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This Simple Chickpea Salad is not only delicious and easy, but will also wow everyone this Memorial Day, from omnivores to vegans to gluten-free diners. I will take this holiday prelude as an opportunity to remind my omnivorous readers how thoughtful it is to provide a vegan protein when you’re serving a group of partiers with diverse dietary needs.
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It’s official: summer is here and it’s time to welcome the season with all kinds of salads that sparkle with flavor—once they get a delicious topping like this Easy Avocado Salad Dressing! Yes, there are many commercial salad dressings that will do, but there’s nothing quite like the taste of a fresh dressing you whip up yourself just before eating.
Any simple green salad (like the salad with cucumbers, carrots, and sunflower seeds pictured here) will shine with this garlicky sauce. What about dressing up an ordinary potato salad? Or try this on a black rice salad? Bean salads transform from ho-hum to woo-hoo with this dash of delicious!
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After a long and much-needed hiatus to remodel the kitchen in our home of nearly 25 years, I’m joyfully back to creating new dishes for our table—and yours. Today’s offering is Winter Squash with Greens that I hope was worth the wait. (Next up: Chocolate Glazed Pumpkin Bars!)
This Winter Squash with Greens is a lovely vegan entrée when served in a soup bowl over millet or it can grace your holiday table as a side vegetable.
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“As American as apple pie” is the turn of phrase for most anything associated with U.S. culture, but really—if you’re counting by the pound—corn is king! For that reason, and because it’s summer when sweet corn is fresh in local farmers’ markets or ready to pick in your garden, I will offer an easy and delicious vegan corn dish.
I’m not talking about just any corn. I’m talking about sweet corn, the delicious corn you can eat on the cob and that, when it’s just been picked or is still reasonably fresh, almost melts in your mouth with natural sweetness.
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Although beets and other root vegetables are often associated with winter meals, beets are also a perfect vegetable for springtime—which inspired me to offer today’s new recipe for Beet Salad with Roasted Pistachios.
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If you’re looking for several ways to use the abundance of cucumbers that recently burst forth in your garden or arrived fresh from a farm in your produce box, I’ve got some quick and easy recipes for you.
Let’s start with this Carrot and Cucumber Salad. You could eat the carrots and cucumbers raw, as you might expect, but instead I cooked them, Asian style, for just a few minutes. Add salt, fresh mint, cilantro, and lime—and voila—culinary delight! Not only are the cucumbers delicious when cooked, but they are also easier to digest.
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If you’re a vegan or vegetarian cook who wants to dazzle your holiday guests with an exciting new dish, I have a couple of delicious options for you today: Savory Vegetable Rolls or their variation, Root Vegetable Casserole. I started experimenting last week to create something interesting for our first dinner guests since the beginning of the pandemic. We had all decided having dinner together was worth the small inconvenience of—oy vey!—taking rapid Covid tests. It was, and this entrée was a major hit!
Today’s recipe options demonstrate how you can play with a basic recipe and create a dish that suits your palate and time constraints. For example, you can also create this dish as a layered casserole, which will be easier and faster than making the rolls. The rolls are not difficult, but they do require extra steps.
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Whether you are vegetarian, vegan, or a flexitarian who wants to eat less meat to do your part for the environment, tofu can be surprisingly delicious—as you will learn when you make this recipe for Savory Scrambled Tofu. It’s a perfect dish for any late-morning brunch, lunch, or dinner.
Because tofu is especially easy to work with, I will often add it as the protein alongside a simple vegetable soup, such as my now-famous Asparagus Soup or Carrot Soup with Coconut Milk (Sacred & Delicious page 99). But’s this scrambled tofu is also a lovely brunch centerpiece with a little avocado toast on the side.
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I tasted this scrumptious cauliflower dish at The Well Fed Community Garden in Raleigh in late May when Arthur Gordon, of Irregardless Cafe fame, created the dish on the spot! He gathered up whatever looked fresh and interesting at the farmer’s market along with herbs growing in the community garden and—voila!—came up with this amazing dish! I’ve adapted it only slightly to serve eight instead of eighteen and made it a tad milder so it doesn’t bring on more heat in this sweltering summer.The complete dish is a cauliflower “steak” that is rubbed down with a mixture of fresh herbs, roasted or sautéed, and topped with a red pepper cashew sauce. The first time I made this myself, I ran out of time and served only the first part of the dish, pictured here—cauliflower with herb rub. That alone was delicious! So, if you want a simpler dish to make for a July 4th bash, you won’t be disappointed.
A third option, also simplified from the original, is to skip the marinade. You chop the florets, grill them (or sauté them in a little salted oil), and top them with the cashew sauce.
If you want to go the extra mile to impress your guests, I recommend making the full dish: rubbed cauliflower steaks with red pepper cashew sauce. The sauce is simple, and you can use it over any of your favorite vegetables. I’ve found it wonderful over grilled summer squash, plantains, and sweet potatoes—foods I like to see on a summer menu!
Finally, if you want to replicate Arthur’s dish more precisely, you can add some hot sauce to the red pepper/cashew mixture. It’s a flavor I always avoid, but I know many people love it!
Wishing you all the freedoms hoped for when our forefathers proclaimed their independence on July 4, 1776!
Lisa with Arthur Gordon, founder of the Well-Fed Community Garden and Irregardless Cafe.
Earlier this week I began talking about summer salads, and today I offer you this Black Bean Salad with Avocado Dressing for your July 4th celebration and for ongoing summer picnics and potluck events.
In the past my go-to veggies to accompany most any black bean dish would have been red bell peppers and tomatoes, but now I find myself looking for something different.
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