A Vegan For Dinner- Mushroom Tarragon Pierogi, Grilled Vegetable Salad, and Cucumber Slaw

Tomorrow, an old friend is coming to visit, and has over the years transitioned to veganism. I will be sharing the recipes for our vegan table spread.

First thing first is to understand what veganism is and to what degree your guest follows it. Vegans do not eat animals or animal by-products. The big difference here between cooking vegetarian and cooking vegan is that most vegetarians are lacto-ovo, meaning they eat milk and eggs. Vegans do not. Most vegans do not eat honey and a small percentage do not eat fungus (mushrooms, the yeast in beer). I roll my eyes at the fact that a great number of them wear leather, but such is life. A bigger challenge here is that in our house, we don't eat soy which is often what would replace dairy. My guest eats both honey(logic: without bees there are no fruit and vegetables and beekeepers have a vested interest in fighting colony collapse disorder) and fungus (cuz who really feels bad for the fungus? it's so hard to empathize with fungus). I googled vegan dishes and found this link, which is excellent, and selected the grilled vegetable salsa from there! The rest are vegan adaptations of things we eat everyday.

Our vegan lunch will consist of: Mushroom Tarragon Pierogi,Grilled Vegetable Salsa, Thai Cucumber Salad, and Fresh Watermelon. I prepared most of it this evening for serving tomorrow.


Mushroom Tarragon Pierogi
While pierogi are not grain free for the paleo people, they are something i make by hand and keep in the freezer. More importantly, the super basic dough recipe that i use just so happens to be vegan.

-1 pack Mixed Shrooms (about 1 cup)
-2-3 Tbs Tarragon
-Salt to Taste

In a food processor, blend mushrooms and tarragon into a finely minced paste. Transfer into a pan with olive oil, add more tarragon if desired and salt to taste. Make your pierogi shells, fill, boil, freeze, and sautee. 1 pack of mushrooms will fill approximately 15 pierogi.


Grilled Vegetable Salad
*While I'm calling this grilled, the lazy in me just used my stove top
-1 Zucchini- chopped
-5 Ears of Corn
-1 Onion- diced

Basically, grill up your favorite seasonal vegetables and mix them together in a bowl. Then toss them with this dressing:

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup fresh lime juice (2 limes) I’m sure lemon works too

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 small garlic cloves, minced

2 tbsp minced fresh cilantro (or herb of choice)

1 tsp maple syrup (or other sweetener)

1 tsp Dijon mustard

Salt & Pepper, to taste

I made this the day of, but prepped the dressing the night before

Thai Cucumber Salad

2 cucumbers, spiraled or slices (I spiral mine on basically an apple-corer-peeler-slicer)

1 Tbs peanut butter- melted

1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil (I keep this in the cupboard because I love Asian cooking)

2 Tbs Apple Cider Vinegar

Toss all ingredients together and serve immediately. You can also use this sauce for "Asian slaw" with cabbage and carrots

Snack Boxes

We do eat grains right now, but we remember what it was like when we didn't. You are ALWAYS hungry, and sometimes it's nice to have snacks on hand. We have an automatic delivery of stretch-island fruit leathers every couple of months, and sometimes we make and freeze snacks on our own, but we also love snack boxes. We've tried 2 types of boxes, Graze and Naturebox. Aside from the fact that it feels like getting a present in the mails, they're easy munchables with great control on nutrition information.

Graze
The grazebox ships either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly at $5/box for 4 individual snacks. We did bi-weekly so 8 portions for $10/month. It has a rating system for the things you like and a low-carb option. You can ask to be surprised or ask for your box to be high-rating heavy. You can also mark snacks as "never send me this" if it's not up your alley. We really love the british "flapjacks" bars (soft granola bars) and spiced honey nuts. Most of the snacks are tasty and there's a great variety. Of the 2, I feel like the graze box snacks as a whole run a little healthier than in naturebox.

Nature Box
The nature box sends you 5 portions of 5 snacks each month (so 25 snacks) for $20. It has dietary restrictions options (ours is soy-free) and YOU handpick the items for your box each week. This ships monthly, but you can trigger your next box early or add extra snacks to each box at $3/bag or $1 granola bars. I like to line ours up with a good mix of different types of snacks and flavors (fruit snacks, figgy bars, nuts, corn, sweet and salty)

Both boxes have their merits, but we ultimately settled for nature box, partially because of the peace of mind in a soy-free option and the ability to hand-choose our box, but mostly because the snack packs are sharing size. We do use bowls to make sure we take 1 (quarter cup)portion at time though the fruit snacks and figgy bars are individually wrapped. We used to share the graze box (though it's not really meant for sharing) and for 2 people that was okay, but having the box last longer, be re-sealable, and packing-lunch friendly are all really good things.


Nuts.com
This is an honorable mention. At the height of an unprocessed diet, this website was AWESOME. It has the cheapest price on pitted dates I've found anywhere (in store, pitted dates are ~$7/lb, on nuts.com they're ~$4/lb) DH loves dates as a favorite snack, but they're also a big part of unprocessed and even vegan diets. I also source cocoa, organic ingredients for homemade chocolate, nuts-both raw and roasted, nuts flours, and dried fruit from this store. On the unprocessed diet we tried their mushroom chips which REALLY do taste like sourdough pretzels. Nuts.com is based out of NJ and we live in PA so my orders usually arrive in 1-2 days. I have placed an order in the morning and received it the next day which is pretty awesome. The ingredients are listed when you order which is always helpful.