Afghan Potato Salad

Forget that mayonnaise covered crap this 4th of July! My new favorite potato salad recipe is Afghan potato salad! It has chickpeas for added protein and a tangy green sauce comprised of scallions and cilantro. Try experimenting with other beans, though! I've used butter beans in the past. Also, swapping out the cilantro for flat leaf parsley would work, too.

My obsession with Afghan food started last year when a friend of mine took me to an Afghan restaurant in Fairfield, Ca. I don't remember the specific dishes I got, though I remember parts of them. Potatoes, lentils, cauliflower, and an acidic green condiment that I couldn't get enough of.  I began scouring the interwebz for Afghan restaurants and sadly, they were few and far between. Luckily I found this recipe which contained an identical sauce to the one at the restaurant! Try it out folks!

Chickpea Salad Sammich.

Here is a delicious sammich I made a while back. For a while this was my sammich of choice to make. It's so easy and full of protein. You could speed up the preparation by blending the chickpeas in a food processor or just mash them with a fork if you're that motivated. I know salad sammiches aren't really the ideal food for a frigid winter, but it goes perfectly with a side of your favorite soup.

Chickpea Salad Sammich
1 15 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 stalks celery, diced
1/4 cup soy mayo
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp yellow mustard
1 pickle, diced
1 tsp kelp
1 small onion diced
salt and pepper to taste

Blend chickpeas in a food processor until minced. Mix all ingredients in a bowl until well incorporated. Serve on sammich or eat on chips, crackers, etc.

Tempeh Stew

This past week has been utterly horrid due to the fact that I seemed to have caught that cold that's been going around. It's been awful. Sore throat. Sniffles. Hacking cough. The works. Regular customers at my place of employment have even been teasing me and claiming that I have Swine Flu. Jerks. :( So, in an attempt to remedy my illness, I decided to be a little old-fashioned and whip up some hearty soup. And, it was hearty in deed. This soup is very low maintenance and since you cook the tempeh with the broth, you don't have to steam it beforehand. Could this have been more simple? Negative.

Tempeh Stew for the Sickly

1 cup red lentils
2 cups water
1 bay leaf
1 veggie bouillon cube
1 can chickpeas
2 medium tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste
8 oz. tempeh

In a large pot, hydrate lentils with water through bay leaf on medium heat. Add more water if lentils start to stick. This is soup, after all. Add remaining ingredients, save the tempeh. Before the chickpeas are fully cooked, add tempeh and cover. When tempeh is desired texture, remove from heat and serve.

Falafel Pitas with Homemade Hummus

Talk about a chickpea overload. This meal contained an obscene amount of protein and was positively delicious. My only criticism: I would've baked these. Either my bum efficiency apartment stove is well, a bum efficiency apartment stove or these just don't gt cooked through the center when they're fried. Also, due to my hormonal stove top's incosistent tempurature, they got mildly deep fried and a little burnt on the outside.

While I've made my fair share of homemade hummus, I've NEVER made falafel from scratch. I'm not sure how authentic this recipe is, but it certainly did the trick. This meal was ideal because it allowed me the opportunity to sneak onions into EVERYTHING. Seriously. I can't stress enough how perfect this recipe would have been if I would've I'd only baked it.

bleh.

I haven't been in the mood to cook AT ALL lately. I've been living on a steady diet of Amy's burritos and ramen noodles; I'm not particularly proud of this. But, good news. I did make a trip to the grocery store today to load up on a lot of produce. More good news, my mom finished planting her garden today which means I shall have fresh basil, red peppers, cucumbers, and squash viddy viddy soon!

Since my last post, I've made another General Tao tofu plate, served over rice this time, and some VWAV mashed potatoes with punk rock chickpea gravy. Comfort food, glorious comfort food! I chopped up some kale and mashed it in with the potatoes, too. I also had to spell out k-a-l-e for the cashier at the grocery store so he could ring me up. Oh, Huntington and its inhabitants.

Kale Chickpea Mash

I know I've mentioned about a hundred times, but a majority of my meals are based on what produce I have that is about to go bad. I just threw this together in a matter of minutes, and it was soooo good. I really need to do more meals like this, where I just improvise. I feel a bit silly posting this recipe because it's too easy.

Kale Chickpea Mash

Ingredients:
2 tbs EVOO
3 tbs minced garlic
1 bunch of kale
1 can garbanzo beans
2 tbs soy sauce
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp onion powder
salt to taste

Saute minced garlic in olive oil on medium-high heat until it turns golden brown, carefully as to not burn it. Add the kale and stir, preferably with tongs to coat the kale in the oil and garlic. (You may need to add a few tbs of water.) After the kale has wilted a bit, add the garbanzo beans and cook for about 4 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and stir. Begin mashing the chickpeas. I use a fork because I don't like them mashed too thoroughly; I still like some chunks. Garnish with some additional nutritional yeast and NOM.

Lazy Daze

For the past few days, I've been a complete and utter sloth. I have literally nothing to do, what, with Dave being at work until 11 p.m. Not to mention I only get about 9 hours of work a week anymore due to the fact that this particular coffee corporation is going under. Brush it off, I guess.

With that being said, all I've done for the past 2 days is watch The Office on my Netflix-Xbox thing. I've achieved a season and a half so far and there's no real end in sight to this marathon. You would think with my intense boredom that I would try to pass the time by doing my favorite thing: cooking. But, you'd be sadly mistaken. The past couple of nights, Dave and I have had either Chinese takeout or quickie recipes. I'm a little ashamed, so tonight, to make up for it, I'll probably be super domestic, i.e. clean the apartment 'til it sparkles and cook a nice, big, filling meal.

Until then, here are this week's cooking endeavors thus far:

Chickpea Mash

I got this recipe, well both recipes, from Vegweb. The recipe called for mushrooms, but Dave's a picky food snob. Instead of making side dishes for this, I just had 3 decent helpings. Rice<3. This gave me an awesome excuse to eat red bell peppers. Potatoes would've accompanied this wonderfully. Next one, Frugal Black Bean and Polenta. The recipe given on Vegweb called for dry cornmeal, but all I had was the moistened polenta, so I just cut it into coins and fried like there was no tomorrow. For some reason, I can't eat polenta unless it's crispy as hell and salted to death.


This was alright. I just can never seem to really get into polenta. Anyone has any suggestions, let a sista know.