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.

Flipping the 'bird' to this cold weather

I live in West Virginia and it's February. It's horrid. I'm assuming we received around five inches of snow today and I also believe I am developing a cold. As a big 'fuck you' to the weather, a well deserved one I might add, I decided to make a hearty soup. This soup was also an attempt to alleviate my sore throat, and it was rather successful.

I got the recipe from How it All Vegan! (my first vegan cookbook ever.) I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Miss Kramer (and in this case Miss Barnard, as well), because quite frequently her recipes fall apart on me (despite how delicious, simple, and intriguing they always sound.) How ever, the use of smokey cumin and sweet coriander MADE this dish! I highly recommend it to anyone living in the unfortunate Northeast, where there is currently an accumulation 928985938 feet of snow. (Please note that the aforementioned over-exaggeration is based purely on intoxication.)

How it All Vegan! Hearty Winter Potato Soup

1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
4-6 mushrooms, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
4-5 medium potatoes, cubed
3 cups veg stock
1 red bell pepper, diced
pinch of red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp pepper (seriously, though, to taste)
2 tsp soy sauce
1 cup soy milk
2 green onions, sliced (garnish)
croutons (garnish)

In a large soup pot saute onions, garlic, and mushrooms until onions become translucent. Add all ingredients that aren't garnishes and bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Simmer for 10- 20 minutes or until potatoes are easily pierced by fork. Put 2 ladles worth of soup mixture plus 1 cup soy milk in blender and blend until smooth. Cook for 5 more minutes, not boiling as this will burn the soup. Serve and garnish. Nomz.

Product Review: Boulder Canyon Rice & Adzuki Bean Chips

Tybrus and I recently made a pilgrimage to our local Aldi for some cheap veggies. Among the things we found there, we found these delicious chips. Aldi floors me sometimes with its totally random selection of food. The chips we found were also flavored with sundried tomatoes and basil. Delicious! They're even gluten free! They're kind of high in sodium, but who do you think I am? The combination of rice and beans in these chips provides a good amount of protein and fiber. I highly recommend these!

Spinach dip in a bread bowl for no reason other than YOUR FACE.

Most shameful thing I've done all week: devour this bread bowl and its innards for dinner along with my loyal accomplice, Tybrus. Seriously. Spinach dip is something that you bring to potlucks or set out as an appetizer at a dinner party when your whiney dinner guests get bored with playing with your cats and start complaining about being hungry. Ungrateful bastards..

For us, it was dinner. And, it was delicious.

This was my first time making spinach dip so I wasn't really sure how much of what to put in it. It was great, but still had a bit of a garlicky bite. This recipe is a refined recipe that I conjured up post bread bowl consumption with better amounts of ingredients.

Spinach Dip

1 12 oz frozen spinach, thawed
1 12 oz package firm silken tofu
1/2 medium yellow onion, sliced
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 carrot, peeled and shredded
1 tsp apple cider or white vinegar
1 tsp basil
1 tsp dill
1 tsp parsley
1-2 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Blend all ingredients in blender or food processor until creamy except for the carrot and spinach. Mix spinach and carrot in with rest of ingredients by spoon when tofu mixture is well incorporated. If mixtures seems too dry drizzle in some soy milk. Hollow out a loaf of bread and spoon the mixture in. Enjoy!

"Yeah, that vegan vomit."

Ah, vomitty tomato sauce. No, it doesn't taste a bit like regurgitation, but it certainly would look the same going down as it would coming back up. Lindy Loo even said so in her post. This was a wildly easy recipe. I used cashew butter instead of the raw cashews and cut the amount of water in half. I served my sauce on these really neat spinach spaghetti noodles I found at my local convenient mart. I just described something as neat. I definitely recommend this if you're lazy and feeding a large crowd. Or, if you're just sitting at your apartment, wearing sweat pants and cozy socks, drinking tea, and watching a Charlton Heston movie.