Slivered Kale Salad with Baby Beets

I might be a salad diva – I mean that in the most humble way. What I mean is I proudly make salads just about every day and not your typical lame side dish. Sure salads typically generate a big ole eye roll. But face it – when made creatively and thoughtfully they are nothing short of delicious and perfect for messing around with savory and sweet combinations. Fruit and veggies can coincide so happily atop a fluffy bed of greens, am I right? It’s important to avoid the makings of a boring salad: romaine or iceberg lettuce, grainy tomato, flavorless stale cucumber, maybe a canned black olive or two, boxed croutons, and gloppy ranch. Blah.
Shredded iceberg does not a salad make. There is a world of greenery out there, most of it edible. Think beyond romaine and spinach (not knocking spinach, but you’ve had your turn…let some other greens share the limelight). I also use the word salad for pretty much anything cold: chickpea quinoa salad, kale salad, Edamame rice salad, etc… it doesn’t even have to have greens. A salad can be an accompaniment to a fantastic meal – a brief, crisp repose from the main attraction – or it can be the featured fare, the underdog of entrees. It can be the avenue to use up the last bit of something before it spoils or to try out new pairings like avocado and apple.

A little chop-chop here and peel-and-shred there, you’re on your way to a dish of pure crunchy bliss. The kicker of course is the dressing. The salad doesn’t have to be all about the dressing, like those sad, tasteless salads you get chain restaurants completely smothered in dressing because what’s under it has no pizzazz. I like to let all components in a salad contribute, and the dressing is just a little something to make the fruit or veggies more vibrant. I don’t buy bottled dressings out of sheer principle. All you need is oil, vinegar, and something to fuse the two…mustard, Tahini, peanut butter, or yogurt. Spruce it up with some herbs or spices and you’re set. Dressing seems intimidating, but you probably have everything you need in your cupboard already. If you don’t have Tahini, try mustard in this dressing.

We ate this as a small side, but with a little baked tempeh, tofu, or some edamame or chickpeas, this could easily be a whole lunch. You could even add some quinoa to get more grains and protein in there. Enjoy!

Slivered Kale Salad with Baby Beets
Makes 2 side servings

Prep time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

4-6 Baby beets, assorted colors

4 oz Kale (about 5 leaves), slivered or cut in a chiffonade
¼ c. Zucchini, grated
¼ c. Carrot, grated
¼ c. Cucumber, grated

1 ½ T. White balsamic vinegar or other light tasting vinegar
2 tsp. Tahini
1 tsp. Lemon juice
½ tsp. Thyme, fresh or ¼ tsp. dried
¼ tsp. Salt
Pepper to taste

5-6 Walnuts, chopped

Directions

Place beets in a medium sauce pan and fill with just enough water to cover beets. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium. Cover pan and simmer for 6-7 minutes or until just tender. Remove from heat, drain, and set aside. When beets are cool enough to handle, slice them thinly.

To cut the kale in a chiffonade, cut out the stems and tough ribs and place leaves on top of each other. Role into a cigar shaped stack and thinly slice from one end to the other. You should have long strings of kale. Combine kale and other vegetables including beets in a medium mixing bowl.

In a separate small bowl, combine vinegar, Tahini and lemon juice. Whisk with a fork until Tahini completely breaks down and becomes creamy. Add thyme, salt and pepper to taste. Pour dressing over salad and stir to combine completely. Top with chopped walnuts and serve.

Spicy Sausage Sauté with Gravy over Grilled Potatoes

One sad potato with demon sprouts, a few borderline-expired homemade veggie sausage links, and a week-long hankering for gravy…these were the real ingredients on hand before coming up with this recipe. Sometimes, despite a fruitful visit to the food store and a newly replenished green supply, you still need to follow the first-in, first-out principle before enjoying the fresh goods. In this case, there were a few items that really needed a chop and chomp before succumbing to the useless, futile fate of the garbage bin - a travesty in my house. Potatoes and veggies sausages.

Sausage and potatoes is not an odd pair in the least nor is it difficult to muster up a recipe that calls for both. Luckily, with my gravy-craving pangs, both pair well with a thick white sauce. I thought of mashed potatoes and gravy, sausage gravy and biscuits or a breakfast-like hash with sausage for dinner, but none of the more conventional recipes involve many vegetables. And while they sound delicious, I still always need a colorful edge to my food, especially after a good, hot run. With all of these recipes ideas paired with my color craving, I starting cooking this dish with no idea of what I was making.

Over the weekend I came across a grilled potato recipe on Epicurious that sounded delish. I also have an unused grill pan that came into my possession when I acquired roommates. Easy enough as a base or side… I then had a sausage scramble idea in mind to go on top, but I knew it would fare on the dry side, especially over grilled potatoes that would themselves be dry unless I completely doused them with oil. So the solution was…gravy! I had only made vegan gravy once a very long time ago, but it didn’t seem that hard. Onion and garlic powder can turn a dull combo like flour, margarine and water into a tasty treat. Maybe it took a little more sprucing than that, but you get the point.

I like to make my own veggie sausages, but I realize it is a lot of work. This was quick, because I had them on hand, but you could also use store-bought links. I’ll include my recipe below, and it’s worth making the whole batch over the weekend to eat throughout the rest of the week. Whichever you choose, this will end up a tasty meal to be sure. As my designated omnivore taste-tester claimed, “This is my kind of meal!” To which this vegan replied, “Meat and potatoes…?” – Well, yeah.

Spicy Sausage Sauté with Gravy over Grilled Potatoes
Makes 2 servings

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

For the Sauté
½ T. Olive oil
½ c. Onion, chopped
1 Medium celery stalk, chopped
½ Large carrot, chopped
¾ c. Green bell pepper, chopped
1 Garlic clove, minced (about 2 tsp)
½ tsp. Sage, dried
½ tsp. Salt
¼ tsp. Fennel seed
¼ tsp. Crushed red pepper
6-8 Veggie Sausage links (store bought or homemade – recipe below), chopped

For the Potatoes
1 Medium russet potato, ½ inch thick slices
1 T. Canola Oil
Salt & Pepper

For the Gravy
1 T. Earth Balance
1 ½  T. Flour
½ c. Almond milk
½ c. Water
¼ tsp. Onion powder
¼ tsp. Garlic powder
¼ tsp. Thyme, dried
¼ tsp. Salt
Pinch of white pepper

Directions

For the Sausage: Heat olive oil over medium high heat in a large non-stick skillet and cook onions, celery, and carrots until vegetables are translucent and tender, 8-10 minutes. Add green pepper, garlic and spices to the pan and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in sausage and cook until brown, another 8-10 minutes, coating with cooking spray if mixture becomes too dry. Set aside.

For the potatoes: Put potato slices in a medium sauce pan and cover completely with water. Bring to a boil and reduce water to simmer. Parboil potatoes until just tender, about 5 minutes. Drain and set aside in a medium bowl. Coat with canola oil, salt and pepper. Heat a grill pan over high heat and coat with cooking spray. Cook potatoes until grill marks are dark brown, about 3 minutes per side. Set aside.

For the Gravy: Melt the Earth Balance in a small sauce pan over medium high heat. Add flour and stir until roux forms. Whisk in almond milk, water, and spices. Whisk until mixture is well-blended and heat until just bubbling. Lower heat to medium and cook until desired thickness is reach. Remove and set aside.

To Assemble: Place 6-8 potato slices on a plate. Top with 1 cup of sausage sauté and 3-4 tablespoons of gravy.

Veggie Sausage Links (Adapted from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Veggie Ground Pork Recipe)
Makes 10 patties, or 14-16 links
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

2 T. Soy sauce
1 tsp. Sage
1 tsp. Onion powder
1 tsp. Garlic powder
¾ tsp. Paprika
½ tsp. Fennel seed
½ tsp. Crushed Red Pepper
¾ c. Boiling water
1 c. TVP

4 oz. Extra firm tofu, crumbled
½ c. Wheat gluten flour

Directions

Mix soy sauce and spices together in small mixing bowl. Whisk in boiling water and stir to completely blended. Pour liquid over TVP and let rehydrate about 10 minutes. Mix in crumbled tofu and let mixture cool completely. Stir in gluten with hands and shape into patties, links or balls. Wrap in aluminum foil and steam or simmer for 20 minutes. After steaming, sausages can be frozen, cooled or sautéed.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

How do I express my love for peanut butter? I must have it everyday. I’ll spread on bread, corn thins, rice cakes, tortillas, ice cream, chocolate bars, celery, peanut butter…I must have it everyday. A day without peanut butter is a day you probably don’t want to talk to me. A day beginning with peanut butter is the day you want me as your best friend. Is it bad that even after I had a piece of chocolate after lunch yesterday, I still made enough room to have a couple of corn thins (they’re like rice cakes, but made with corn) with some peanut butter and cinnamon sugar walnuts on top? That’s right, I had more than one. I like other nut and seed butters: cashew, almond, and sunflower seed. And the peanut is hardly my favorite nut compare to: walnuts, cashews, and almonds. But for whatever reason, I find all other butters, regardless of their deliciousness or health benefits, inferior to the power of peanut butter.

For a 50th birthday party with a fellow believer in “a spoonful of peanut butter helps the medicine go down” who happens to also have an infatuation with M&Ms, a perfect hybrid cookie was in order. There are more healing powers in the chocolate-peanut butter combo than modern medicine can offer. That might be a bold statement, but I have found no better cure for cramps. Having never made peanut butter cookies before, I felt I had to do a lot of research, especially since I am partial to softer cookies despite peanut butter varieties having a crunchier reputation. Of course there is a happy place in between, and working with dense, fat-filled peanut butter, I figured the moisture content wouldn’t be a problem if I found a good recipe.

Another story of infidelity….how do I manage to stray from recipes so easily? I can’t commit. I know everyone has faults, I’m not exempt. And sometimes it’s not so much a fault as it is a certain lacking. I found a great recipe that needed some minor adjustments, and I am only recently becoming comfortable with making my own tweaks while baking. Baking is fickle and one gram off could put 30 cookies in the garbage. So I tread carefully. This outcome was very successful. I’ve already made them twice and have requests for more at work. I have found that you can’t skimp on the margarine- the taste won’t be affected, but the cookie will fall apart easily. This cookie dough isn’t one that can be spooned onto the cookies sheet – you have to clump it together with your hands and shape them like patties. Stir in the chocolate chips before you clump the dough together or you’ll be kneading it for a while to get them incorporated.

Soft and crisp at the same time with chocolate surprises in every bite. Spreading an extra teaspoon of peanut butter on top of a freshly baked cookie like I did is optional but a highly recommended enhancement.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes about 36 small cookies
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 ¾ c. Unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ tsp. Baking soda
¾ tsp. Salt

1 c. Brown sugar
¾ c. Smooth peanut butter
½ c. Earth or Smart Balance
2-3 T. Almond or soy milk
2 T. Vanilla Extract

1 c. Chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In another bowl, beat the sugar, peanut butter and margarine together until smooth. Add almond/soy milk and vanilla and blend until well mixed. Add flour mixture and work with hands when it becomes too thick for your blender. Fold in chocolate chip, pressing firmly into dough.

Using 1 ½-2 tablespoons of dough per cookie, form dough into small discs. Press in 2 directions with the back of a fork for a crisscross pattern. Place on cookie sheet and bake in oven 7-8 minutes or until just golden on the edges. Be careful not to over bake. Remove from oven and let cool on pan to finish cooking. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

Blueberry Bran Muffins with Streusel Topping

Good morning sunshine! That’s what Monday morning said to me as I prepared a “Welcome” batch of muffins for a new co-worker. Having just come home from an early morning run, I was on a roll. Run, walk the dog, bake, get ready for work….I know, over-achiever. But it feels good to be productive, especially when Monday mornings tend to be dull at best and foreboding at worst. Whenever I get back from a run, I’ve either got crispy vegetables or healthy grains on my mind depending on the time of day. At 6 am I was definitely thinking grains.

Blueberry muffins are my favorite and bran muffins are a close second. I used to hate blueberries (a sore admission on my part), but I would eat a blueberry muffin in a heart beat. Blueberries are just starting to come around as a regular grocery item, so I had a few containers on hand. I had already planned to make muffins for the occasion and had picked out a recipe after an extensive online search. As I reached for the flour, what did I see? Flax, bran and nuts, oh my! Of course I wasn’t just going to follow a recipe, duh. I wanted some chew to my muffins and a sweet crunch on top. So I laced these babies with bran and used coconut oil for that magic je ne sais quoi.

The crunch was the important part. I have not had much success with typical streusel toppings consisting of just flour and sugar – they tend to get clumpy and not crunchy. Oat-based toppings are better, but my favorite features nuts. The kind of nut hardly matters, just mix it with sugar and I’m good. In this case I couldn’t decide between walnuts and pecans so I used both with fabulous results. It must have been this special edge that sparked the comment, “You’ve outdone yourself.” Gracias.

These muffins were incredibly moist and, as such, need much care when removed from the pan. Even with a generous amount of cooking spray, they need a good knife-around-the-edge careful lifting TLC. They fall apart easily, but it works out if you’d like to spread a dab of Earth balance in the middle. Delicious, moist, crunchy, semi-sweet and perfect for a healthy indulgence.

Blueberry Bran Muffins with Streusel Topping
Makes 12 medium muffins
Prep time: 5 minute
Cook time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

1 ¼ c. Whole-wheat pastry flour
¼ c. Oat bran
¼ c. Wheat bran
¼ c. Flaxseed meal
1 tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Baking soda
½ tsp. Salt

¾ c. Almond milk
2/3 c. Sugar
¼ c. Applesauce
¼ c. Coconut oil
2 tsp. Vanilla
1 c. Blueberries, fresh or frozen

¼ c. Pecan/Walnut mix, coarsely ground
2 T. Sugar
½ tsp. Cinnamon

Directions

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Coat a muffin pan with cooking spray and set aside.

Mix dry ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl. Blend wet ingredients together in a separate bowl and slowly add to dry. Stir mixture until no clumps are left. Add another 1-2 tablespoons of flour is mixture is too wet.

Mix nuts, sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Pour batter into muffin pan and top each muffin evenly with streusel topping. Bake for 25 minutes or until inserting a toothpick in the center comes out clean.