Stoner salad, fit for a Burnout.

Recently, I made the yummiest thing, courtesy of the most adorable new blog:


That is Mango Quinoa Salad, and it is from The Vegan Stoner, surely the cutest website that does not include photos of baby animals. Seriously, take a peek at the little labels on the drawings! It’s like a scavenger hunt of whimsy.

[Just a note: Before you go making all sorts of punny observations about the stoner-burnout thing, kind of like I did right at the top of this post, let me state for the record that I’m not that kind of burnout. Not that I care if you are, or if your neighbor is, just saying. We’re all adults here. Like I need help getting the munchies, anyway.]

So! This salad! Once I saw the picture, I knew I had to make it. “Handful of quinoa” was a little vague for me, since in my experience, proportions actually matter when cooking grains, so I went with a half-cup. This was a good call. Also, I am not usually into celery and raw onions, even in salad and even when they’re red onions, which are pretty much the most inoffensive member of the onion clan. But I sucked it up and diced those babies, tried not to eat all the mango and strawberries before I could get the salad together, and broke out the mixing bowl. Let me tell you that the celery and onions are a perfect vegetable counterpoint to the sweetness of the fruit, so you shouldn’t skip them, even if, like me, you’re weird about certain veggies. Curry and a sprinkle of salt is all the seasoning you need, although I did add a drizzle of olive oil because it’s healthy and delicious. And with that, The Vegan Stoner has my loyalty, because this is the perfect summery salad.

Well played, Vegan Stoner. Well and deliciously played.

Comfort food.

As promised, I did make dinner last night! Quinoa Kitchari with Boca burgers and Mushroom-Onion Gravy. I think Red would have helped, but I was snappish and frazzled and thought he was making fun of me when he said the gravy looked good. *hangs head shamefacedly* I apologized and he got me a Blue Moon and I felt better.

Kitchari simply means mixture, and that’s what it is. It’s quinoa and red lentils simmered to a mush—a very tasty mush that is reminiscent of mashed potatoes. It probably won’t win any beauty prizes, but neither will anything else I make, so it’s all good. It would probably taste fine with other lentils, but the red ones really bring the mushiness to the party. I know that shouldn’t sound appetizing, but it works. It really does. It’s warm and filling, even though despite the spices and tamari, it’s pretty bland and can be dry. (See: quinoa and lentils.) Then again, so can mashed potatoes until you dress them up. If I eat it plain, I add extra salt and pepper and finish it off with some soy butter.

Last night, of course, we were in the gravy groove. It was fairly basic: onions, garlic, and mushrooms with herbs, broth, and a spelt flour-vegetable oil roux. Easy and tasty. It added a nice touch to the kitchari and acquitted itself admirably when we poured it over Boca burgers. I foresee it also being ladled lovingly over biscuits in the near future.

I can’t say too much about the Boca burgers, other than that I splashed them with a little tamari as they cooked. They always taste blah to me, even with all the delicious toppings in the world. Yet, for some reason, they are an integral part of Dog Food Surprise. Maybe I OD’d on them during my early vegetarian days, when the worlds of soy and vegetables seemed so alien. They must have offered a familiar, processed comfort. Now I don’t even want to take them to a cookout because they look so sad sitting there on the grill.

Anyway, dinner was a success. An ugly, monochromatic success, because when you have brown food and pale golden food and you cover it all with light brown gravy, you get the opposite of food porn. Hence, there is no picture because even if there was, you would have had to squint to tell that it wasn’t cat puke.

I digress. Can anybody really tell the difference between soy sauce and tamari? Am I wasting my money on the latter?