Recipe #3: Five Bean Salad

A good friend's mom used to always have a variation of this salad in her fridge.  She told me how to make it about 20 years ago and I still love it and make it quite often.  It is ridiculously easy and it is great to bring to cook-outs and potlucks.  You can use whatever canned beans you like but I like this variation because of the different colors and textures of the beans involved. 

1 can garbanzo beans

1 can kidney beans

1 can butter beans

1 can lima beans

1 can black beans

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 Tablespoons Balsamic vinegar

3 drops of hot sauce (Frank's Red Hot is a good bet)

Sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

Drain and rinse the beans really well in a large colander.  Shake off excess water.  Pour beans into a large container with a tight fitting lid.  Add remaining ingredients and cover with lid.  Shake well to coat beans with dressing.  Chill for at least 30 minutes before serving and shake well again.  Add more salt and pepper if needed.  Sometimes I'll put extras in there like corn, cumin and lime or dried basil, garlic and lemon.  This is a hard one to mess up so feel free to get creative.  Makes about 15 side dish servings --about 1/2 c. each.       

Better Homes and Gardens Salad Book

Old cookbooks are hilarious to me.  I have a small collection and I intend to add to it every chance I get.  Yesterday I stopped at an antique store in Portland (between Lansing and Grand Rapids) and I bought a Better Homes and Gardens Salad Book.  It turns out that this particular cookbook was a bestseller in 1958 and was in the top ten for non-fiction that year.  Well, people didn't have taste buds in 1958 apparently.  For the most part, these recipes are shocking and disgusting.  Why were people so obsessed with gelatin back then?  Almost every recipe is a mold of some sort.  What is funny about this book is that I think the recipes are supposed to be kind of fancy but they are so weird.  Here are a few of my favorites: 

Melon Polka-dot Mold   

2 packages cherry flavored gelatin

2 c. boiling water

13/4 c. cold water

3 Tablespoons lemon juice

1- 8 oz package cream cheese rolled into balls

11/2 c cantaloupe balls

2/3 c. pecan  halves

and then.....

1/2 c. sliced STUFFED GREEN OLIVES! WHAT!?

The gist of the recipe is that you are supposed to trap the above ingredients in a blood red dome of jello. This was apparently totally acceptable to serve your guests on an summer afternoon.  The heading at the top of the page is: "Capture the beauty of fruit in shimmery molded salads!"    

Banana Ham Rolls

6 thin slices of boiled ham

Prepared mustard

3 medium green tipped bananas

Melted butter 

Perfectly innocent sliced bananas are smothered with mustard-drenched ham slices.  Together, they die a slow buttery death in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.  

Here is a recipe that the book labels: "Easy for the junior chef":

Drain chilled canned pear halves and sandwich together with mayonnaise

Top with shredded American cheese and trim with green olives

This isn't a recipe, this is a dare.  No one should eat this unless someone is willing to give them $10 just to take a tiny bite.  

My favorite recipe of all the demented recipes in the book is this one:

Hot Potato Salad in Frankfurter Ring

The long and the short of this recipe is that you combine cooked diced potatoes, mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, and 8 slices of crumbled bacon in a round baking dish that has been lined with a fortress of 10 erect wieners.  You then bake this offensive mess in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.  Right before serving, you top the thing with sliced hard cooked eggs--just to add insult to injury.  By the time you digest your first bite, you are pregnant and you have had a heart attack.  Delicious!  

Lemony Salmon Tower of Doom

There is a whole section in the book on molded meat salads.  Tangy Tuna Mousse Squares, Lemony Salmon Tower, and the Shrimp Lime Double Decker are all about trapping canned seafood in gelatin.  Most of these salads have more meat than vegetables.  As you can see, the pictures in the book actually do more harm than good.

All in all, this cookbook was well worth $3, especially since now I know how to make a "hearty ham salad men go for".  They recommend serving the manly ham salad with bacon wrapped franks and hard rolls.  No joke.              

Recipe # 2: Tiggy's Shepherd’s Pie

A perfect winter recipe!  My good friend Tiggy sent this to me.  She is a great cook and this recipe was easy and awesome.  The original recipe calls for mashed potatoes only, adding the cauliflower was my touch.  Instead of corn and celery you could use just about any veggie- parsnips are great in this dish too.      

One 32 oz carton of vegetable broth    

½ cup uncooked barley

1 cup uncooked lentils

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1 cup celery, diced

½ cup corn

½ cup Boca or Morningstar crumbles (sausage) OR 1 cup fresh mushrooms, diced

1 ½ teaspoon garlic powder

1/8-1/4 tsp each Rosemary, Sage, and Italian Seasoning (or to taste)
1/3 cup soy sauce or Bragg’s amino acid

2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped

2 c. chopped cauliflower
about 1/3 cup vegetarian broth 

1 Tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes    

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Reserve 1/3 c. vegetable broth and set aside.  

In a covered saucepan, bring remaining vegetable broth, barley and lentils to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes.

In a large pot, add potatoes and cauliflower and cover generously with water.  Boil potatoes for 20-25 minutes.  Drain well and return to pot.  Mash well with a potato masher, adding the nutritional yeast and reserved broth as needed to reach desired consistency.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

In a large skillet, stir fry onions, carrots, celery, corn, mushrooms or crumbles and all remaining seasonings in oil for about 10 minutes.

Add the cooked barley and lentils to the skillet.  Mix well until combined.  Add more seasonings if needed.   

Spray cooking spray into a large casserole pan and add barley mixture to pan.  "Frost" the top with mashed potatoes and cauliflower.  Spray frosting utensil with cooking spray to avoid potatoes sticking.

 Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.  Serves 8-10. 

Recipe #1: Smoky Eggplant!

This is so easy and it is ridiculously good.  

1 large eggplant

4 Tablespoons Bragg’s or lower sodium tamari

1 pinch garlic powder

1 Tablespoon olive oil

½ Tablespoon liquid smoke

1 Tablespoon nutritional yeast
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Olive oil cooking spray

Peel eggplant and cut into large chunks that are as close in size to one another as possible.  Place eggplant in a single layer in a large dish with a lid.  Combine all other ingredients except nutritional yeast in a small bowl.   Drizzle marinade and sprinkle nutritional yeast over eggplant chunks. Stir well to coat evenly.  Cover with lid and leave in the fridge for an hour.   After the hour is up, stir eggplant again and take out of fridge. Spray a very large frying pan or wok with olive oil cooking spray and heat over medium heat.  Add eggplant and stir fry until very tender- 5-10 minutes. Makes 2 side dish servings. 

Welcome!

Oh no! Another food blog!!! Just what the world needs. To make matters worse, it is a VEGAN recipe blog! Ugh! 

Yes, it's true. I have created a vegan recipe blog. Sorry folks, but I love to cook and I love recipes and I feel the need to tell the world that cooking and eating this way is actually super fun. I promise not to get preachy and I would never claim that portobello mushrooms can taste just like bacon.  What I will do is share some of the recipes that I have come up with (only the yummy ones) and since I know a lot of great cooks, I'll also post recipes from my friends and family.  All of these recipes are vegan and focus on using healthy ingredients that are minimally processed. Woo-hoo! Let's get cooking!