Sort-of-Greek Barley Salad

It's been a long time since I've posted here - and I have my reasons, trust me, but that's neither here nor there. Right now, it's all about quick, easy, summer food, the kind you make when you and your spouse are both ravenous and you're broke and your AC is broke and it's 90 degrees out and running the oven is patent suicide. It's made even better by a side of cooling Ecuadorian-style marinated onions, an easy recipe I learned to make from my amazing past employers, who taught me all kinds of lovely cooking things which will probably end up on this blog.

Elephant Smoothie Bowl + Homemade Salted Magic Shell

Hello, friends.

This is a smoothie bowl. 

You probably already know that.

But you're about to see a lot of pictures of it, anyway.

 I used to live on peanut butter banana smoothies. Sometimes I would have them for two or three meals, which illicited some concern from my parents, as any seemingly liquid diet probably should. But, seeing as it has plenty of carbs from bananas and fat and protein from peanut butter, I maintain it's basically a perfect meal, especially when you throw in some spinach. And, it tastes like dessert. I'm not even joking, it's like ice cream.

Creamy Chickpea Pasta

Ready for another easy, pasta-based recipe? Really, these are changing my life. This one is creamy and rich and, due to the rosemary, reminds me of my mother, with her rosemary-filled garden beds and epic rosemary-roasted potatoes, and my grammy, who gave me my first gigantic bottle of dried rosemary when I got married and moved out of state.

Funfetti Salad

You're probably thinking one of two things - "what is funfetti doing on a salad", or "oh, this poor vegan, she's been eating vegetables alone so long she thinks they're fun. And confetti-like."

  My advice to you, in either case, would be to just stop and eat this delicious salad - complete with creamy hummus dressing! - and look at a ton of pictures I took of said salad, because it's amazing and I want to remember it forever and ever. Ready?

So far, I have made this salad as a meal and as a side with two different dressings. A great addition to the toppings I already have pictured are celery and radish, by the way, but I was out so that was a no-go.

Tuscan Beans with Sage

                                   

I've been very much into convenience food lately. And by that I mean, make-ahead, can-be-carted-around-in-a-backpack-and-eaten-cold-hours-later food.

Salted Caramel Mocha Frappe: Pt I

Around the time the other half and I were jaunting around the Boston area for my aunt’s wedding, Starbucks did their thing and released their usual fall flavors: pumpkin spice and salted caramel mocha. Many factors, such as its revolting, distinctly un-vegan ingredients and the fact that the barista/snob in me generally hates the sort of individuals who come in frothing at the mouth over the flavor, abbreviating it to PSL as if pumpkin spice latte crosses some obscure threshold of tolerance is just too much of a mouthful to actually say, rabidly snapping celebratory iPhone pics of their decidedly run-of-the-mill beverages fated to be over-sentimentally hashtagged and posted and reposted to the point of exhaustion, have made me refuse to order the ever-popular pumpkin spice. This is pure pigheaded- and meanspiritedness, because I actually love it.

    My one choice when abroad, therefore, was to suck down as many salted caramel mochas as possible before returning home. This left me with such a spoilt, salted caramel lust that I actually drove to a Starbucks after leaving my job—again, at a coffee shop—to get one of said drinks. It was pathetic, and I was in my uniform still and the Starbucks and I kept exchanging knowing but confused looks. So I staged an intervention. For myself. 

And yes, I know I'm just the salty cousin of all those pumpkin spice hags.

Chocolate Pie [vegan]

This Thursday, I'm thirsty for chocolate. Pie, to be specific.

That's code for "this isn't a drink recipe."

Cake is the accepted standard American birthday dessert of choice. But, as food blogging is increasingly drawing to my attention, I was a petulant, picky child. First I vehemently disliked frosting, then, in a vividly-remembered episode of cake-eating at my paternal grandparents’ house, I discovered that frosting is actually delicious and gave up cake eating in favor of its less healthy topping. Or maybe it was the other way around and I abandoned frosting-eating for cake, all I’m really sure of is that frosted cake in its entirety is something I have long viewed askance.

Beet + Walnut Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

I’ve been making various incarnations of this salad for almost two years now.

The salad I usually keep very simple: this is actually the most toppings I’ve ever added—the beets and walnuts stand alone, flavor-wise, so if you don’t have any other vegetables on hand, don’t worry.

The dressing I’ve also altered: sometimes I do a simple olive oil and vinegar vinaigrette, often I use Dijon mustard instead of regular, but this time it was the old yellow because I am out of Dijon.

However you spin it, its almost impossible to go wrong as long as you have the foundation of this salad: greens + canned beets + walnuts + dressing.

Beet + Walnut Salad

Serves one as a meal, or two as a side salad

2 cups chopped greens

½ can (or so) beets      

1/8 cup walnuts  

    

Other suggested toppings:

¼ green pepper

½ onion, sautéed in olive oil

2 small radishes, sliced

To assemble:

Prepare toppings, and arrange on lettuce as desired. If you are making ahead of time, do not add nuts until ready to serve, as they will get soggy, and don’t add the sautéed onions until they’re cooled or the lettuce will wilt.

Dress and serve.

Honey Mustard Dressing

2 tbsp mustard of choice

1 tbsp honey

2 tsp lemon juice or vinegar

1 tsp olive oil (optional)

Salt, pepper, and onion powder to taste

Whisk ingredients together. Adjust seasonings as needed.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie

This Thirsty Thursday, I'm taking a step away from my usual coffee beverages to bring you a quirky smoothie. Yes. Quirky. 

It's like Zooey Deschanel in a cup.

End-of-Summer Greek Pasta Salad

 It’s happening: the end of summer is approaching. We had a week of chilly mornings and evening here at the beach—basically just enough to get everyone unpacking their sweaters and reawaken unwelcome memories of pumpkin spice madness and Uggs—followed quickly by two weeks of muggy days with temps reaching into the upper 90s. I’m not complaining though, these last throes of summer have found me kayaking on river and sea, getting my money’s worth out of my swimsuit, and stuffing my face with this delicious salad.

Mint syrup + iced coffee

    I’ve been extremely busy the past few weeks, moving to a new apartment, trying to settle in, finishing up my summer class, working, and running countless errands, but there is always time for coffee. Always.

Iced Chai

   I'm about to share with you a fairly straightforward recipe for something delicious. An iced chai tea.

Canola Oil Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies [vegan]

    Even after cutting out dairy, baking didn’t become really tricky until the first time I ran out of coconut oil.

   I prefer to use coconut oil in most cases, and did so often even before I stopped eating dairy. But I always had butter to fall back on in emergencies, and the first time I found myself with no coconut oil and no prospect of getting any in the near future I felt rather hurt—one of the bigger perks of being an adult is never being denied access to cookies, and being robbed of this right felt like a betrayal by the universe in general.

Grapefruit Fizz

   As warmer weather creeps in, I have found myself obsessed with this drink.

   It’s simple—only two ingredients—and takes less than five minutes to make. It’s a very rewarding beverage, the effort expended to make it minimal and the results uniformly delicious. (Trust me, as someone who has gone through two bags of grapefruit in as many weeks: I know).

Flax egg tutorial

   When one starts the grand adventure that is veganism, or at least vegan adjacency, which is the most I can claim, one quickly discovers an entirely new, sometimes bewildering, lexicon of food terms. Coconut whip? Not a lash made of tropical fruit. Earth Balance? That had me stumped for a while.  It is not, somewhat disappointingly, some mystical substance rumored in Wiccan texts, but as it turns out, just a popular cost prohibitive vegan butter substitute. (As in, I have only bought it once and cried a little inside as I put it on the conveyor at checkout). And no, I have not found any other truly vegan margarine substitute so far, though I went into my neighborhood supermarket with high hopes for their store-brand butter sub. Such is life.

Double Chocolate Almond Truffles [vegan]

   I tend to cover things I love in chocolate, whether accidentally or on purpose.

  

 These truffles are no exception. If anything, it’s rather surprising that it took me this long to do so. For lack of a better term, we’re going to call them truffles, even though they clearly are not truffles at all, because, you know, vegan. I think they’re better, but more than one person has described my eating habits as “weird”, so that’s probably just one of my many eccentricities talking. 

     They were originally inspired by my love of Larabars, which was constantly at war with my desire not to literally eat myself out of house and home. (Almost two dollars for a bar? Please. I’m not made of money). So, I started making my own. Granted, my flavor repertoire is limited, mostly because I’m kind of lazy, but it holds me over in between legitimate Larabar splurges.