Shitake Tamales, with Mole Mofu and Lime Dressed Salad

Yet another mushroom dish!  Clearly I'm obsessed.  Vegetarian tamales are pretty hard to come by in restaurants, and the frozen ones from Target have a frightening amount of fat in them.  In my opinion, if they are that fattening, they should taste better than they do.  So homemade tamales it was!

To round out the meal, I came across some mole dressed Mofu.  I've been trying to avoid eating tofu lately because of the concerns surrounding soy, but since Mofu is local and organic, I make the occasional exception.

Finally, a simple cabbage, kale and avocado salad with lime vinagrette.

Personal Avocado Salad Bowls

Like guacamole, but not mushed up, and with other salady things thrown in.  On this particular evening, I had no lettuce, so in went spinach and radishes, along with the usual tomatoes, cilantro (that's coriander to you Shaheen) onions and garlic.  Plus it's fun to eat out of the skin!

Raw Tacos

If you are not familiar with Charlie Trotter, he is a genius, and one of his mottoes is "food doesn't have to be rich to taste good."  Instead of relying on butter, salt and cream, he takes the time to lift and support the natural flavours of the vegetables.  Charlie wrote an amazing book of impossible recipes simply titled RAW.  So when I ate at his restaurant in Chicago several years ago, I could have ordered the vegetable menu, one of two printed choices, but my friend dared me to ask for a raw menu.  I knew that for it to be truly raw, it had to be vegetarian, so I wasn't worried.  It was and is the best meal I've ever had.  If you are in Chicago, have money to burn, and want to spend 4-5 hours eating, then this is the place for you. 

More recently I had a delicious meal at St. Louis' first and only raw restaurant, Puravegan.  You really do feel a lot better after eating food like this.  It makes you wonder why you ever bother with the stuff that makes you want to lie down after you eat it.

So anyway, I totally ripped off this idea from a really great blog my friend alerted me to called My New Roots.  I'll let you get the recipe from her, but I made of few changes of course.  I forgot to buy cashews, so I used tahini in place of the cashew cream.  I used kale instead of cabbage as taco "shells."  I included zucchini and corn in the salsa.  And I was worried (unnecessarily) about not being full enough, so I also made a few with sprouted grain tortillas.  We both agree that the kale leaves were better than the tortillas for this particular taco filling.  And unlike so many raw dishes, this didn't take too long to put together.

Big Salad

This is a favorite at our house and we eat it once a week.  I don't really like to plan it out too much.  I just throw everything salad-y in and it is always good.  The tofu is nice for it's texture but it's certainly not necessary with the chick peas and nuts covering the protein requirement.   Here are the ingredients:

Baked tofu (see shitake stir fry for recipe,) chick peas, crushed almonds, green onions from the garden, avocado, grape tomatoes, sliced carrots, shredded radish, fresh herbs from the garden, sliced red onion, thin sliced beets, julienne red bell pepper, cucumber half moons (not pictured,) bleu cheese (not pictured,) and your favorite dressing - mine is a simple vinaigrette made of balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.   Toss all of this with the greens of your choice!  Sadly, my romaine lettuce has already bolted thanks to the heat.  So I used some leftover napa cabbage and spinach for the base of this salad.  Cabbage is more nutritious than lettuce any way, plus it is crunchier, so I highly recommend this for your next big salad!  These are all pretty sturdy ingredients, so go ahead and dress the whole thing, and throw the rest in the fridge for lunch tomorrow.  It will be different, but I quite like my veggies marinated over night. 

Side note, I ended up not using the beets in the salad when I got the idea to make beet crisps.  They were delicious, but I will wait to tell you all about it in a different post.