Recipe: Asian Jicama-Mango Salad

Jicama (pronounced like you're mid-hiccup when you call for your ma, "hick-ah-ma") is an often overlooked vegetable (well, actually a tuber similar to a potato) that deserves your attention. It's known as a Mexican Yam or Turnip and is a refreshing raw, slightly starchy treat with subtle flavors like green beans or peas and apples. Don't worry, it tastes nothing like a raw potato/yam or turnip.

Since it's refreshing and subtle, it pairs well with bolder flavors. Enter: Habanero. I have a love-hate relationship with this chili. I love its fruity, almost sweet heat. I don't like its intense heat. It can be up to 100x as hot as Tabasco sauce! You can avoid the heat by avoiding the capsaicin which is concentrated in the seeds and the pith where the seeds are attached.

Habaneros and jicama are from Mexico, so you can imagine all the Mexican flavor combos you could add. I was feeling adventurous though, so I went with some Asian flavors of ginger and sesame oil for my salad.

Asian Jicama-Mango Salad

1 large jicama
1 mango
1 bell pepper (color is your choice, mine was red)
1/4 c cilantro
7-8 radishes
handful of chives (or green onions)

Sauce:
1 T sesame oil
2 T lime juice
1 T brown rice vinegar
2 diced itsy-bitsy habaneros
1 T grated ginger
1 T bee-free honee (or a sweetener of your choice)

Dice the veggies small (see photo) and place in a bowl. Mix the sauce ingredients in a glass measuring cup (if you're worried about the heat, try 1/2 a habanero and up it until you're comfortable.) Blend the sauce well and add to veggie bowl and toss well. Serve cold or room temperature.

Don't forget one of the best parts...eating the mango you didn't cut off the seed...mmm...mango!!

Recipe: Taco Dip

Eating out is fun, but not nearly as fun as spending time making a full out meal at home. I'm not talking about a rush job like a sandwich or stir fry. I'm talking about an entree, side dishes... maybe even an appetizer. It's rare in our house to make the time to make full out meals. We're usually running from one thing to the other, or working late. But not tonight...and tonight was good, really good.

In celebration of the 4th of July, I wanted to make a vegan version of a family favorite: taco dip. It's layered with a chili-seasoned sour cream/cream cheese, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. This stuff is a hit at family gatherings and really easy to make vegan.

Vegan Taco Dip

1/2 tub Tofutti cream cheese (or your choice)
1/2 tub Tofutti sour cream (or your choice)
3/4 c Pace medium salsa (or your choice)
1 romaine heart
1 medium tomato
1/3 white onion
1 fresh jalapeno (optional)
1/2 T cumin (to taste)
1 T chipotle (to taste)
2 tsp ancho (to taste)
1/2 T garlic powder (to taste)
1 T lime juice (to taste)
1/2 T hot sauce (to taste

Mix cream cheese and sour cream in a small bowl until smooth. Add in spices, lime juice and hot sauce (you can skip this step by mixing in a half package of your favorite taco seasoning (check ingredients if you're making it vegan.)) Spread this mixture at the base of your dish (use a large dinner plate or you can double this recipe for a 9x11 dish). Top with the salsa and spread even (try not to mix the layers.) Dice the lettuce, tomato, onion and jalapeno and layer in that order on the salsa mixture (think you want to be able to get a good mix of this on a chip, so dice it small.) Serve with chips or fresh veggies.

That was just the appetizer! Check out this spread: homemade refried pinto beans; fajita-style peppers, onions and mushrooms; fresh guacamole; and jicama-mango salad (recipe upcoming.)

Baller Meatless Meatballs

Spaghetti is one of those comfort foods, like chili, that can be made vegan and most meat lovers won't even realize they're missing the meat. It's also pretty easy to make from scratch.  I usually just make the marinara with tomatoes, garlic, onions, red peppers, mushrooms, oregano, basil and red chili pepper flakes, but tonight I wanted to kick it up a notch and make it super hearty. 

Spaghetti marinara with Gardein meatless meatballs, parsley and faux parmesan

What's heartier than meatballs? I've tried a couple veggie meatballs and can say without a doubt that Gardein's meatless meatballs are the best. Gardein's meatballs have a great fennel flavor that reminds you of an Italian grandma's handmade with love meat-ah-ballls. The texture, when sauteed before adding to the sauce, has a great juicy, slight crumble with a browned crisp crust that rises above and beyond the usually wheat-y or rubbery consistence faux meats can have.

Yum! www.gardein.com

To Meat or Not Meat?

Recently, my fiance celebrated his 2nd anniversary of eating only plant-based foods with a reflection on what it was that convinced him after decades of eating animals to stop. It got me thinking about the people I've encountered (and the struggle I've had personally) where this idea that to stop eating animals means to somehow give something up. The reality is in the last few years there has been a tremendous move to offering plant-based alternatives to animal products. For instance, Gardein's sizzling sezchuan beefless strips with some fresh veggies stir-fried in (pictured above) makes passing on eating a cow for some beef and broccoli much easier. 

My fiance has transitioned his diet in his move away from eating animals. He eats way more veggies and much healthier than he did. As a result, he's seeing major health benefits. I haven't transitioned my diet as much in the move away from eating animals. Instead of consuming pigs and cows to eat a grilled ham and cheese, I've switched to Lightlife's baked ham style slices and Daiya's provolone slices. This week, I got a slice of cheesecake that one would be hard-pressed to tell was 100% plant-based. On my cereal, it's just as easy to use one of the countless alternatives to milk from a cow.  That's just it, you have choices - lots of them - every day in what you choose to eat. 

I still slip up and choose foods that come from animals on occasion - often thinking it'll be more convenient or comforting.  The thing is I know better and more and more that knowledge with the experience of finding tasty plant-based food that works for what I like is helping me transition away from eating animals. It isn't hard if you go at your pace and are willing to try. 

Resources for exploring eating more plant-based foods:

www.exploreveg.org - resources, recipes, Twin Cities-based activities, and more.

www.vegguide.org - searchable resource of restaurants that offer plant-based meals

www.veganmofo.org - blog list with lots of recipes, motivation and inspiration

www.vegnews.com - magazine with lots of helpful tips, recipes, reviews.

Whole Foods Market - they've got a lot of 100% plant-based options on their shelves, but so do your everyday grocery stores and Target.

Trader Joe's - convenience and they mark 100% plant-based foods with a V(vegan) for ease in shopping.

Barely Homemade

Sandra Lee's semi-homemade approach is a little more cutesy than I care for (well, with the exception of her cocktail time which I can totally get behind.) In my secret fantasy life that I don't really want and doesn't at all seem like me, but intrigues me all the same, I am a stay-at-home socialite with a proclivity toward faux feather boas in pastel pink and martinis. What does this have to do with the stir fry photo below?

Sorry, I must have sipped one too many martinis imagining my fantasy life and got off track. My point was Sandra Lee's efforts can seem like mostly-homemade compared to what you can do with the magic of Trader Joe's. Case in point: my lunch this weekend. This meal consisted of 5 ingredients and 8 minutes:

1) Trader Joe's Japanese Fried Rice
I really love this stuff which can be a vegan meal in itself. The rice is slightly sweet with tons of umami (from "tell umami this stuff is so freaking good" aka savory/satisfying). Takes 5 minutes to steam in the microwave.

Source: Trader Joe's

2) Gardein Chick'n Scallopini

In my top 3 favorite faux meats, the Gardein scallopini are solid starters for any dish you want to make. Takes about 7-8 minutes from frozen to fantastic in a medium hot skillet. Trader Joe's doesn't carry these, but they do have several other faux meat alternatives that could serve in a pinch.

Source: Gardein

3) Cub Foods' Japanese Vegetable Stir Fry or Trader Joe's frozen veggie blend of your choice

Why is it so hard to find a bag of mixed vegetables you'd want in a stir fry (broccoli, onion, red peppers, carrots, water chestnuts and mushrooms)? It seems like a no brainer this would be a way more popular blend than that boring and unappealing corn, green beans and carrots combo from childhood. 

4) Trader Joe's Island Soyaki Sauce

A pinch goes a long way of this pineapple sweetened teriyaki sauce with ginger, garlic and sesame seeds, but it really brings a bag of frozen veggies (or fresh) and some gardein chick'n to the next level.

/Source: Trader Joe's

5) Optional, Secret Ingredient: Huy Fong Foods' Chili Garlic Sauce

Not as spicy as siracha, but adds heat and extra garlic to your dish by the spoonful. This stuff rocks, but is not sold at Trader Joe's... yet. 

Source: Huy Fong Foods

I made this meal at my home, so it needs to count as at least "barely homemade." What? Sometimes you just want a tasty meal and time left to enjoy your weekend.

Vegan Feast

Compassionate Action for Animals hosted their Annual Banquet tonight, celebrating fifteen years of advocating for animals. This was our first time attending the event which was widely regarded as a vegan feast of epic proportions and lived up to the hype. The food was accented with great company and a year in review speech by my fiance :)

The proof is in the photos. Check out this amazing plant-based, vegan spread:

Drool worthy hors d'oeuvres (starting at 9 on the dinner plate): plantain hush puppy, potato knish turnover, "Camembert" and pear crostini, rice and lentil idli, brown rice veggie sushi roll, and cucumber radish finger sandwich with herbed "cream cheese".

Vegans at the table were excited they didn't have to ask about the bread's ingredients and got "butter".

Simple salad with highly sought after cherry tomatoes (see story below)

Mushroom barley soup

Gardein Chick'n Scallopini done 2 ways: cacciatore sauce and lemon tarragon; herbed scalloped potatoes, veggie fried rice and lo mein and ginger carrots. 

Strawberry shortcake with a whipped cream made from coconut 

Chocolate "cheesecake" with rasberry coulis and candied almonds

Dessert table featured lemon tart, strawberry short cake, chocolate "cheesecake", and carrot cake. Yum!

In what can only be described as an episode of overwhelming adorable-ness, a young boy came around to our table during desserts and asked politely if he could have some of our table's leftover salad. What? There is sugary goodness in the forms of cakes and tarts and you want our salad? Yes, tomatoes are my favorite. And so he proceeded to fill up his salad plate picking and choosing to get as many tomatoes as he could with the salad tongs. The adults at the table exchanged looks and shrugged it off. A few minutes later the boy was back and asked again if he could have more salad. We asked him more about his love of tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes were his favorite and there was a gold mine to be had in the dozen salad bowls in the room. He planned to not stop until he ate every last one. We wished him well and watched him happily saunter away with another plate of salad loaded with his favorite tomatoes. A few minutes later we saw him confused at the missing salad bowls at the tables he hadn't yet reached, and pointed to the volunteer who was carrying the bowls back to the kitchen. He was off in a sprint to recapture his treasure trove.

Stuffed, but committed, I hopped on my bike and fulfilled my 30 days of biking pledge with a quick ride.

Morrocan Birthday Fun

My fiance treated me to a sweet birthday, including a homemade dinner and baked from scratch birthday cake (the first cake he's ever made from scratch!) He also got me a Penny Larsen Jewelry necklace with a Minnesota charm that has a red stone near my hometown. I had been eyeing the necklace longingly at shops since February. 

For dinner, he made a Moroccan tagine substituting quinoa for the couscous. It is the Year of Quinoa after all (and we didn't have any couscous.) Couscous is a ball of semolina flour (the stuff used in spaghetti noodles); whereas, quinoa is a grain-like seed that happens to be a complete protein. You can find both in the bulk section or the pasta/rice section of most groceries. Yeah, but what's a tagine?

Tagine refers to both a rich stew and a type of clay pot usually used to prepare said stew. Tagine pots are clay with a bowl like bottom and a clay lid that is cone-shaped. The perk of the tagine pot is that it minimizes the amount of water needed to cook the stew by collecting and recondensing the steam from the slow simmering stew. This is especially useful in places with little access to water - like North Africa where the dish originates. Being from the land of 10,000 lakes, we don't have a tagine, but a cast iron dutch oven does the job in a pinch.

You can read more about this specific tagine and get a link to the recipe at my fiance's blog. 

For the made-from-scratch chocolate cake with ganache, Isa Chandra Moskowitz from Post Punk Kitchen, yet again, offers a stellar vegan "Just Chocolate Cake" recipe. That lady sure knows how to bake! Not to worry, we're doing the 30 Days of Biking pledge to ride our bikes every day in April, so we burned off some of the cake calories.