Vegan Goodness:
Today we ate:
- Breakfast: Green smoothies and cereal for everyone. LP enjoyed having his own bowl of cereal and mom enjoyed her cheerios topped with chopped almonds a bit of agave (pretend “honey nut” cheerios!)
- Lunch: Grilled chickpea salad sandwiches on leftover roti, along with Cesar salad with romaine from our yard.
- For snacks we enjoyed blueberries, strawberries and crackers. Summer fruit is really great!
- Dinner: Smokey tempeh with collard greens. The collards were a combination of a bunch from our CSA and our own garden. This is one of our favorite dinners because it is so easy – the same marinade we use for the tempeh is what we use to cook the collards, and we end up with some delicious smoky goodness! LP also enjoyed a side of leftover cous cous with carrots topped with some butter.
Money Matters:
Today we spent the following:
- $29.29 at Trader Joe’s where we picked up some basics like orange juice and fruit for smoothies, some dishwasher detergent, bananas, etc.
Monday Munchies: Recipe of the Week
I love all of Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s work, but her cookbook The Vegan Table is one my favorites. She has a great recipe for “Better than tuna salad” that uses chickpeas and walnuts. Since the G-man is allergic to walnuts, and LP isn’t always able to eat big chunks of nuts (like the recipe calls for) I adapted it with ground almonds. I also change up the vegetables that we add in depending on what we have, since part of being cheap and healthy is both eating in season and using what is already in our fridge. So, here is my version – I just call it “Chickpea Salad.” This is great served on a plate of lettuce, or grilled in a sandwich, especially if you have some vegan cheese and want to make a “tuna” melt!
Chickpea Salad
Ingredients:
- 3 cups of cooked chickpeas beans (or two cans)
- 1 cup of almonds
- 1 1/2-2 cups of chopped, crunchy veggies. (For this version I used three small carrots and one cucumber – all from our CSA. This is also fantastic with two large carrots, a couple stalks of celery and a bell pepper. Use whatever crunchy veggies are in season, or that you have on hand!)
- 2 TB of fresh parsley, chopped
- 1/2 cup of vegan mayonnaise
- 2 tsp Dijon mustard
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
1. In a food processor grind the almonds almost into almond meal. (This part is based on preference. You can also just rough chop them, or pulse slivered almonds a couple times).
2. Add the chickpeas to the food processor and pulse a few times until the chickpeas are flaky.
3. Put the chopped veggies and parsley in a large bowl and add the chickpea mixture. Mix it up so that all the veggies are incorporated into the chickpea mixture.
4. Mix in the mayonnaise, mustard, salt and pepper. Mix well until the salad starts to come together.
Serve over a bed of lettuce, in a sandwich, stuffed in a tomato, or just by itself!
