Orange Wakame Cucumber Salad + The Organic Cook’s Bible giveaway

Is it still salad season? I am loving the lingering warm weather, especially since it is no longer sweltering. I try to make it a daily goal to go for a walk with my baby every day. At least every weekday. At first, he was content with the stroller, but it can be hit-or-miss and result in a crying fit, so we’ve gravitated to wrapping. I never thought I’d be into hardcore babywearing. I knew I’d want to do some babywearing since skin-to-skin is so important, but my guy is a snuggle monster and loves to be wrapped. Or as Rob says, he demands to be snuggled. For now, I am delighted to oblige as I can still walk around and do simple things around the house.

Orange-Balsamic Lentils and Mixed Grains

Another cute radish rose!

This was a quick and easy main course salad that paired well with the spring kale salad which contained all the vegetables.

Orange Red Lentil Soup with Coriander and Star Anise

One can never have too many soup recipes, especially during the heart of this very cold winter.

However, this isn’t your standard red lentil soup. Have I ever shared a standard recipe? Probably not.

The red lentils are infused with coriander and star anise, spiked with orange juice and a touch of fresh ginger gives you a bit of a bite. This split pea soup has also has ginger and coriander, but the orange and star anise were a refreshing twist. Flavours that seemed a tad unusual but worked very well.

Not as unusual as some of your chocolate suggestions, though. I am totally intrigued by Gabby’s homemade chocolate shampoo! I love reading them, so please keep them coming!

Red lentil soups shared here previously:

Creamy Red Lentil, Spinach and Lemon Soup

Cozy Red Lentil and Kale Soup

Red Lentil and Lemon Soup

Red Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lime

Tomato Red Lentil Soup with Dill

I am sharing this with Souper Sundays.

Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad with Hemp and Orange + Greens 24/7 Review + Giveaway

Wowzers, have you ever seen such a pretty salad before?? Filled with all things green (spinach, arugula, Brussels sprouts, avocado and hemp seeds), you feel almost virtuous for eating it, too.

The salad is courtesy of Jessica’s new cookbook, Greens 24/7. As a fellow Canadian, I have been following her blog, Cupcakes and Kale, for years. I highly recommend her High Protein Creamy Cauliflower Alfredo Pasta and was eager to eat my way through her cookbook.

All her recipes include something green. Lots of leafy greens, but also cucumbers, avocado, broccoli, zucchini, nori, spirulina,and celery. They span the gamut from drinks (Cherry Kale Quencher Smoothie), breakfast (Green Goddess Granola), sides (Cool Ranch Kale Chips), soups (Lemony Miso Soup with Chinese Broccoli), salads (Mediterranean Broccoli and Barley Salad), green mains (Ginger Bok Choy and Sweet Peas with Miso-Glazed Tofu, Samosa Burritos with Peas) and the ultra creative green desserts (Brownies with Spinach, Spinach Ginger Cookies, Lemon and Parsley Olive Oil Cake and Cabbage Strudel).

Suffice it to say, if you are looking for ways to eat more greens, this is your cookbook. My favourite recipe so far has been the Stuffed Baked Sweet Potatoes with Broccoli, Swiss Chard and Hummus. We also both enjoyed the Creamy Spinach Curry with Tofu Paneer. However, I had prettier photos for the salad, so that is what I am sharing today. 🙂

No stranger to raw shredded Brussels sprout salads (see this Maple-Dijon Brussels Sprouts Salad), this is yet another way for me to eat eat one of my favourite vegetables. I chose to thinly slice them instead of using the food processor which made for cute mini cabbage creations in the salad. The vinaigrette was simple and allowed the produce’s own flavours shine with a faint sweetness from the juicy clementines.

One of the great things about this cookbook, are the pretty photos of nearly every recipe.The photos were done by Jackie Sobon (check our her teaser portfolio from the cookbook here). This is the photo from the cookbook below and the Superfood Salad in the rear.

Recipes from Greens 24/7 spotted elsewhere:

Green Juice without a Juicer (with a UK giveaway)

Mediterranean Broccoli and Barley Salad (with a giveaway)

Mushroom and Spinach Galette (with a giveaway)

Shredded Rainbow Salad with Lemony Avocado Dressing

 Thankfully, the publisher allowed me to giveaway the cookbook to a reader living in the United States or Canada. To be entered in the random draw for the book, please leave a comment below telling me about your favourite green ingredient and how you prepare it. The winner will be selected at random on February 5, 2015. Good luck!

PS. I am sharing this with Souper Sundays.

PPS. Check out my giveaway for Vegan Without Borders going on now.

Thai Chickpea & Kale Salad Rolls with Peanut Dressing

My lovely friend, Dawn, recently asked me to share my tips for food blogging.

As you know, I have a demanding full-time job and this is my hobby. After a few years, I think I have a great balance between managing the blog and the rest of my life. Mainly, the blog does not take over my life.

Some people wonder how I make and share so many different recipes without losing my mind.

I try to keep things low-key. I only take photos once. New recipe, snap a photo. If I come back and the photos suck, oh well… I will still post the subpar photos if the recipe is good.

This also means that I may make a recipe one way but find a better use for it afterwards as leftovers. Then my photos might not look like my recipe!

That is how this recipe evolved. It started out as a Thai Kale Salad with Chickpeas and a Peanut Dressing. I made it, I ate it. However, the next day, I thought rice paper rolls would be better.  So I wrapped them up… and decided I didn’t want to bother with new photographs and munched away. Of course, the wrap was better. There is something sensational when all the components of the dish hit your palate at the exact same time: the lemony kale, the sweet red pepper, the crunchy carrots and the chickpeas are not rolling around everywhere…. and how could I forget the delicious peanut sauce? It is light, thinned with vinegar but flavourful with the ginger and orange. Drizzled into the salad roll, it was delicious. So delicious, I gobbled up the rest of the salad before rethinking about a new photo shoot.

Want more advice on how to be an awesome food blogger? Check out Dawn’s round-up with tips from Joanne at Eats Well With Others, Alissa from Connoisseurus Veg, Susan Voisin from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, Cara Lyons from Cara’s Cravings and Alyssa from Queen of Quinoa.

PS. I am sharing this with Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, No Croutons Required and Bookmarked Recipes.

Cinnamon-Orange Stewed Prunes

Which food makes you giggle? An automatic response because you just don’t want to eat it.

While I have cooked and baked with prunes before, I subconsciously think of my bowels when I see prunes. I know it isn’t just me, because the folks in California have been rebranded prunes as “dried plums“. So many less connotations, while using different words.

Dried dates, apricots and cranberries get a lot of love, but prunes are rarely heralded. It wasn’t until I picked them up on a whim that I remembered how nice they taste.  They aren’t as cloyingly sweet as dates or raisins, and have a much more complex flavour: deep and robust.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I love to explore new breakfasts, although I rarely share them these days. I spotted this recipe for stewed prunes with citrus and cinnamon and figured it would be a great topping for my morning oatmeal.

I was drawn to this recipe for stewed prunes because there is no added sugar and the sweetness comes entirely from the prunes and orange. In fact, the sweetness is tempered by including the orange peel in the pot as everything  simmers. A dash of cinnamon permeates the succulent compote and melds seamlessly. I halved the original recipe since I didn’t have a pound of prunes. I used half a Navel orange, cut into thin slivers, which delivered a wonderful flavour. Don’t be off-put by including the entire orange, peel and all. It works. Really well.

(I’ve done something similar before, years ago when I made Nigella’s Clementine Cake in which you boil 5 whole clementines (peel and all) for two hours until meltingly soft, add half a dozen eggs, sugar, ground almonds with a dash of baking powder before you throw it into the oven. The cake is oh so moist, not super sweet, but wonderful. Gluten-free baking at its finest, although obviously not vegan.)

Just as Molly suggests, the silky prunes develop a complex flavour throughout its hour-long simmer. Overnight, in the fridge, the flavours meld further. It was a delicious topping for my morning oatmeal and could easily top some yogurt or ice cream, if you are into that, for a delicious dessert. Warm and cold, I loved it both ways.

Other prune recipes that have caught my eye:

Tagine of Yam, Carrot and Prune from Moroccan Food and Cooking
Butter Bean, Prune and Tomato Tagine from Sanitarium
Georgian Red Beans in Sour Prune Sauce in Olive Trees and Honey
Spinach and Prunes with Beans in The New Book of Middle Eastern Food
Prunes Stuffed with Walnuts in Orange Juice in The New Book of Middle Eastern Food
Quinoa Tagine with Chickpeas, Olives and Prunes (Quinoa and Chickpea Marbella) at Diet Dessert n Dogs
Chickpea and Sweet Potato Stew in A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen (recipe here)
Masala Chai Poached Prunes at In Praise of Sardines
Orange-Scented Hazelnut Prune Truffles at Anja’s Food for Thought

What are your favourite ways to enjoy prunes dried plums?

This is my submission to this month’s Tea Time Treats with dried fruit and this month’s Credit Crunch Munch.

PS. The winners of Plant Powered 15 are Johanna and Kari.

Citrus Collards and Chickpeas (& Tips for Moving to Houston)

And then there were three.

Three Canadians in Houston!

One of my friends recently moved here and I could not be more thrilled.

After massive hugs and giggles, Rob and I had to pass on our new-found Texan/American wisdom:

1. Beware of the drivers and HUGE potholes. Houston’s roads are pretty atrocious (broken roads explained here)

2. Beware of the new bugs here

3. Get used to the heat, quickly. Stay indoors. Use the air conditioner. Do not go outside between 9am and 5pm. 😉

4. Get used to the sporadic rain. In Houston, it will rain like crazy for half an hour, then stop and dry up within another hour. I shudder to think what it will be like when a hurricane hits.

5. Locate your closest recycling depot, fastest DMV, nicest bank

6. Speaking of DMV, learn how to import a Canadian car. It needs a special anti-theft check done once a week during a 30 minute window. Yikes!

7. Lament about the terrible cell phone reception, even within our own home

8. Your SSN is very important. You need it to get paid (and open a bank account). When you are ready to get your SSN (do it ASAP, but after they resume working), show up an hour before they open. Even then, there will still be thirty people ahead of you, possibly more since they have been on shutdown

9. Saturday mail. Yes, they deliver mail on Saturdays!

10. Insurance, insurance, insurance… medical, home/rental, car, etc. Credit card? Well, we have yet to get one from a US bank.

… and many more that I have forgotten or have yet to learn

Of course, we also shared our tips for our favourite grocery stores. We tried to explain the awesomeness of Trader Joe’ but we could see it was lost in translation. Thus, we took matters into our own hands. We brought her for a personalized tour of our favourite eats. Cheap pantry staples, beer, almond milk, vegan ice cream, etc… now we’re talking!

Inspired by talking all things local, I went Southern with my meal, too. Similar to my last Southern beans and greens saute, this is a dish that is more than the sum of its parts. The original recipe was just for the citrus collards, but I swapped things around: dates instead of raisins (and less of them) along with chickpeas to make this a complete meal. Collards are local to the Southern United States, especially during the fall, and are best during the winter. I love collards in all of its forms, but it can be bitter if cooked poorly. This dish uses a few techniques to coax the collards into sweet submission.

First of all, this dish a bit more fiddly than a throw-into-the-pan stir fry. The collards are boiled, blanched and dried. This prevents the need to cook them into oblivion. Next, a quick saute is enough to infuse the greens with the sweetness to offset the collards’ astringency. Fresh orange juice and dates provide a great flavour, too. And then I threw in the chickpeas.

It is funny how our taste buds work. We thought this dish was fabulous. It exceeded my expectations. And then Rob said it: it smelled like bacon. The dish had a depth of flavour that was definitely was reminiscent of bacon even though we did not use liquid smoke nor maple syrup. It must be something about sweet, chewy things that reminds us of bacon. In this case, I think it was the caramel undertones from the pan-roasted dates.

Do you have any other tips for moving to the US? Do you feel like your plant-based meals taste like bacon, too?

This is my submission to this month’s Random Recipe for local ingredients, to this month’s Shop Local Challenge and Virtual Vegan Linky Potluck.

Guaca-Chi (Guacamole with Kimchi)

Remember our warm avocado greeting? To be honest, comparatively, Texas does not grow very many avocados. In the US, avocadoes are mainly grown in California and Florida or imported from Mexico and Chile. True, we are much closer to all those places than when we lived in Canada.

One of Rob’s self-imposed goals this year was to perfect guacamole while we live in the land close to avocados. However, after making this, our plans have been put on hold. This is just too good. Better than guacamole and even simpler. A seemingly crazy concoction of avocado and kimchi with a bit of tang from citrus juice (we’ve used both lime and orange juice with good success). The spicy, tangy kimchi works well with the creamy avocado and sweet orange juice or tart lime juice.

Just like guacamole, it is a great dip and a flavourful topper paired with flavourful dishes like pupusas.

I wish I could take credit for this wonderful dip, but I stole it from Joe Yonan’s new cookbook Eat Your Vegetables. While it isn’t vegan, it is a vegetarian cookbook aimed to help the single cook. The recipes are geared for 1-2 people, with tips on how to use up odds and ends from cooking. Personally, I am a big fan of leftovers, but I can appreciate the value of fresh, flavourful cooking throughout the week. His recipes span super simple, such as this one, to more elaborate fare that I could not imagine cooking just for one. All look bold on flavours. I also enjoyed his laissez-faire recipes, teaching you to listen to your food on the stove, instead of the prescribed directions. He’ll direct you to saute your onions until brown instead of “for 10 minutes”.

Need other ideas for kimchi? Joe includes a recipe for homemade kimchi but also has you covered in case you get bored of guaca-chi: Sweet Potato, Kimchi and Greens Hash; Kimchi Deviled Eggs; Cold Spicy Ramen Noodles with Tofu and Kimchi and even Grilled Kimcheese. Of course, you could also try my Enoki, Broccoli and Tofu Bowl with Kimchi.

PS. A few people commented on my last kimchi post, but I wanted to highlight that yes, indeed, kimchi is usually not vegan nor vegetarian. There is usually shrimp or fish sauce in it. Making it at home is great (I should really do that again) but there are vegan versions out there.

This is my submission to Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Simona and this week’s Raw Food Thursday.

Spicy Thai Mango Tofu Curry with Vegetables

They are here!

I thought Alphonso mango season was still a few weeks away but it turns out now is the time! They are here from India!

Alphonso mangoes, one of our favourite mangoes, have a short season. Juicy, sweet and less stringy, the Alphonso mango is a treat. We eat them fresh, dripping their juices over the sink.

Thankfully, I am not going to tell you to use Alphonso mangoes in this curry (we actually haven’t bought any yet, although that’s on the agenda for the weekend). Unless you happen to be a very lucky person, overflowing with so many mangoes you do not know what to do. In a stir fry, ones that keep them shape are the best kind. Since you pair them with other vegetables, you do not need to use expensive, sweet mangoes. As such, I used frozen mango chunks. And I could not tell you what kind of mango those are… but I know they are not Alphonso.

Crispy tofu mixed with a medley of vegetables – tender crisp broccoli, carrot and bell peppers – coupled with chunks of sweet mango.  Frozen mango worked well as it is cheaper and moreso, they are firm, cubed and sweet, keeping their shape in the skillet. Tossed with a light, orange-based sauce flavoured with garlic and ginger and a heavy dash of red pepper flakes, there are a lot of bold flavours. The sweet balanced nicely with the heat, without being too overwhelming, even for my own heat-sensitive palate.

Reminiscent of my Toasted Sesame Orange Teriyaki Vegetable and Quinoa Bowl, although that one is a bit more involved with flavoured tofu and a more complex orange sauce. I kept the tofu simple here to let the vegetables shine.

Have you tried Alphonso mangoes yet?

This is my submission to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Graziana.

Roasted Orange Veggie Noodle Bowl

Did you catch this post yet? Why Four Workouts a Week May Be Better Than Six.

It struck a chord with me, as I stopped cycling for the winter. More is not always better.

I found it to be a well-designed study. While it investigated older aged exercise-naive women, I found it fascinating that the women doing 6 work-outs a week spent less energy overall throughout the day because they were tired and stressed form their work-outs. Instead of being invigorated by exercise, too much exercise caused them to feel like they were short on time, and became more sedentary during the day. Interestingly enough, this was shared shortly after another article talked about how models slim down for their work. Lots of intense exercise but nothing that gives them muscle definition. Egad. My advice: if you are doing a lot of exercise, eat. Fuel your work-outs properly.

In any case, let me know if you enjoy these interesting news and tidbits, even if non-food related.

For those that are here for the food: I tried something new. Roasted oranges. I often roast vegetables but not fruit (I’ve tried roasted strawberries which were very good, though). I was intrigued. I tried them but prefer juicy oranges au naturel. They had a deeper more caramelized flavour but I missed the juiciness. Try it and let me know what you think.

I paired them with roasted Brussels sprouts (which I adore) as well as red bell peppers. A creamy orange ginger dressing, a bit heavy on the vinegar, worked well with the kelp noodles (the vinegar tenderizes them nicely). Feel free to use your favourite noodle. Or try it more like my Crunchy Cabbage Salad with a similar tahini-orange dressing, my orange teriyaki vegetable quinoa bowl or a brown rice salad with roasted beets and oranges with an orange-sesame vinaigrette.

This is my submission this month for Pasta, Please for peppers and to this month’s Simple and in Season.

Madeira-Poached Figs with Lemon and Sage

(sorry, this time you can actually post comments! Apparently I can’t figure out wordpress for Android)

For someone who doesn’t drink, I have a lot of alcohol. I used to have more booze attributed to my purchases than Rob, but that was before Rob visited Veux-Tu une Biere? in Montreal and stocked up like mad with artisanal beers.

I may not drink alcohol, but I will gladly cook with it. Over the years, I have gathered:

Vodka, from my Penne Alla Vodka days.

Sherry, because it is easier than keeping white wine in the fridge. Great in this Carrot and Roasted Red Pepper Soup.

Raki, from my trip to Turkey. My Dad already drank half of it but I think I wanted it to make a poached-fish dish. Totally tabled for now.

Chambord, because I wanted to make a knock-off of a mixed berry Chambord-whipped cream French toast from a local resto, Coquine. Off my radar for now.

Amaretto, because who doesn’t like almonds?

Madeira, because I was lusting over Madeira-soaked mushroom ragouts.

I think I also have a small amount of Creme de Menthe because I wanted to make a Grasshopper dessert.

Rob has scotch, rum, Aguardiente (from our Colombian trip), ROOT liqueur (tastes like root beer and Rob highly recommends it!) and SNAP gingersnap liqueur (with blackstrap molasses, ginger and cloves! but Rob hasn’t opened it yet). Nevermind his stock-piled of beer.

While trying to decide what to do with a crate of figs, I decided to finally break out the Madeira. Fresh figs do not last long. Roasting them (or technically poaching them in this case), allowed me to extend their sweetness for another 2 weeks.

Madeira: Candy liqueur, as Rob put it, after he tasted it from the bottle. Using it to oven-poach figs resulted in a sweet yet savoury concoction spiked with lemon and sage. I tried a bunch of variations, but my favourite was with the lemon and sage, although you could leave them out, too. Thyme also worked well. I also tried a few cinnamon-orange variations but preferred the one with Madeira. The orange zest became a bit bitter through the roasting so consider omitting that if you want to try that variation.

Serve over top something more bland and neutral like your morning oatmeal (that’s what I did), or serve as a dessert slathered over banana soft-serve ice cream.

Because my photos aren’t always that photogenic, I thought it would be neat to play around with some of the features on Picasa. I rarely do much photo post-processing other than “I Feel Lucky” but found this neat “Orton-ish” option in Picasa (see pic below). Not entirely sure who or what this Orton effect was all about, I learned it was named for Michael Orton who would combine 2 images: one in focus and the other out-of-focus to create an impressionistic effect. Brought me back to my black and white darkroom days!

How do you like the photo? I like the colour palate with the soft contours and warmer colours. More of an artsy shot now, instead of a food porn photo. But hey, it keeps me entertained!

Enjoy!

This is my submission to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Chris.

Tahini-Dressed Zucchini and Green Bean Salad with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I am really impressed by British/Irish chefs. Yotam Ottolenghi, Denis Cotter and now Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I had never heard of him before I saw praise for his new vegetarian cookbook, River Cottage Everyday Veg.

What I love most about these chefs is that they turn humble vegetables into something extraordinary. First, I tried Hugh’s quinoa salad with caramelized onions and zucchini that was a sleeper hit. I loved the sweetness from such simple ingredients. Then there was the Appaloosa Bean Summer Chili which used red wine with zucchini, red peppers and tomatoes to make a savoury chili.

Tell me which vegetable you like the least. Probably something local that comes up in overabundance in the summer. You can tolerate it in moderation, but week after week of the same vegetables can get boring. I would probably pick green beans. While I have made some great dishes with them, I don’t find them that versatile. Zucchini, on the other, doesn’t taste like much, but can be used in so many creative ways.

I was drawn to make Hugh’s tahini-dressed zucchini and green bean salad with sun-dried tomatoes as a spotlight to local, seasonal ingredients. I wasn’t sure it would be a filling meal, but green beans are beans and along with the lemon-tahini dressing, this voluminous salad was perfect.

While this may seem initially like a finicky salad, look at it as a main course to soothe your qualms. Relish in cooking each component to bring out its best: lightly sear the zucchini until golden, then dress in some lemon juice and chile flakes. Steam your green beans until tender crisp. Plate on top of your favourite baby greens, sprinkle with chopped sun-dried tomatoes and drizzle with your dressing. The dressing is nice and light, without being too oily or heavy (I reduced the oil and sugar since I used Meyer lemons). Enjoy this best as a warm salad directly after preparing it. Leftovers are nice cold when slathered in the dressing.

This is my submission to this month’s Simple and in Season, to River Cottage Rocks #5, to this week’s Summer Salad Sundays, and to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays.

Raw Citrus Kale Salad

When I visited San Antonio last year, I discovered Greens, a gem of a restaurant and a haven for vegetarians on the outskirts of downtown. Eager to side-skirt the meat- and cheese-heavy Texan cuisine, a few friends and I checked it out together. All of the dishes we ate that night were great – fresh and vibrant. They really know how to make a mean sauce!

I still remember when my friends tried the kale salad. It was their first time eating a raw kale salad and they enjoyed it. Simple and sweet, yet slightly spicy, but not overpowering. We tried to guess what was in it, pinpointing the flavours.. soy sauce? citrus? chili flakes? While there was no specific recipe (they make it to taste every day), thankfully our server told us exactly what was in it: soy sauce, sesame oil, red pepper flakes and brown sugar. I could have sworn there was orange juice, but regardless, I was eager to try my hand at this once I returned home, with or without the citrus!

As I flipped through Color Me Vegan, I bookmarked the raw kale salad with orange, grapefruit and lime, and I remembered the salad from San Antonio. I figured this would be a good recipe to try to recreate it. I wasn’t sure about including grapefruit, so I omitted it entirely.  Being familiar with the massaging technique for raw kale salads, I also opted to wilt my kale with the citrus dressing. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the citrus kick from both the orange and lime juices. It paired well with the kale, and the addition of onion and pine nuts made this even better than the raw kale salad at Greens! I prefer my salads to be on the less sweet side, so feel free to add more agave, to taste, depending on the sweetness of your oranges.

I’ve said it before, but raw kale salads are perfect for gatherings: no worrying about anything spoiling in the sun and wilted kale salads can easily be made in advance since they are supposed to wilt! Enjoy!

Other kale salads I have enjoyed:

Raw Kale and Beet Salad with Raisins and Almonds

Creamy Raw Kale Salad with Avocado, Apple and Beet

Almost Raw Asian Kale and Edamame Salad

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this week’s Weekend Wellness, to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes, to Cookbooks Sundays and to this week’s Summer Salad Sundays.

Mexican Spicy Citrus Black Beans with Spinach

Good news! Rob and I will not be homeless come May 1!

Having been thoroughly spoiled in our current home, we tried to balance what we wanted with our new place. Turns out we were wooed by suburbia. We are currently living at the East end of the city of Toronto, and will be moving all the way to the Western-most outskirts of the city of Toronto. My daily cycling commute will change to 9 km, which will probably be around 35 minutes but I have yet to try it out (still faster than transit). While we aren’t exactly thrilled with living in a cookie-cutter community, what we do appreciate is living in a 10-year old home that has been well-kept by the current owners (never before a rental!), a space for me to hibernate for studying purposes and the real bonus was a garage for us to keep our bikes. No more storing the bikes in the dining room! The kitchen is also pretty nice, roomy and complete with a gas stove (and a dishwasher!). Don’t laugh, we contemplated living in a few places without a dishwasher- it is more common than you might think.

What we’ve sacrificed for this gem of a house is basically location. Not only are we an extra 2km from downtown, but the subway is 2km away, necessitating a bus or street-car ride on rainy days. While I have located my new health store for my tempeh and dino kale fixes, sadly Sunny’s and Better Bulk are now quite a hike. Travelling East/West in midtown Toronto is definitely not very efficient, so I think I will have to plan for grocery shopping primarily at No Frills instead (cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes, anyone?). I am actually looking at this as an opportunity to force myself to eat through my pantry. Eat all my beans before we trek out to Texas. I can replenish my stash from Rancho Gordo once we settle there, hehe. 😉

To celebrate our impending moves, I decided to make a Mexican bean dish. This time simply spicy, citrus black beans. I changed Elise’s spicy citrus black bean recipe slightly, but the nontraditional Janet-ism was adding the spinach because I wanted some greens. Omit it for normal Mexican beany uses. My other changes were taming the spices, using only Aleppo chile flakes and smoked paprika, but feel free to add chipotles in adobo or whatever floats your boat. I also increased the lime juice and added in orange zest for more pronounced citrus flavours. The citrus paired incredibly well with the heat from the beans. This is definitely one of my favourite solo bean recipes to date.

This is my submission to this month’s My Legume Love Affair, hosted by Susan, to this week’s Weekend Wellness, and to this month’s My Kitchen, My World for Mexico.

Mango, Black Bean and Quinoa Salad

I don’t know any blogger that doesn’t relish receiving comments.

The food blog community is very supportive, leaving mostly positive comments about recipes and photographs.

I also love comments when I have questions or ones that are constructive. One of my very first posts, about our family’s rouladen, stemmed such interesting comments. Everyone thought we were rolling them backwards! As you can see, we roll the beef slices along their short axis, making long and thin rolls. However, in the comments, in seemed like everyone else was rolling them on the long axis, producing shorter, stumpy rolls.

I told my mom we were rolling them wrong. She told me that was how our grandmother always did it. There was nothing wrong.

We are just a backwards family…

To be honest, we wouldn’t want the short and stumpy rolls… the longer the roll, the more you get to savour the mustard, pickle and caramelized onions on the inside! (Not that I am eating rouladen any more, although a veganized dish is on my bucket list combining those 3 ingredients)

And then the other day, I received the most odd comment. I honestly thought it was spam, but there was no link to a website. So, I hit accept and posted a reply.

I didn’t really think twice about its validity, but it was really odd. The short comment slammed my style of recipes and specifically directed me to a “good” recipe. One that I have made before and really didn’t like.

I was really excited about the dish, too. Black beans, quinoa and broccoli in a raspberry chipotle sauce. From Isa, whose recipes I adore. I was so happy when I finally found chipotle in adobo at Sunny’s, that Rob went out to buy fresh raspberries specifically for this dish.

However, it was so bad that I was nauseous within thirty minutes. It was my first time using chipotles in adobo, so I started making the sauce with a limited amount of chile. I increased it as I tolerated it. But it didn’t taste that great, even after I added agave to sweeten the sauce. And then my stomach started to give me problems…. I called it quits.

But I hate wasting food. Especially the primo fresh raspberries.  If I didn’t get nauseous, I probably would still have eaten it. But I just couldn’t swallow it!

Rob has an iron tummy and tongue already scorched by years of eating spicy food, so he offered to finish it. Even though it was definitely subpar and (not even that spicy).

But, before I burdened Rob with heaps of the dish, I snatched half of the base of the salad. The good parts: the black beans, the quinoa and the steamed broccoli.

I veered towards an alternative route, towards a mango, black bean and quinoa salad with a sesame orange dressing, that I ended up adapting from Eating Well. Bonus broccoli, of course.

After trying the first dish, this was a much better alternative. Light and fresh. Bright with the mango with subtle flavours from the fresh orange juice, toasted sesame oil and cilantro. I added toasted sesame seeds to highlight more of the sesame flavour.

Let me assure you, I won’t be trying chipotles in adobo again anytime soon.

What do you do when you make something that doesn’t taste good? Do you still eat it or try something new?

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and to this week’s Weekend Wellness.