Maggie's Chickpea "Tuna" Salad

I talked about vegan potluck before and how much I love it. We haven't had our regular potluck since February and I miss the company, camaraderie, and cooking of our vegan potluck crew so much! As I kept thinking about our monthly gatherings, I'd remember a delicious dish from one month, a different dish from another month, and so on. But one dish kept popping up in my head. At the very first potluck she came to - years ago!, our friend Alissa brought a chickpea "tuna" salad. Everyone was amazed. As in, there was outright clamor for the recipe. Alissa gladly shared. 

About a month ago, as the temperatures kept rising, I wanted to make this chickpea tuna salad again but could not find the recipe. Alissa couldn't either! But she remembered better than I did. With her list of ingredients + rough amounts and my tinkering around, what emerged was this amazing, healthy, and summer-temp worthy "tuna" salad. 

Maggie's Vegan Strawberry Pie

While I love all fruits and vegetables, I certainly have my favorites. For fruit, there's no comparison to strawberries, as far as I'm concerned. This year, I planted my own strawberry plants, which hopefully means I'll have my own source of strawberry deliciousness for years to come! In the mean time, I'll be making this strawberry pie with berries from other local & organic sources. That's actually how this pie originated! 

Shana knows I love strawberries. Last summer, she surprised me with a delivery of 5 pounds of local & organic strawberries. That's love, folks. I kept eating them a bowl at a time, but worried that I wasn't going to get through them all quickly enough! Then a dinner party with some friends took shape and I asked if they'd all mind trying out a new strawberry dessert. After enthusiastic positive responses, I decided on a strawberry pie and began scouring the internet for ideas. As usually happens, none of the recipes I found were quite right. Instead, I decided to take some ideas from all of them, plus from some of my other recipes, and created a magical dessert. It was a hit at the dinner party and is a perfect cool treat for summer temperatures.

Maggie's All-Cuisines Salad Dressing

Well, we are mid-way through spring with hints of summer in the air. This means that it is time for our CSA again! I was *so* excited to sing our "CSA-day" song on the first week of pick-up. The joy at our CSA starting up again is also set against the backdrop of the global pandemic that rages on. Indiana has slowly begun to open up, but we're still very wary about heading to restaurants and we've only been going to the store every three weeks or so. Our weekly CSA box has dramatically expanded our access to fresh veggies, especially leafy greens! Seriously, we've gotten lettuce mix, heads of lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, arugula, braising greens, and micro-greens, plus turnips, radishes, and the first bit of asparagus; it's magical.

With so many leafy greens to eat, we've been finding new ways to eat them. Shana has been craving tikka masala with regularity, which is fine by me since it is delicious. A leafy green salad is a wonderful companion. When we first confronted the combination of tikka masala and salad, I looked at the dressings in the fridge and didn't love any of the possible taste combinations. So obviously, I made up my own! 

While originally intended as a lovely accompaniment to flavors in Middle-Eastern dishes, this salad dressing works beautifully with every flavor profile we've tried. It's a fast, easy, and tasty dressing for salads with any meal. 

Poured here on a simple salad of spinach and toasted almonds.

Maggie's Almond Sour Cream Jam Muffins

These muffins are so, SO good. I wasn't sure what to expect, since I more-or-less made up the recipe and baking isn't as much my thing as cooking, but wow. They are rich, have great texture, and I love the dollop of jam in each one. I ate four in one day!

I didn't intend to create a sour cream muffin recipe, but I'd used a small amount of sour cream making cheesy taco mac. While normally I wouldn't think twice about an open tub of sour cream in the fridge, I've been far more conscientious about the food we've been making and using. We have only been to the grocery store twice in the last six weeks, and while we are very lucky in terms of our ability to stock up on food (plus, beans and lentils are cheap and delicious!), I am pretty sure that our changed behaviors have altered my processing of food in our house. This recipe is a great thing to emerge from my shifted consciousness and it is sure to make it into a regular rotation!

Crockpot Teriyaki Tofu with Veggies

It feels odd to be posting new recipe during a global pandemic. This feels especially true I last went to the grocery store over a week ago and don't plan to go again for at least another week. However, I did a good job planning when going to the store last week AND we did a good job planning dinners around how long each veggie will last. This teriyaki tofu dinner (based on a recipe from The Super Easy Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook) was just perfect, using up the last of our bell peppers and half of our kale. The rest of the kale will be used tomorrow in white bean and kale soup. Plus, I made a great teriyaki sauce from ingredients in my pantry - though feel free to buy one instead!

While I do like the flexibility of cooking at home without having to plan around classes, meetings, events, and more, I miss my students and colleagues and friends so much that this flexibility pales in comparison. sigh. At least we're eating well?

I hope you're eating well, too! If not, try this recipe?