And, I went on the most amazing cross country trip from Austin, Texas to Anacortes, WA with my best friend, Olivia. And, that trip was the inspiration for this yummy recipe I am sharing today.

Because Olivia and I both are gluten free and pretty dang particular about what food we put in our bodies, the only thing that we really had planned going into the trip was what we were going to be eating. One of the things that I thought would be great road trip food was Baba Ganoush with Crudite. You know, instead of the typical Funyun and SlimJim fare. As it turns out, Olivia had never had Baba Ganoush before, but after just one savory bite, the entire 8 oz. tub was annihilated before we even got out of central Texas. So much for that lasting until we got to LA…

So, in homage to our once in a lifetime trip through the desert of New Mexico, hiking the Grand Canyon in Northern Arizona, up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, through the Redwoods, Oregon and finally to Olivia’s new home – the stellar state of Washington – I bring you our most favorite snack in the world.

This one’s for you, Liv! I miss you.

Olivia (L) and Rachel (R) viewing a gorgeous sunset over the pacific

And, to all you Washingtonians out there reading this, you just got the coolest new resident, and I’m totally jealous of you.

ROASTED GARLIC BABA GANOUSH
makes about one cup

1 large eggplant, quartered lengthwise
3 large whole garlic cloves, skins removed
1/4 cup + 2 Tbs. grapeseed oil
1 lemon, juiced
2 Tbs. tahini
lots of salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and place the eggplant slices and garlic inside. Rub 2 Tbs. of oil on the eggplant and garlic. Season with salt and pepper and roast until the garlic is browned and the eggplant is very soft, about 30-45 minutes. Let cool slightly.

2. Peel the skin off the eggplant. Place the garlic and eggplant flesh in the food processor along with the lemon juice, tahini, and about a 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp. pepper. Turn on the machine and let it run until the mixture starts to get pretty smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, turn the machine back on, and, while it is running, add 1/4 cup grapeseed oil though the feed tube.

3. Continue to process the mixture until it is nice and smooth, tasting periodically for more salt or pepper. Enjoy this super yummy treat at room temperature or chilled with crudite, gluten free crackers, or pita bread.

This evening for dinner I had planned to eat the leftover Dal Curry with Spinach and Brown Rice that I had made a few nights ago. But, for lunch today, I attended the Annual Vegan Chili Cookoff and couldn’t seem to muster the strength for another meal consisting almost exclusively of legumes. I needed veggies. STAT.

So, I started rummaging. Somehow, through some amazing intervention of the Leftover Food Gods, this was literally all that I had left in my produce bin. Well, okay, I also had some tomatoes, a russet potato, and a pear. But, other than that, this was what I had left. Actually, now that I think about it, I should have thrown the pear into this salad as well. It would have been amazing. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

And, yes, there will be a next time.

This salad was a beautiful, perfect combination of crunch from the veggies and soft suppleness of young coconut flesh. The flavors melded smoothly with the sweetness of the ginger and maple and the tang of the vinegars. The umeboshi plum vinegar provided a lovely splash of saltiness, and there with a subtle kick with the last minute addition of chili garlic sauce.

In order to make this dish raw, (obviously) leave out the chicken, use untoasted sesame oil, and replace the caramelized ginger with 1 Tbs. grated fresh ginger. If you would like a little extra protein, throw in some slivered almonds. Also, you can use agave nectar in place of the maple syrup and apple cider vinegar in place of the other vinegars. Unfortunately, you will have to leave out the chili garlic sauce altogether, but if you throw half of a minced jalapeno in with the veggies, I’m sure you won’t even miss it.

If you are new to the magic that is the young coconut, here is a tutorial on how to open it and get to the meat. And, don’t forget to save the coconut water inside. That stuff is the nectar of the gods. Seriously.

CABBAGE SALAD WITH YOUNG COCONUT NOODLES AND CRYSTALLIZED GINGER
serves four

For the Salad:
3 cups shredded red cabbage
1 cup shredded Napa cabbage
1 cup shredded cooked chicken, optional
meat from 1 young coconut, sliced thinly into “noodles”
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1 carrot, diced or shredded
1/2 cucumber, diced
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1/4 to 1/2 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger
2 Tbs. each black and white sesame seeds

For the Dressing:
1/4 cup toasted sesame oil
3 Tbs. maple syrup
2 Tbs. brown rice vinegar
1 Tbs. umeboshi plum vinegar
1 tsp. Asian chili garlic sauce
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. Himalayan salt, or 1/2 tsp. sea salt

1. In a large bowl, combine all of the fixins for the salad.

2. Combine all of the ingredients for the dressing in a jar and shake it up until it emulsifies. Or, just whisk it all together in a small bowl. You may need to tweek the amount of each ingredient to find the balance that is just right for you.

3. Pour the dressing over the salad, mix it up, and dig in.

OTHER CABBAGE SALAD RECIPES FROM AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE:
Tassajara Warm Red Cabbage Salad at 101 Cookbooks
Red Cabbage Salad with Braeburn Apples and Spiced Pecans at Serious Eats
Thai Cabbage Salad with Chicken at Eat This.
Swiss Chard Cabbage Salad with Garbanzo Beans, Broccoli Stems and Cottage Cheese
Red Cabbage and Dried Figs Salad at Chocolate and Zucchini

Unlike the cornbread that most folks are used to – soft, cakey, and decidedly too sweet – this one is rustic and savory. With the addition of pumpkin in place of buttermilk or oil, you not only remove a potentially gross and/or unhealthy ingredient, you also get a whole host of nutrients added to the mix. Pumpkin contains craaazy amounts of vitamin A, vitamin E, iron and fiber. In addition, it is strongly anti-inflammatory, so it balances the highly-inflammatory effects of the corn. This is good news for folks with arthritis, asthma, colitis, or autoimmune diseases who still want to chow down on some good ol’ fashioned cornbread every now and again.

Try it. You’ll like it.

PUMPKIN CORNBREAD
heavily adapted from a Cooks Illustrated recipe
makes one eight-inch skillet of bread

1 Tbs. + 1 tsp. EarthBalance or butter
1 cup stone ground cornmeal
2 tsp. sugar, maple syrup or agave nectar, or 1 packet of Truvia
¼ tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Baking powder
¼ tsp. Baking soda
1/3 cup boiling water
¾ cup pumpkin puree
½ tsp. Apple cider vinegar
1 egg, lightly beaten or Ener-G Egg Replacer for 1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spoon the EarthBalance into an 8-inch cast iron skillet and place the skillet in the oven while it is preheating.
2. Mix 2/3 cup cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking powder and soda in a small bowl.
3. Add the remaining 1/3 cup cornmeal to the boiling water and stir to make a mush. Add the pumpkin, vinegar, and egg and stir until smooth.
4. When the oven is preheated, combine the wet and dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Pour the melted EarthBalance into the batter and stir to incorporate. Quickly add the batter to the hot skillet. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes
5. Remove from the oven and turn cornbread out onto a wire rack. Cool for 5 minutes and serve.

OTHER PUMPKIN RECIPES FROM AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE:
Gluten Free Pasta with Pumpkin-Coconut Sauce and Kale
Pumpkin Scones with Autumn Spiced Glaze at Baking and Books
Pumpkin and Black Bean Soup, Pumpkin Bars, Stuffed Mini Pumpkins, and Homemade Pumpkin Seeds at SF Gate
Pumpkin Casserole at Closet Cooking
Pumpkin Cinnamon Cheesecake at Elana’s Pantry

But, I’ve recently come up with a few tricks that keep my time spent in the kitchen and food sent to the compost bin to a minimum. Here are a few ideas:

* Make large batches of rice and freeze them in portion sized containers. Pull them out later for almost instant rice pudding or, in this case, to serve with some tasty curry.
* Soak beans overnight. In the morning, drain them and put them in the Crockpot with enough water to cover by at least 2 inches. Add a few pinches of salt, turn on low and let them cook while you are at work. When you come home, use some of the beans to make, say, a curry perhaps, and freeze the remaining beans (with enough cooking liquid to cover the top of the beans) in portion sized containers for later use.
* Make four servings of your favorite dish and package them each in individual containers. Find 3 single friends to do the same and trade. Voila! Four different meals for the price of one.
* Buy tomato paste in a tube instead of a can. It might cost a bit extra, but you can easily use a tablespoon at a time without trying to figure out how to use the rest of the can in a hurry.
* When you make a pot of soup or stew, freeze at least one portion. If you do this once a week for 2 months, you will have 8 single serving meal options stocked up. This is a great way to ensure that you always have variety.

CHICKPEA AND CHARD CURRY FOR ONE

2 tsp. coconut oil
3 Tbs. finely diced yellow onion
2 garlic cloves, minced on a Microplane
1 tsp. fresh ginger, minced on a Microplane
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. turmeric
5 cherry tomatoes, diced, or about 1/4 cup diced tomatoes
3/4 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup Swiss chard, chopped
few pinches salt
1 Tbs. cilantro, minced

1. In a small sauce pan, heat the coconut oil over medium high heat until melted. Add the onion, garlic, and ginger and cook until onions are just soft, about 3 minutes.

2. Add the spices and stir to thoroughly coat the onion mixture. Immediately add the tomatoes and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan to remove any spices or ginger that may be sticking. Add the coconut milk and lower the heat so that the mixture is just at a simmer.

3. Add the chickpeas, chard and salt. Stir, lower heat even more, cover and cook until the greens are just wilted, about 2-3 minutes.

4. Pour curry into a serving bowl and garnish with cilantro. Serve with brown Basmati rice on the side.

Tips and Thoughts About Dining Alone from Around the Blogosphere:
Cooking for One, a Pleasure or a Trial? at Tea & Cookies
Going Solo in the Kitchen: A Cookbook
Living Alone Recipes from Katie Lee Joel
Thai Red Curry Recipe at Whole Foods Market
Pumpkin Gnocchi at Closet Cooking

I have wrestled with my potato addiction for a few years now. Having an Irish Papa who didn’t really like any other starchy carbs, potatoes were pretty much a staple at every meal in my household. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks – you name it and we were eatin’ spuds. But, when I started venturing down my current path of healthy eating, I discovered that potatoes may not be the best food in the whole world for me to be chowin’ down on a couple meals a day. They have a pretty darn high glycemic index, especially russet potatoes, meaning sugar spikes and more work for your pancreas. Plus, they are white and it’s always been my understanding that you should always “Just Say No” to any white foods, i.e. sugar, white flour, white rice, etc.

But, I crave them. I don’t really eat a whole lot of grain, so when I want something starchy, I want taters. Baked, mashed, roasted, gratineed, dauphinois-ed. Anyway you can eat ‘em, I want ‘em.

So, I set out to find ways to justify my tuber-addiction. First off, I found that potatoes have a surprising amount of nutrition in them. One potato (2 grams of potato with skin) contains as much fiber as most whole grain breads and nearly 50% of your daily allowance of Vitamin C. They contain tons of potassium, Vitamin B6 and trace minerals, including thiamin, riboflavin, folate, niacin, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, and zinc. And, just recently, the United Nations officially declared the year 2008 as the International Year of the Potato in order to “increase awareness of the importance of the potato as a food in developing nations” and calling the vegetable a “hidden treasure”.

How could I possibly deny a vegetable that has a whole year dedicated to it?!

Finding all of this information certainly made me feel better, but I wanted to take it one step further. I had seen recipes for mashed potatoes with other stuff mashed into them, so I decided to do that and up the nutritional value of one of my favorite foods even more. I made my normal batch of mashed potatoes, but I threw some carrots into the boiling water with the potatoes and added finely chopped kale at the end. The result was this mashed comfort food that was actually good for me!

MASHED POTATOES WITH CARROTS AND KALE
serves four hungry folks as a side dish

5 Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed clean and cut into 1 inch pieces
4 small carrots, scrubbed clean and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 Tbs. butter or Earth Balance
1/4 – 1/3 cup plain goat yogurt, plain soy yogurt, sour cream, or Tofutti Sour Cream
1/2 tsp. granulated onion
1/2 tsp. granulated garlic
1 cup finely chopped kale leaves
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Throw the potatoes and carrots into a big pot of boiling salted water. Cook until they are super tender, about 15-20 minutes.

2. Drain the water and add the veggies back to the pot. Over a very low flame, add the butter, yogurt, onion and garlic. Mash it all up together. Once all of the big chunks are mashed out, stir in the kale and season with salt and pepper. Cover and remove from the heat. Set aside for about 5 minutes or until the kale is wilted.

3. Put a big scoop in your bowl. Wrap yourself in your favorite cozy blanket and plop yourself down on the couch. Turn on any movie starring Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, and/or Hugh Grant and chow down, guilt-free.

In lots of restaurants these days, it seems hummus is one of the only vegan options on the menu, so most vegans and vegetarians I know seem to kind of yawn at the prospect of yet another bowl of pureed garbanzo beans. In fact, the spread of hummus (no pun intended) is so rampant that my local Food Hole has a whole aisle just for hummus! But, what makes this hummus different than most is the addition of cumin. For some reason, just adding that spice takes it to a whole new level. In fact, I’ve been told numerous times that this is the best hummus ever, but no one can really put their finger on just what makes it so great.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF HUMMUS
makes 4 cups

This is an easy recipe for raw foodists to adapt. Instead of using canned chickpeas, use sprouted chickpeas. And, if you can handle wheat, use nama shoyu instead of tamari to make this recipe really raw.

2 cans chickpeas, drained
1 cup tahini
3 Tbs. lemon juice
3 Tbs. wheat-free tamari
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. ground cumin
2 small garlic cloves
1 tsp. sea salt, or more as needed
1/4 tsp. cayenne, or more for more of a kick
water, as needed

1. Throw everything in a food processor and blend until smooth. With the machine running, slowly add water as needed to make a smooth, thick-yet-easily-spreadable paste. Adjust seasonings and serve with carrot sticks, celery sticks, cucumber slices, or pita bread.

At work this week, I have a little more freedom to make more of the stuff that I love. The man of the house, who is a real meat and potatoes kinda guy, isn’t home for dinner, so I’m loading up the menu with tons of my favorite vegan, gluten-free, and veggie-based meals. While I was searching around on one of my favorite gluten-free blogs for inspiration for the week, I came upon a really yummy recipe for a vegetable gratin that included fresh flavors and colors that really popped. I knew I had to try it. I made a few changes here and there, added my own twists, and vwah la! This recipe was born.

I served this as a main dish, but if you omit the pasta, it becomes a ridiculously easy lovely side dish for a pot luck, baby shower, BBQ, or weeknight dinner.

SUMMER PESTO VEGETABLE GRATIN
serves 2
adapted from a recipe by Karina

Note: This would also be great with 1/2 cup cooked Cannelloni beans thrown in with the veggies for a little added protein and fiber.

Basil Pesto:
1 bunch fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup pine nuts
4 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil, or more as needed
1 garlic clove
1 Tbs. Parmesano Reggiano, optional
1 Tbs. lemon juice
salt and pepper, to taste

Veggies:
1 zucchini, sliced into rounds
1/2 cup marinated artichoke hearts
1/4 cup Divina marinated roasted tomatoes*
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 large tomato, sliced
1 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper, to taste

Topping:
1 cup Panko or Gluten Free Breadcrumbs
1 Tbs. minced fresh oregano leaves
1 Tbs. olive oil

1 1/3 cup Whole Wheat or Brown Rice Penne Pasta
2 oz. mozzarella or Veganrella, shredded

1. For the Pesto: In a small food processor, combine the basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, cheese, and lemon juice. Blend until combined, but still a bit chunky. If it isn’t the consistency of a loose paste, add more olive oil as needed. Season and set aside.

2. For the Veggies: In a saute pan over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Cook together the garlic, roasted tomatoes, and artichokes until they are just warmed through. Add the zucchini and cook 3 minutes, stirring often. Remove the pan from the heat and transfer veggies to a medium-sized mixing bowl. When the veggies have cooled slightly, toss them with half of the basil pesto. Set aside.

3. For the Topping: Combine and set aside.

4. To Assemble: Pour the veggies into a mini loaf pan. Top the veggies with 1/3 of the breadcrumb mixture. Sprinkle the cheese over the breadcrumbs and place the tomato slices over the cheese. Sprinkle the balsamic vinegar over the tomatoes and finish the gratin with the remaining breadcrumb mixture. Pop this in the oven and bake about 20 to 30 minutes or until the topping is browned and the cheese is melted.

5. While the gratin is baking, cook the pasta according to your package instructions. Toss the cooked and drained pasta with the remaining pesto.

6. Serve the gratin spooned over the top of the pasta.

* Divina Roasted Tomatoes are incredible and I have yet to find anything that compares to their flavor and texture. I find mine at the antipasti bar at my specialty grocer or packaged near the olive bar. If you can’t find them, try experimenting with other roasted and marinated tomatoes. Or, jarred and marinated roasted red peppers could be yummy…