Salads and Recipe Tweaking

I’m so relaxed that I almost forgot to blog. Okay, not really. But it’s been a laid back day at home with the exception of a trip to Costco. The weather was so perfect that I felt a little bad for not going on a hike or utilizing that more, but it was nice to enjoy a little down time after a crazy week to catch up on things around the house, take the dogs for a long walk, and tinker with projects. Today also consisted of some interesting meals because I had time to flip through my stash of vegan recipe books. For lunch, I created the nacho hemp sauce from Kristen Suzanne’s Ultimate Hemp book which is a regular favorite for me.

But I had some cauliflower that needed to be used up and since it’s not my favorite raw, I tried blending about a cup of chopped cauliflower into the nacho sauce to see if that really altered the flavor and texture.

It did just slightly, but the sauce still tasted great with a nice creamy nacho kick.

And it coated my salad nicely for lunch.

So there, another way to sneak raw cauliflower into your diet. :-) I’ve also successfully added carrots and butternut squash to the sauce that were undetectable, the Vitamix does an amazing job of pureeing the raw veggies into a smooth texture.

For dinner, I finally tried a recipe from Thrive Foods, the sauce from the Asian Noodle Salad recipe.

It’s definitely a Saturday night recipe because the sauce is very rich and decadent with almond butter, olive oil, and agave nectar.

I poured it over lightly steamed cauliflower since I’m still using it up and sliced red pepper and carrots to make a semi-raw Asian-themed dinner.

And I topped with chopped green onions for a colorful dish.

The sauce is fantastic, slightly sweet, rich, and very creamy with savory tang. And it’s perfect for coating veggies with flavor. It’s something that could be used for a fun dip, salad dressing, or spread in wraps.

Not sure who was a bigger fan of it – me or Miko.