Friday 4 March 2011

Recipe Round-Up: 1000 Vegan Recipes

Another day, another post about '1000 Vegan Recipes'. One day I shall have made them all, and then what shall I post about? Oh yeah, my other trillion cookbooks that I have. In fact, I am waiting for another one to arrive in the post as we speak. Hurry up book!

Here is a meander through some more of the salad recipes from '1000 Vegan Recipes'. Most of these were made to take to work during the week as lunches. The morning is so much happier knowing that there is a delicious lunch packed and waiting for me, even if I don't get to eat it until 3pm sometimes!


Brown Rice Salad with Black-Eyed Peas. To be honest, I wasn't a fan of this salad, I found it a bit bland and meh. The pecans also didn't work for me in it. One of the few recipes I haven't enjoyed from the book (I guess there have to be a few).


Last-Minute Italian-Style Pasta Salad. This salad involves pasta, chickpeas, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hears, peas, capers and chives in a dressing. Sound good? You bet! Aside from leaving out the roasted red capsicum (peppers), the only other change I made was to use rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes instead of oil-packed sun dried tomatoes.


Eight Treasure Barley Salad. I think this might be one of my favourite salads ever, and it travels really well to boot. First of all, who does no love barley? It is chewy and delicious. The eight treasures are white beans, celery, carrot, scallions, olives, dried cherries, toasted pecans and parsley. The pecans in this were great. It keeps well for a few days, and the longer it sits the plumper the dried cherries get, making it extra delicious when you finally eat it. Nom, nom, nom.


Chilled Glass Noodles with Snow Peas and Baked Tofu. This recipe is meant to serve 4, but I only got two lunch-sized servings out of it. True, I am a particularly hungry little vegan, but if you have a 12-hour working day, you want to make sure you stay full! I used a Japanese-style marinated tofu that is available at the supermarket here.


Quinoa Salad with Black Beans and Tomatoes. The recipe calls for one and a half cups of dried quinoa, I decreased this to one cup and still have a very large quinoa to vegetable/bean ratio.


Southwestern Quinoa Salad with Pinto Beans and Corns. See above re. quinoa amounts, I also only used one cup dry quinoa here. Overall on its own I did find this salad a bit bland, however wrap it in some tortillas and it makes for a fantastic lunch!


Asian Noodle Salad with Tempeh. This serves four, but I got three big lunch servings out of it to take to work. It is really nice. I used linguine here (the other option is thin rice noodles) because I had some on stock and also it seemed like the sturdier option given that this was going to be hanging out in the fridge a few days. Did I mention that this has a peanut butter based dressing? Because it does. Which is awesome. Plus, eating tempeh at work is super cool.


Sesame Udon Salad with Adzuki Beans and Baby Spinach. I cannot tell you how happy I am that I can get tinned adzuki beans at my local supermarket now, it makes these recipes so much easier! Though it is a bit sad that I can get adzuki beans easier than I can get black beans. I digress. This is a nice, simple salad with a soy/rice vinegar/sesame/ginger based dressing. I love chewy udon noodles.


Macaroni Salad. The classic! Delicious and true to form. Sprinkled with some paprika for garnish (my fiend Brendan will approve).

Cute Kitty Picture of the Post


Dim Sim turned eleven (gasp) on the 16th of Feb. I will give her a proper birthday post, as soon as I can get a photo of her enjoying this year's present. See, she has recently decided that cameras are things to run away from! Anyway, here she is munching away on her birthday last year, eating out of her birthday bowl that I got her then. Sweet kitty.

(% 1000 Vegan Recipes Blogged: 11.3%)