Pasta and Salad

I did a bit of shopping today and then went set about cooking dinner. I love bagged salad mixes--they're prewashed, so all you need to do is dump them in a bowl and toss in the rest of your salad fixings. I grated a couple of carrots, cut up a couple of Roma tomatoes and a Gala apple, threw in some golden raisins and some peanuts, and made a lovely Sesame Ginger dressing from Garden of Vegan. I love these little condiment bottles I get at Bed, Bath & Beyond. They're the size of your average bottle of dressing, but you can use them over and over. The only thing I don't like about them is there is no removable tip, so I have to cut off the tip of the lid to squeeze. They also work well for frosting cupcakes if you aren't doing any fancy swirly stuff.

I found a couple of really neat recipes in last Wednesday's Washington Post Food section. This is a recipe for Udon Noodles with Baby Bok Choy. Wow--a vegan recipe from the Post. What a shocker. Well, I didn't have udon noodles (or the sub of linguini), so I used whole wheat fettuccine instead. It was pretty tasty, although I don't eat pasta enough that I have a handle on the taste and texture of whole wheat pasta. And since I had more pasta than the recipe called for, I could very well have used that third head of bok choy that was in the package I picked up at Trader Joe's last week. Still, with the salad, it was a very nice dinner. I topped that off with a bowl of Purely Decadent Pomegranate Chip "ice cream" (well, they call it non-dairy dessert, probably because they can't legally call it ice cream). This was some seriously good stuff. I typically put chocolate syrup on my ice cream, but when I discovered I was out of syrup, I ate it plain. This is some good stuff. You must get some NOW (oh, okay, if the store is closed, wait until it opens and get it then).

I have become a bit of a pomegranate freak since they became popular. I love pomegranate blueberry juice and pomegranate molasses flavoring. Clif Nectar bars, their almost raw division, has a new pomegranate cherry bar that rocks. I think I love it almost more than their dark chocolate and walnut flavor, which has served as my chocolate fix at work on a few occasions.

And I totally forgot to mention in my post of last week that if you're a guy, you should eat lots of cooked tomato products. Pasta with marinara sauce (and veggie meatballs), pizza with tons of veggies (no cheese), recipes with tomato sauce, tomato paste, or processed tomatoes--eat up. Tomatoes have lycopene, an antioxidant, and eating them helps prevent prostate cancer. It is most bioavailable when the tomatoes are cooked or processed, but it's still not a terrible idea to put some in your salad anyway. Even ketchup on your veggie burger will provide you lycopene.

I wonder what special benefits it has for women. Either way, I'll try to eat more of them.

A simple entree

It's been a while since I made this--my Puckery Pomegranate Seitan. I guess you could say it's like a vegan fessenjen--I adapted a meat recipe to seitan. Ever since it became popular, I've fallen in love with pomegranate flavoring. A bottle of pomegranate molasses lasts a good long time, but I used the last of mine tonight :(.

Anyway, here's the recipe--it's pretty simple:

2 tbsp oil

1 lb seitan, sliced

1 large onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

4 tbsp pomegranate molasses

2/3 C vegetable stock

dash of sugar

1/4 cup walnuts

Saute seitan in oil on both sides until it starts to brown. Remove from the pan and keep in a warm place. Add onions, garlic, pepper, and salt and saute until onion softens. Add pomegranatet molasses, stock, salt, pepper, sugar, and walnuts and bring to boil. Add seitan back to pan and coat with sauce. Simmer until sauce thickens then serve.

If there's a Middle Eastern store in your area, you can find pomegranate molasses there. My local Whole Foods also carries it. It's actually thickened pomegranate juice, so you could technically make your own, but it's cheaper and easier to buy a bottle of the stuff. Next time I go grocery shopping, I've got to get me another bottle of that stuff.