Mock Tuna Salad

As of this moment, I'm not a vegetarian. Though at times I really would like to be. Everything that I have read or watched about the way we eat in this country says that eating meat=bad while eating a plant-based diet=good. So, I guess you can say I'm dabbling in the vegetarian genre as often as I can (or, more accurately, as often as I think my husband will tolerate it).

So today, I was trying to figure out what to serve my family for lunch. And, I must admit, weekend lunches are my culinary weak spot. During the week, I pack leftovers for my lunches and for the kids. But come Saturday and Sunday my leftover reserves are typically gone, and I'm due for a trip to the grocery store. If there are times that my family is most likely to succumb and eat out, it would be Friday night and Saturday/Sunday lunch. And if I do manage to pull something together, it's usually soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (aka The Lunch of Champions).

Today, however, I had a recipe I really wanted to try out: Mock Tuna Salad. I'd had this dish once before during a rare mother-daughter lunch at an eclectic little shop, The Shangri-La Tea Room and Vegetarian Cafe in Boise, Idaho. Served as both an appetizer (with crackers and fresh veggies) and as a sandwich, the "Mock Toona" salad at the Shangri-La is 100% raw, which I have come to find out means that it is made of a combination of soaked nuts and seeds. And while I wouldn't say that it has exactly the same taste as tuna, you definitely can understand why people call it this.

However, seed-based mock tuna is not the only type out there. There is also a vegetarian recipe using one of the most versatile beans in the vegetarian's arsenal--the garbanzo bean (or chickpea). One advantage to this recipe, as far as I can tell, is that the beans do a decent job of emulating the texture of tuna. Pulsing it in the food processor--not to the point of creating hummus, but breaking it up into "flakes"--helps to make the finished product look more like tuna salad, something that is missing in the raw version.

There are a ton of recipes for mock tuna out there. But while I was reading through the many recipes, I saw one piece of advice that really made sense to me: if you don't usually put x-ingredient into regular tuna salad, don't put it into your mock tuna. So as I looked through the recipes online, I ruled out those that included dijon mustard and other odd-sounding inclusions and created one that had the ingredients that I consider essential to a good tuna salad or chicken salad sandwich.

The recipe that I used I adapted from a posting on Chez Bettay: The Vegan Gourmet.  My modified recipe follows, but feel free to made modifications to suit your own taste. I served mine as part of an open-faced sandwich, nestled on top of fresh-sliced tomatoes, baby spinach, and a slice of homemade 100% whole wheat bread. It was also good on crackers, and (as pictured) as an actual "salad"

Mock Tuna Salad

Ingredients: 
1 cup finely diced organic celery
2 15-ounce cans organic garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
4 green onions, finely sliced (both white and green parts)
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes
1 tablespoon dried dill weed

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1/2 cup Vegenaise or organic mayonaise
1/4 cup organic dill pickle relish or finely diced dill pickles
sea salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

 Directions:

1. Put the drained garbanzo beans into a food processor and pulse 5-6 times until roughly ground. Scrape into a large mixing bowl and set aside.

2. Add the celery and green onions to the bean mixture and stir to combine.

3. Sprinkle the remaining ingredients over the bowl's contents and mix together until creamy and combined.

*While the recipe is better after 24 hours in the fridge (to let the flavors mingle), it was also great freshly made as well.

Spicy African Peanut Slow Cooker Soup

So, my mother got me a new cookbook for Christmas. She figured it was right up my alley, given that I have been really focused on making vegetarian choices for my family as of late. And it has a super-cute title on top of that: "Peas and Thank You: Simple Meatless Meals the Whole Family Will Love."

The author, Sarah Matheny, is an "attorney turned stay-at-home mom" from Keizer, OR. And I'm nothing if not a fan of local talent. 

Sounds like a match made in heaven, right?

Well, it depends.

I have tried several recipes out of the book so far. Some have been EPIC FAILS, like the chocolate chip cookies (that my mom wasn't sure were fit to leave out for Santa) or the Tofu Fun Nuggets (seriously, the words "tofu" and "fun" should never even be in the same sentence, except for "It would sure be fun if tofu never appeared on my table again." And maybe I would have thought the final products would have been more fun if they hadn't taken me hours--yes, hours-- to prepare them or minutes--yes, minutes--for my family to decide that they truly were not fun, but disgusting).

Yet, there have also been several delightful recipes emerge as well, one of which I made for the first time last night: Spicy African Peanut Slow Cooker Soup (you can read Matheny's blog containing the original recipe).

Now, I've never been to Africa, and I've only had Ethiopian food a whopping three times in my life, so I'm certainly not the person to verify that this dish is authentically African. To be honest, it tastes a great deal like some of the Thai cuisine that I've had in the past, mainly because of the inclusion of peanut butter and coconut milk, both top-notch "can't go wrong" ingredients in my book. Add that to rich spices like cumin, curry powder, garam masala (a combination of black pepper, cumin, cardamom, and cinnamon) and some of my favorite plant products (sweet potatoes, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, and red lentils) and you have a winner-winner-no-chicken-dinner. 

If this soup were a coat, it would be a warm, orange down parka with a hibiscus flower print--hearty, warm, and a bit tropical.

Don't let the name fool you, however. If you are looking for a spicy dish that will leave your tongue screaming, this is not that dish. No one in our household thought the soup was in any way spicy. And if you want to prepare it without using your slow cooker, it takes no time at all. Dump everything into a large pot and simmer for 20-30 minutes (this is the way I prepared it, and no regrets). We garnished only with cilantro (which I highly recommend)

 

Spicy African Peanut Slow Cooker Soup

from Sarah Matheny's "Peas and Thank You"

1 14-oz can chickpeas (drained and rinsed)

1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed (about 1 cup)

1 1/2 tsp curry powder

1/2 to 3/4 tsp garam masala

1 tsp cumin

1 tbsp minced ginger

2 tsp minced garlic

sweetener to taste (organic sugar or stevia--although I didn't add a bit and it was perfect)

dash of cinnamon

1 14-oz can fire-roasted tomatoes, in juice

1 14-oz can light coconut milk

2 cups vegetable stock

2 tbsp natural peanut butter

1/2 cup red lentils, rinsed and drained

Garnishes: chopped cilantro, chopped peanuts, sour cream, or plain yogurt

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a Crock-Pot and set on high for about 30 minutes, then switch to low for an additional 3-4 hours. Serve and top with garnish(es) of choice.  

Simply Stir Fry

Tonight was a typical night in the Arnold household. Kind of.

Granted, my husband is out of town for the week, leaving me to play single mom (and might I say, I have the utmost respect for women who can raise children on their own).

And granted, I hauled home nearly a half-ton of essays to grade again tonight (which is probably why I am writing a blog post rather than spending every moment between now and bedtime reading 40+ essays about how the society in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four manipulates language to control the populace).  Ugh.

But otherwise, it was the typical evening.

You know, those evenings when you are desperately trying to make a healthy dinner for your family. Meanwhile, the children huddle around your feet screaming, whining, crying, and pouting while you do everything in your power to not chop off your own ears while you wield a sharp knife.

These nights happen often at my house, and it's on nights like this that it's hard to not throw in a cookie sheet laden with chicken nuggets and tater tots and escape to the living room (where at least the sound of the commotion doesn't reverberate off the appliances and the linoleum floor). But since I no longer keep things like chicken nuggets in the freezer, I still have to find something quick to fix. And one of the freshest and fastest meals that I turn to in these times is stir fry.

My definition of a good stir fry has changed a great deal in the past year. Before, "good" stir fry involved a small sampling of vegetables mixed with commercially-prepared "stir fry sauce" (a.k.a. soy sauce on a sugar high). Now, I heap on a wide variety of fresh veggies (always remembering baby bok choy, a personal favorite green of my daughter) and replace the stir fry sauce with organic tamari soy and fresh pineapple chunks.

And when my toddler and my preschooler slick it up, leaving more rice on their plates than veggies, I know it must be good. 

The following recipe is just what I happened to throw in the wok tonight--but I often vary the ingredients to match the rainbow in my vegetable crisper drawers.

Simply Stir Fry

1/2 medium organic yellow onion, cut into thin strips
1/2 organic red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 large handful organic carrot slices
2 handfuls organic sugar snap peas
1 organic zucchini, sliced
1 baby bok choy, cut into 1" lengths
4 oz sliced mushrooms
1/4 of fresh-cut pineapple, cut into chunks
1-2 tablespoons coconut oil
2-3 drops of dark sesame oil
Organic tamari soy sauce, to taste

1. Heat oils in wok over high heat. Once hot, add onions, red pepper, carrot slices, zucchini, and snap peas. Stir fry until tender-crisp.

2. Add mushrooms and pineapple to the veggies and stir fry for about 2 minutes. After 2 minutes, add soy sauce to taste. Serve immediately over rice, toss with rice noodles, or eat as is.

3. Savor the peace and quiet that ensues as children stuff stir fry into their mouths.