccoli, onions and sliced carrots in the microwave, threw them in the blender along with the other ingredients and blitzed away until smooth. Then heated up the sauce, added crushed chili flakes and tossed in cooked macaroni. Dinner took about 15-20 minutes.

Asian Persuasion.

I wasn't initially in the mood for asian food but when faced with a block of tofu and a bag of green beans, this was the only thing I could come up with. I sauteed the tofu in olive oil, regular soy sauce, mushroom soy sauce, plum sauce, a splash of rice vinegar, garlic, sansho pepper and crushed chili flakes. Served with steamed green beans and rice with a healthy squirt of Sriracha. Pretty tasty if I do say so myself.

Oatmeal & Buckwheat Healthy Cookies

I was in a baking mood last night at 8pm and made these on the fly. I wanted a somewhat healthy, hearty cookie and decided to use up the buckwheat flour that was hanging out in the fridge. I basically took a vegan oatmeal raisin cookie recipe and switched out the white flour for buckwheat. I definitely need to tweak this recipe because the cookies were very fragile and tended to fall apart if you pick them up. I added a bunch of healthy stuff like walnuts, almonds, sesame seeds, cranberries, sultanas and dark raisins. They're tasty but need work.

Fried Rice and Avocado Pesto Pasta

I whipped up this fried rice from last night's brown rice, the leftover veggies, added some broccoli, tofu, onions, garlic, ginger, mushroom soy sauce and ketchup. Threw it all into the wok on high and dinner was ready in minutes.


I made this dish over the weekend which was inspired by Giada DeLaurentis' avocado and arugula pesto. I made mine with less arugula, more basil and instead of parmesan, I used almonds and miso paste.

Macrobiotic Meal.

Brown jasmine rice, steamed carrots and green beans, baked yam, gingered black beans with miso-sesame dressing and a wakame salad that I forced myself to eat. I hate seaweed.

So. I'm trying to cut back on overly processed foods and fat. I've been a giant stressball these past few months and my diet has been poorly because of it. I've been leaning far too much on white bread, frozen veggie burgers, sweets, sweets and more sweets. I have a macrobiotic cookbook called The Self Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner that emphasizes macrobiotic eating as a way towards a balance of your mind, moods and body. It favors whole grains such as brown rice, millet, quinoa, barley etc as a staple and to be eaten with fresh, unprocessed foods such as vegetables, beans, sea vegetables and some minimally processed soy foods like tempeh and tofu. Easy enough I thought. I'd like to eat several meals a week like this but I'd have to do more research to make it interesting. Tonight's dinner was pretty basic and kinda boring. But at least it's a starting off point.

Chickpea Salad Melt

This takes me back to when I was living at my college dorm in the mid 90's. The decor was very dated as was the food in the dining halls. The starchy greasy food made me gain the Freshman 40. Awesome right? Well, one of those foods was the tuna melt. Toasty bread, mayonnaise-y tuna salad and melted cheese on top. I decided to re-create that dish today, vegan style.

The first thing I did was make the tuna salad equivalent. I made chickpea salad out of mashed chickpeas, chopped celery, red onion, vegan mayonnaise (Vegenaise brand), garlic powder, onion powder, a touch of mustard, salt and pepper. The proportions are up to you, taste as you go. If you want a "fishy" taste, you may add dulse or nori flakes. Next, I made the "cheese" sauce. The recipe I used is very similar to the "Cheese Sauce" recipe you'll find here. It's the 3rd recipe down. You don't have to make the whole amount, cut the recipe in half if you want. You can always store the rest in the fridge for later. Ok, so after that, I assembled the sandwich. I buttered a slice of whole grain bread with Earth Balance margarine, spooned some chickpea salad on top, dolloped a couple TB of cheese sauce and put it under the broiler for several minutes so the toast browned and the sauce got all bubbly.