For our family gathering this past Saturday, I took a big platter of cookies as well as some pasta salad.  I forgot to take a photo of the pasta salad before everyone dug in, so I had to settle for a photo of the leftovers.

Pasta Salad

1 pound pasta, any shape

1 cup roasted red peppers, patted dry and chopped

1 cup olives, any kind, chopped

1 pint cherry tomatoes

1 can artichoke hearts, chopped

1 cup basil, chopped

Lemony Vinaigrette Dressing

Juice of 2 lemons

Zest of 1 lemon

1 TB agave nectar

1/4 to 1/3 cup olive oil

S&P to taste

Cook pasta per package directions.  Immediately after draining, rinse with cold water for several minutes and spread out on a baking sheet to cool completely.  Toss all of the veggies with the pasta and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.  If you are making this a day ahead, hold off on adding the basil until you are almost ready to serve.  When ready to serve, toss again and add more olive oil, if the pasta looks dry.

So easy to make, yet so yummy!  This would be great for summer picnics or even when it feels too hot outside to eat a hot meal.

While visiting my parents over the weekend, my dad said that he’d never had a falafel before and didn’t even know what was in it.  I told him that I would make them the next time they visited and, true to my word, I made them tonight.  They ate ‘em up and even took some leftovers home.  They are so incredibly easy to make.  I wonder why we don’t have them more often?!

I’ve been using the same falafel recipe for a few years now and I’m not sure where it came from originally.  Sorry for not giving any credit to the original creator of my falafel recipe.

Falafel

2 green onions, cut into 1 inch pieces

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup fresh cilantro

1/4 cup fresh mint

1 15-oz can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I use whole wheat)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp Tabasco sauce

1 TB olive oil

Put everything into a food processor and process until smooth.  You can either make them into patties or balls.  I use a cookie scooper and scoop them onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until they are golden brown.  You can also pan fry them, but I usually end up making a huge mess when I go that route– baking is much easier and less fatty.

Not the most attractive photo, I know (my plate is on an Elmo placement, by the way, in case you were wondering about all those words).  I served ours up on top of some middle eastern flatbread that I can always find at Trader Joe’s, topped with chopped lettuce, tomatoes, and some dill pickles.  I know, the dill pickles sound like an odd topping for falafels, but they are really quite tasty.  The sauce that I make to go with the falafels is made from 2 TB mayo (or vegan mayo), 2 TB Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream (thanks to Amy’s tip, I was able to find some at Whole Foods), juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 cup chopped cucumber, and about 2 TB chopped fresh dill.  Combine all of those ingredients and thin it out a bit with some plain rice (or soy) milk until it is the right consistency.

On the side, I threw together a quick tabbouleh, which turned out really good.

Tabbouleh

1/2 cup bulgar

1 cup water

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1/2 cup chopped fresh mint

1 cup chopped kale

1 cup chopped cucumber

1 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, cut in half

1 cup diced red onion, soaked in several changes of water (optional, but I find that doing this removes the raw onion after taste)

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup olive oil

S&P to taste

Cook the bulgar in the water.  Meanwhile, put all of the other ingredients into a bowl.  When the bulgar is cooked, add it in and stir.  Taste for seasoning and adjust, if necessary.

I know that kale isn’t a traditional tabbouleh ingredient, but it really has no flavor when it is raw (at least to me it doesn’t) and I thought it would be a good addition here to boost the nutrition of the dish.  The only thing it contributed was extra vitamins and fiber– if I hadn’t known it was in there, I wouldn’t have thought that anything was amiss.

We’ve were out of town for Mother’s Day weekend, thus explaining the lack of recent posts.  On Friday night, my hubby made me a very tasty meal of spaghetti with marinara as my Mother’s Day gift.  He’s so sweet.  It turned out really, really good, but I was so hungry when we ate it that I dove right in without first taking a photo.

When we returned from our weekend away, we were in pretty bad shape grocery-wise.  I went out to Sigona’s, the only place for produce, as far as I’m concerned, and picked up some delicious produce.  Take a look at the salad we had after my shopping trip:

It was just a simple garden salad, but everything was so fresh tasting that I had to share.  My beats were still cooking when it was time to eat, so they didn’t make it onto the salad.  Drizzled on top is my balsamic dijon vinaigrette.

I wasn’t really in the mood to cook anything last night, so I decided that some frozen veggie burgers were the way to go. The burgers were a “tex mex” variety- with corn, black beans, etc., and I decided to try out Carrie’s twist on tabbouleh for a side dish. I didn’t have her recipe in front of me and I was too lazy to turn on the computer, so I decided to wing it. The outcome was awesome! The leftovers are even better. Here is how I made my version of Carrie’s version of Mexican style tabbouleh :

Mexican Style Tabbouleh Salad

1/2 cup bulgur wheat

1 cup water

1 cup frozen corn kernals

1 cup beans (any kind will do)

1/2 red onion, diced and soaked in several changes of water *

1/2 tomato, diced

1/2 mango, diced

1/2 cup cilantro

juice of 3 limes

1/4 cup olive oil

Put the bulgur in a pot with the water and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for about 15 minutes until the water is adsorbed. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, add the frozen corn (no need to defrost- the hot bulgur will do that for you), beans, tomato, onion, mango and cilantro. When the bulgur is cooked, add it to the bowl too. Add the lime juice, olive oil and S&P. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

* I really don’t care for raw onion too much, mostly because of the gross after taste it leaves in my mouth. I find that by soaking raw onion in several changes of water before I add it to a salad, it helps to counteract the yucky after taste.

I especially loved the addition of the mango. When I was a kid, my mom would make pasta salad in the summertime and would either add in some chopped nectarine or some grapes. It was so tasty to have a sweet bite of fruit in the middle of a savory, refreshing salad and I thought the mango would serve the same purpose here. If I would have had a jalapeño on hand, I may had added it as well. I will totally be making this again!

I had this idea for pizza, but at the last minute, decided to make calzones instead. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out and I will definitely be making them again.

To make the calzones, I divided my pizza dough (store bought whole wheat) evenly into thirds. One of the thirds I divided in half (to make Emma an extra one that I could freeze). I then rolled them all out into circles and filled them with the rest of my cashew cheese, some frozen spinach, and a few broccoli florets (also frozen). I had originally planned to throw some basil in there too, but forgot until they were already baking. I baked them at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes on my new baking stone (thanks, Brianne and Paul!). We had some marinara on the side for dipping. They were great! The best part was that Emma liked them too. She loves pizza and this is a good veganized version that tastes pretty close to the real thing. For hers, I took all of the filling components, plus a little bit of marinara and gave them a whirl in the food processor before stuffing the dough.

On the side, we had a chopped salad. We are out of lettuce and the only fresh veggies in the fridge were the last of my organic golden beets, some baby carrots and some celery. I chopped up all of those, plus an apple and pear, topped it with my balsamic dijon vinaigrette and sprinkled on some toasted pine nuts, walnuts, pistachios, and dried cranberries. Very tasty!

The cashew “cheese” sauce that I wrote about before makes an enormous batch. Honestly, it takes exactly like an alfredo sauce, but is much easier to make and much better for you. I had a big tub left in my fridge that needed to be used up and I decided to serve it over some spaghetti noodles with some fresh basil. As I had suspected, it becomes more saucy with the addition of some of your pasta cooking water, so be sure to save about a cup of it to pour over the noodles when you mix your sauce in.

On the side, we had a nice salad made of organic red leaf lettuce, organic pears, and organic golden beets. I picked up some beets the last time I was at Sigona’s and they had been sitting in my fridge for nearly a week waiting to get used. I don’t cook beets often and I wanted to do something more creative with them other than boiling them and putting them on a salad. Well, that didn’t happen this time, but I’ll keep an eye out for a recipe involving beets that doesn’t involve salad.

So the salad was really simple. A bed of leaf lettuce, some pears, the beets, and some toasted walnuts, pine nuts and pistachios, topped with my favorite vinaigrette:

Balsamic Dijon Vinaigrette

1 heaping tsp dijon mustard

1 tsp agave nectar

Splash of balsamic vinegar

Olive oil to taste

S&P to taste

In a small bowl, combine the mustard, agave nectar, balsamic vinegar and S&P. Whisk in enough olive oil to suit your taste. I prefer my vinaigrette dressings to be heavier on the vinegar and lighter on the olive oil, but feel free to adjust the quantities to your preferences.

I came across this recipe for a cashew cheese sauce and thought I had to give it a try. It didn’t sound particularly delicious, but the recipe seemed so easy and so versatile that I couldn’t pass it up.

Man! I was dead wrong. This “cheese” sauce was so good, and it tastes exactly like an alfredo sauce. I made up a big batch of it (yes, it makes a ton!), served it atop some penne and topped the dish with some fresh basil. It was delicious! One recommendation, especially if you plan to serve it with pasta, is to add a bit of your pasta water to it before tossing in the cooked pasta. I found that the sauce was extremely thick (despite having adding more water than the recipe called for). I cooked up some kale to serve on the side. What a tasty meal this was!