A benchmark. And a Kale Tahini Salad.

Happy 100th post! This is a pretty big deal and I feel like it is perfectly timed with something fantastic: a new job! I might be inclined to change the name of this blog now... though I've grown pretty attached the long and painfully bland name that I started with: What I Do When I Don't Have a Job. I'm open to suggestions.

Even thought this seems like an occasion for a fancy post, I have nothing fancy to share. But, recently, I did learn about the benefits of including more raw foods in my diet after watching the documentary Food Matters. To sum it up, let's eat more salads and make our bodies feel better. I'll start today with this salad.

Israeli Couscous Salad

Israeli couscous is an oversized version of the "grain" you probably already know. And the mouth-feel is amazing! Truly.

It's like my mouth is at Chuck-E-Cheese in the ball cage!

Steak and Slaw

Colorful red cabbage slaw with well marinated tempeh steaks. Just some pretty photos today because I've covered slaw and steak before: Here and here, respectively.

A different angle:

Sliced almonds, chopped pecans, red cabbage, kale, carrot, onion, red wine vinaigrette.

Picnic at the Bluffs

Days off are awesome. They are even better spent with people you love. A good friend was in town and we went to a great lookout park and had a picnic centered around Quinoa Salad.

Bree and Liz casually take in the view. Optimistically, I brought a frisbee, but it was just so hot that I got lazy and ate food instead. Fine by me.

omg, Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

So simple. Sweet and salty with a kick from raw ginger.

~3 tbsp Soy Sauce*
~1 tbps White wine vinegar*
1 tsp sugar
a splash of red wine
freshly grated ginger and garlic to taste
*very approximate; as with most of my cooking, I didn't pay attention to how much of anything I added. If it doesn't taste awesome, just play around with it!

Poured over thinly sliced tempeh and marinated for a couple minutes. Then cooked up in a pan until crispy.

Kale. Onion. Cucumber (briefly marinated in white wine vinegar). Teriyaki tempeh. (The focaccia was a regrettable addition and I didn't finish it.)

Coconut Curry Polenta and Chop Salad

A couple of days ago I had an amazing meal at a bar during happy hour. My mind was blown when I ate the coconut curry polenta with sesame sauteed veggies and sweet chili sauce. I've never had a more tasty polenta!

As I tend to do, I then tried to make my own version of this dish. Since I didn't have a recipe for the curried polenta I made one up, substituting half the cooking water with coconut milk and various other spices (Thai hot sauce, tamari soy sauce, curry powder, grated ginger).

I cooked the polenta until it was a thick and hard to stir, then spread it in a pyrex dish to cool. As it cools, the polenta hardens and can be handled easily and prepared for any recipe. However, this batch is probably limited by its dominant curry flavor.

It started with beets...

This was a wonderful meal that just kind of happened as I walked through the grocery store. Well, really, Bree and I had this great adventure involving a warm drink (Toddy!) in a thermos at some bluffs overlooking the river at sunset. It was nice but then it was cold and we were hungry and had beets on our minds.

It's hard for me to describe the meal because there ended up being many parts instead of one bowl of every ingredient, like a stir-fry. I suppose that's what lists are for:
-Beet and a pear mixed green salad with White Wine Vinaigrette
-Smoked Apple Sage sausage
-Sauteed beet greens and fried Polenta rounds

Beets are wonderful and sweet and their leaves are actually very nutritious and largely overlooked in the leafy-greens department. I lightly sauteed the leaves in a little Earth Balance until they wilted and served them with the polenta and sausage. The polenta was fried in a combination of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and course salt and pepper until the surface was crispy and golden.

The sausage is made by a company called Field Roast from Seattle, WA. This is the most delicious veggie sausage I have ever had in my life! They are pricey at around $6.99 for four links, but they are very much worth the splurge (especially when on sale for $4.99). I lightly browned the sausage in a pan after slicing it into little rounds.

As for the salad, I boiled the beets and cut them into small cubes and added them the the thinly cut pear and onion. Usually I don't boil veggies because all the good stuff boils out into the water but I've saved the beet water and look forward to reusing it today. It would be nice to use the beet water in a fresh juice of some sort but I don't have that technology so I might use it to make a pink pasta salad of some sort. A quick internet search yields many interesting results for beet water usage, though.