Raw Walnut Meat, salsa, guacamole

I was working from home this week and was trying to decide what to make for lunch. A few blogs I follow had posted recently about raw walnut "meat", so I decided to try it with a salad.

Change up the spices to your tastes. This is a great recipe because it comes together quickly.



Serves 1 - 2

Ingredients
Walnut Meat
1/2 raw walnuts
2 - 3 sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes
soy sauce
sriracha
salt
pepper
chili powder
cumin powder (We are out of cumin powder, so I added cumin seeds)

Garden Salsa
Tomatoes (I used cherry and roma from the garden)
Onion
garlic chives
hungarian wax pepper
olive oil
salt
pepper
juice from 1/2 lime

Corn Guacamole
1 ear corn
1/2 avocado
salt
pepper
lime juice

Lettuce

Method
Walnut Meat
Place the walnuts and tomatoes in a food processor (I used the smaller bowl because I am using such small amounts). Pulse until it appears to have the texture of ground meat. Add the seasonings to taste.

Garden Salsa
This is just what I had ripe in my garden, feel free to use whatever you think would be good in salsa.

Roughly chop the tomatoes, onion, and chili. Place the tomatoes, onion, chili, and herbs in a food processor (again I used the smaller bowl) and pulse until still chunky, but mixed. Transfer to a bowl and season to taste.

Corn Guacamole
Shuck the corn. Place the ear of corn upright and using a knife, cut away the kernels into a bowl. Add the avocado and mix. Season to taste.


Wash and dry the lettuce. Chop into a bowl and add the meat, salsa, and guacamole.

Notes
This was really really good. The walnut meat has A LOT of flavour. I'm going to try it again with pecans because my husband is sensitive to walnuts. I'm happy that I was able to make the salsa completely from our garden. Garden vegetables taste waaay better than anything bought from the store.

I had a couple of tortillas in the fridge that needed to be used. I put them in the toaster oven until they were crispy and served it with the salad.

Orzo Pasta Salad and New Lunch box!

I like to bring my lunch to school everyday, partly because I don't like any of the restaurant choices here and partly because it is cheaper. I have been on the look out for a good, useable lunchbox for a while now and I think I have found one that is fantastic. A Planetbox!

So far I have only used it for one day, but I really really enjoy it. There is room enough for food for my lunch and an afternoon snack. My husband also said that he had more than enough food for him. So it is not just for children! I wish that the carrying bags came in other colors, but that is a minor fault.



Ingredients
Orzo
onions
garlic
cremini mushrooms
sun-dried tomatoes
kale
basil
lemon juice
sriracha


Method
Boil the orzo until tender, about 8 minutes. Drain.

Sauté the onions until softened, add the mushrooms and garlic and cook until those are soft. Add the drained orzo and kale. Mix around until the kale is wilted and the orzo has taken up some of the oil in the pan. Remove from heat, add the lemon juice and sriracha. Stir to combine and garnish with fresh basil.

Eat immediately or cool in the fridge and eat at room temperature.

Notes
This was a perfect lunch box salad. It tasted great at room temperature and held up well in the container.

Also in my lunch box is homemade hummus, black olives, plums, carrot sticks, and Late July mini peanut butter cookies.

Once again, my lunch box rocks. It even has rocket magnets on the front. I love it.

Roasted Eggplant Muffuletta Sandwich

This is a recipe from Veganomicon. I have been eyeing it since I got the cookbook and finally made it the other day. I am going to make this many times more.



You can find the recipe in it's entirety here.

I didn't change anything about recipe. It is perfect the way it is. You need to press the sandwich for a few hours prior to the devouring and you should have seen all the physics text books I had stacked on top in my office. It was comical.

Notes
My husband thought this needed a creamy layer, like a mozzarella cheese. Maybe some tofu would suffice? I thought it was great.

Pizza!

My husband and I regularly make pizza. Well, I usually sit on the couch, drink wine, and chat with my husband while he makes pizza. The recipe below is all based on my observations with some input from him.




Ingredients
pizza dough (bought from the grocery store. Now that we have a bread machine it will be easier to make our own)
homemade hummus
potatoes
sun dried tomatoes
olives
caramelized onions (we made these in the crock pot. Super easy.)
basil
oregano
rosemary
red pepper flakes

Method
According to the husband:

The pizza dough is really hard to roll out, so I usually roll it out a bit, then put it in the cast iron skillet to heat it up some. When it is warmer, I roll it more and go back and forth until the dough is of a sufficient size.

The thinly sliced potatoes are cooked in a bit of water in a sauce pan until they are par-cooked.

Now that your dough is sufficiently large, spread the hummus (or tomato sauce, it tasted better then the hummus when cooked) over the dough. Top with the tomatoes, tomatoes, onions, and olives. Top with the seasonings. Bake at 450F until golden brown, about 15 minutes.

Notes
The first time I had potatoes on a pizza was when I was hanging out with my friends Mark and Laura and they had just found some potatoes from their garden and they made it to the pizza. I was surprised at how good they are on it. Try it, and you may like it!

We were experimenting with making a large scale hummus pizza. It tastes much better when the hummus is not heated. So I would suggest using tomato sauce. Not that it is bad, just not as tasty as it could be.

Gnocchi with Sun-dried tomato pesto

My husband and I went to the Orchard Street Chop Shop for drinks a few weeks ago. The bar area upstairs is pleasant and I thought for sure I would be able to get a hot toddy. It turns out they don't have hot water at the bar (?), so I just had a shot of whiskey anyway. Anyway, as we were sitting there, we decided we should probably eat. I didn't think that I would find anything I could eat, but they had gnocchi as the token vegetarian dish that night with smoked carrots and beets. Oh man it was so good. I decided to try making my own at home.

Both of the recipes are from Vegan with a Vengeance.



It did not really photograph that well

Gnocchi
Ingredients
Potatoes (I cooked three in my slow cooker, but you can bake them in the oven. Do not boil because it will bring too much liquid into the mixture)
1 head roasted garlic
salt
olive oil
1 1/2 C white whole wheat flour

Method
Once the potatoes have cooled enough to handle, peel off the skin and place in a large bowl with the garlic. Add enough salt and olive oil until you get creamy mashed potatoes. Start adding the flour by handfuls until a dough starts to form. Knead on a floured surface until the dough is non sticky, but not dry.

Bring a salted pot of water to boil.

Divide the dough into three sections and roll each section into a log. Cut off about 1 inch pieces and roll the pieces into a ball. You can use a fork to add the traditional lines on the dumplings.

Add the gnocchi in the salted boiling water. They should rise to the surface after a couple of minutes. Let them continue to cook until they start to look "whiter". I then transferred them to a heated cast iron pan and browned them on both sides. Top with the pesto and eat with fresh bread.

Sun-dried tomato pesto
Ingredients
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1 cup water
1/4 cup almonds
roasted garlic (I had some leftover from the gnocchi)
olive oil
salt
pepper
1/4 cup fresh basil

Method
Soak the sun-dried tomatoes in warm water for about 10 minutes then add the tomatoes, the soaking water, almonds, and garlic to a food processor. Blend until a chunky paste is obtained. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste and for consistency. Chop the basil and add at the end.

I wish I had added the basil in the processor so it wasn't so chunky in the pesto afterwards. Also, next time I will be adding more liquid (water or oil) to make it less thick.

The gnocchi was not as good as the Chop Shop. It was good though. I have a bag of frozen gnocchi in the freezer, maybe next week, I can try cooking them again and see if they turn out different.

The husband thought this was good.