Sandwiches

Pimento Cheese-Style Hummus

June 14, 2013
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Years ago, I was making red pepper hummus at my parents’ house when my mother asked for a taste. “Hmmm,” she said. “It’s sort of like pimento cheese.” Now, I don’t know if that was a good thing to her or not; we’d never had pimento cheese in the house when I was growing up, [...]

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Gluten-Free “Meatball” Mix

January 31, 2013
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I’ve been obsessed the last couple of weeks with coming up with a gluten-free mix that I could keep on-hand to make quick “meatballs” for spaghetti and sandwiches. I don’t know what got me started on this quixotic mission, but the result is that I’ve made so many balls in the last few days that [...]

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Tunisian-Inspired Chickpea and Potato Salad

November 28, 2012
Tunisian-Inspired Chickpea and Potato Salad

Though I love the tastes of Thanksgiving–gravies and dressings cozy with the flavors of sage and thyme–once the big day is over, I feel the need to shock my palate with seasonings and spices that would have made a pilgrim flush a bright Christmas red. So as I was thumbing through the November issue of [...]

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Savory Lentil-Mushroom Burgers

September 12, 2012
Savory Lentil-Mushroom Burgers

I had a craving for a burger burger. Not a beet burger, or a falafel burger, or a black bean burger, or a curried eggplant burger–just a plain old burger that I could put on a bun with ketchup and pickles and not have the flavors clash or my daughter give me that look that [...]

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Berbere-Spiced Red Lentil Hummus

July 30, 2012
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Some couples read love poems to each other; my husband and I read restaurant menus. One of our favorite parts of planning a vacation is figuring out where we are going to eat. I like to ask my facebook followers for recommendations while my husband likes to use Google. We come up with a big [...]

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Old Fashioned (Tofu) Chicken Salad

June 6, 2012
Tofu Chicken Salad

It’s chicken salad the way my mom used to make it–but with no chicken, mayo, or hard-boiled eggs. So maybe it’s not exactly my mom’s chicken salad, but it’s close enough to satisfy my craving for something savory and crunchy to put between two slices of bread.

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Dreena’s No-fu Love Loaf

April 26, 2012
Dreena's No-fu Love Loaf

I’ve been looking for a great lentil loaf recipe, and finally I’ve found one! Unfortunately, I can’t claim credit for this delicious dish. That goes to Dreena Burton and her new book, Let Them Eat Vegan!: 200 Deliciously Satisfying Plant-Powered Recipes for the Whole Family. Fortunately, Dreena and her publishers have given me permission to [...]

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Jackfruit “Crab” Cakes

April 11, 2012
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I’ve been experimenting off and on with young green jackfruit ever since I heard of jackfruit carnitas. Harvested before it has a chance to become sweet, green jackfruit “shreds” as it cooks until it has an uncanny resemblance to pulled pork. It doesn’t have much flavor itself, which makes it ideal for soaking up the [...]

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Hummus in the Blender

March 12, 2012
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Always travel with hummus. That’s my advice to new vegans and to anyone trying to eat healthy on the road. Having hummus in a small cooler saved us last month when my family went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. With the streets and streetcars closed for parades, we were limited to restaurants we could [...]

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Beetballs: A Vegan, Gluten-Free, Soy-Free Sausage Recipe

February 13, 2012
Beetballs

When I heard that a food blogging conference was taking place in the state just next door, I was intrigued. When I heard that friend, cookbook author, and fellow blogger Kathy Hester was going to be there, I said “Sign me up!” So a couple of weeks ago, I drove the four hours to Birmingham, [...]

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Colleen’s Chickpea Burgers with Tahini Sauce

October 11, 2011
Colleen's Chickpea Burgers with Tahini Sauce

I was a vegetarian for six years before I became a vegan, and before I made the change, I thought that being vegan was just more than I was able to do. I had been inspired by Diet for a New America when I first became vegetarian, and though I agreed with the ethics of [...]

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White Bean Salad with Za’atar

April 12, 2011
White Bean Salad with Zatar

Chickpea salads are very popular in my household. My daughter E likes them so much that she often helps me throw them together, and we never use exactly the same formula twice. Over the weekend, I decided to really shake things up and, instead of chickpeas, make a bean salad from great northern beans. I [...]

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Sea-sational Chickpea Salad

September 8, 2010
Sea-sational Chickpea Salad

Eaten any good algae lately?  Chances are you have, even if you didn’t know it.  Algae, or sea vegetables, are used as stabilizers or thickeners in everything from mayo to ice cream, and even if you avoid processed foods, you’ve probably enjoyed sushi wrapped up in nori or miso soup flavored with wakame.  But if [...]

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Curried Eggplant, Lentil, and Quinoa Burgers with Onion-Pepper Relish

September 2, 2010
Curried Eggplant, Lentil, and Quinoa Burgers with Onion-Pepper Relish

Leftovers give you two separate good feelings. When you first put them away, you feel really intelligent–”I’m saving food!” And then, after a month, when hair is growing out of them and you throw them away you feel…really intelligent–”I’m saving my life!” –George Carlin I often think of eggplants like George Carlin’s leftovers.  When you [...]

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Ridiculously Easy Curried Chickpeas and Quinoa

April 27, 2010
Ridiculously Easy Curried Chickpeas and Quinoa

Chickpeas again!  I apologize to any chickpea haters for following one chickpea recipe with another, but in my opinion, there are few foods in the vegan diet as versatile as the chickpea.  Think about it: You can smash them, roast them, stew them, and make endless varieties of salad with them; they’re used in cuisines [...]

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Roasted Beet-Tofu Burgers

September 21, 2009
Roasted Beet-Tofu Burgers

High Noon Café, the only vegetarian restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi, where I live, serves the most unusual veggie burgers, bright red with beets and soft in texture from the tofu. The first time my husband recommended I try one, I was afraid to order it, but once his burger came, I couldn’t resist sampling it. [...]

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E’s Samosa Wraps

June 23, 2009
Samosa Wraps

Like a lot of 12-year olds, my daughter E is hesitant to try new foods—and when I say hesitant, I mean she has to be bribed, threatened, or otherwise coerced into trying them. So when I recently picked up a couple of Amy’s Samosa Wraps because they were on sale, I hoped to get her [...]

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Sweet Potato Falafel with Yogurt-Tahini Sauce

January 4, 2009
Sweet Potato Falafel

I don’t exactly know how I came to have about a dozen sweet potatoes in my pantry. I seem to remember buying a few for a casserole that I never got around to making, but I’m not quite sure how the others got there. My secret suspicion is that while behind closed doors, they’re multiplying [...]

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Two Chickpea Salads

October 11, 2008
Creamy Chickpea Salad

October may seem like a strange time to be writing about salads, but even in the cooler months, I like to eat salads for lunch. I load up on raw vegetables for my midday meal and concentrate on cooked veggies, beans, and grains for dinner. But raw vegetables don’t really fill me up or keep [...]

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Spicy Roasted Eggplant Spread

June 18, 2008
Spicy Roasted Eggplant Spread

Middle East meets Southwest in this wrap I concocted on the spur of the moment last night. I’d thrown an eggplant into the toaster oven to roast, intending to make my standard baba ganoush, but just before it was done I realized that I was all out of pita bread. Since our hearts were set [...]

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TLT Sandwiches

August 5, 2007
TLT

When I told D that we needed to use the tempeh soon before it went bad, he got this far-off, dreamy expression on his face. I thought for a minute he was having some type of male menopausal seizure, but no, he was just thinking about tempeh “bacon.” The first place D ever had tempeh [...]

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Dal Bhaji–A Recipe Redux

June 14, 2007
Dal Bhaji

Think of it as the Indian version of sloppy joes. Pav Bhaji, the wonderful street food of Mumbai, traditionally consists of a potato and vegetable curry (or bhaji) served on a bun (or pav). I’ve never had the pleasure of sampling Pav Bhaji in Mumbai, but I did cook up my own version last year, [...]

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Veggeroni (Seitan Pepperoni)

April 4, 2007
Veggeroni

Okay, you wormed it out of me. I was going to make this again just to tweak the seasonings a little, but with so many of you writing to tell me that you just have to have the recipe now, I’ve decided to post it here and let you do the experimenting with it. (I’ve [...]

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Red Bean-Chipotle Burgers

January 13, 2007
Red Bean Chipotle Burgers

A few days ago, my family was in the mood for a good old burgers-and-”fries” meal. Now, you know I try to eat as little processed food as possible, so rather than reach for a frozen Boca or Garden burger, I opted to make a bean-based burger from scratch. And though these are not as [...]

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Colorful Tofu Salad with Basil and Cashews

June 28, 2006
Colorful Tofu Salad

It’s swim-meet season, that dreaded time of year when once a week my family sits outside in the humid Mississippi heat while my daughter periodically gets to jump into a pool and swim as though Jaws himself were after her. She stays nice and cool while the rest of us wilt. Since we’re out there [...]

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Green Olive Hummus

May 27, 2006
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If you are beginning to think my family lives on hummus, you’re very close to being right. We use hummus for just about everything around here: a snack with veggies and crackers, a salad topping, a sandwich filling, and dinner with pitas, tabouli, and other Middle Eastern dishes. We love hummus. We also love olives: [...]

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Almost-Instant Hummus Ghanoush

May 12, 2006
Almost-Instant Hummus Gannoush

I had a sudden craving for baba ghanoush, but it was much too late to roast an eggplant. So I decided on an unorthodox method of cooking it, in the pressure cooker. Within about 5 minutes, I had completely cooked eggplant and also a problem: The eggplant was hot, and whoever heard of eating hot [...]

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Chipotle Chickpea Dip

May 6, 2006
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I’d pretty much decided to leave yesterday’s lunch off the blog until my husband came home and devoured the leftovers, saying “This is the best hummus ever!” I pointed out that it’s not really hummus. “It doesn’t have any tahini at all, and the flavors are Southwestern rather than Middle Eastern. And it’s super-spicy. Maybe [...]

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Pav Bhaji (Spicy Mixed Vegetables on Buns)

March 4, 2006
Pav Bhaji

Sailu’s Food recently posted this amazing recipe for Pav Bhaji, which she describes as “the quintessential Mumbai street food,” and I couldn’t wait to try it. After all, I love Indian food, and this recipe contains bunches of vegetables and lots of spiciness. So last night, while daughter E. (aka “the spice hater”) was off [...]

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Hash Browns and Black Bean Burgers

January 21, 2006
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Our meal time keeps getting later and later. Last night it was closing in on 7:30, and I still didn’t have a clue what I was going to fix. I just knew that it was Friday night, and I did not want to be in the kitchen all night. (My husband, who does the dishes, [...]

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