Bowtie Pasta with Avocado & Herbs

This colorful, textured dish features bowtie pasta, avocados, roma tomatoes and fresh herbs. This dish can be eaten hot or cold, as a side salad or as a main course.

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Italian

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• 14 ounces bowtie pasta
• 2 medium avocado
• 2 roma tomatoes
• 2 green onions chopped
• 1/4 medium red onion chopped
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp Italian dressing
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 Tbsp basil
• 1 Tbsp parsley finely chopped
• 1 tsp salt or to taste

Directions

1. Begin cooking pasta according to on package instructions.
2. Cut avocados in half, remove the pit and cut in half again. Remove the skin and chop into medium chunks. Place avocados in a large bowl. Add lemon juice, dressing (or olive oil) garlic powder, onion powder then gently mix to combine and lightly coat the avocados.
3. Chop tomatoes, green onions and red onion. Add to the large bowl.
4. When pasta is done cooking drain, rinse and add to the large bowl. Add fresh minced herbs and toss pasta until all ingredients are evenly combined.
5. Add salt & pepper to taste. Enjoy!
6. NOTES
7. For a vegetarian alternative top with a sprinkle of Parmesan or feta cheese.
8. If you do not have fresh herbs substitute with dry herbs to taste.

This was delicious, but really really overdid it on the onions.  This shows me cutting the onion amounts in half from how we ate it.  Maybe if the onions had been sauteed a little prior it wouldn’t have been so harsh.

Southwest Sweet Potato Chickpea Delight

Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 (16 ounce) jar salsa
1 (15 ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cups yellow corn tortilla chips, crushed
1 medium white onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 cup vegan cheese, grated, divided
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
cilantro, chopped, optional

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all ingredients, but reserve a small handful of the vegan cheese.

2. Spread into a shallow casserole dish.  Cover with lid or foil and bake for 45 minutes.

3. Remove foil, stir, and top with remaining vegan cheese.  Bake another 20 minutes or so, until the sweet potatoes can be easily pierced with a fork.  (Watch carefully,  as the top will get crispy fairly quick, and you may need to stir occasionally to prevent burning.)

4. If desired, sprinkle with fresh chopped cilantro right before serving.

Serves: 3-4, Preparation time: 1/2 Hour

Recipe on vegweb

My notes:

I briefly sauteed the onions and garlic because I hate it when they stay crunchy.  Despite following the recipe and even cooking longer, there were still a few hard sweet potatoes per serving.  I’m hoping when we reheat the leftovers tonight this won’t be as noticeable.  I left out cilantro, because I hate the stuff  I used On The Border Medium salsa and daiya pepperjack vegan cheese.  Vegan cheese is hit or miss with me, but in this it was great.  Melted just right and tasted good, not weird.

Saraga International Market

North
3605 Commercial Drive
Indianapolis, IN 46222-1681

South
2308 East Stop 11 Road
Indianapolis, IN 46227

Yelp

India Sizzling
11301 Village Sq Ln
Fishers, IN 46038
(317) 845-5500
www.indiasizzling.com

7262 Fishers Crossing Dr
Fishers, IN 46038
(317) 578-1987
www.cafekoreaindy.com

I set up a thingy to send posts from here to our foodluv tumblr, so feel free to check whichever you prefer!  Now to post this to see if it really sends it.

While one of the new multigrain Pringles flavors is called ‘Truly Original‘, I doubt that the founding fathers of potato chippery ever grew their own supplies of triglycerol mono-oleate. Yup, it’s still junk food but with the appreciable removal of dairy products and that annoying MSG these new chips finally give us an excuse to Pop the Top. Whatta ya mean, they don’t say that anymore? That was the last time I ate a Pringle!

The look of these chips is decidedly multigrain with little seedy things and a slightly browner color but the crunch and flavor is pretty authentic to my mouth memory. Salty, crispy,  kind of oily and hard to put a lid on. I’m glad that Pringles finally came around and offered a tube of snacks without MSG coating its shiny innards but for the same price nowadays you can get a bag of infinitely more wholesome chips like almost anything from Garden of Eatin’ or Kettle Foods.

I’m sure there are years of embarrassing hand-in-tube rescue scenarios ahead for me but I’d be much more supportive of Pringles if they’d done this ages ago instead of hopping on the eco-green HealthWagon like everyone else.

I could tell you about how much I used to love macaroni and cheese but this is America and I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t also love the stuff! So going vegan was tough because I, first, assumed there was no alternative and, later, found all the alternatives to be pretty unfaithful… and gross. But leave it to the wonderful folks at Amy’s Kitchen to team up with the equally-glorious gang at Daiya Foods to make an all-vegan, gluten and soy-free mac and “cheeze” that tastes splendid!

For you non-vegan types I’m sure it’s still pretty gross. The cheeze has the right melt and gooey consistency of real cheese but the flavor still isn’t (and probably shouldn’t ever be) spot-on cheddar. It also seems to give Katy a stomach ache but, to me, it’s a great tasting “side dish” that I have quickly come to love as a work-time entree all on its own. A little pepper and a few minutes in the microwave instantly make my day better!

You can click the image above and read the Wikipedia page about broccolini but my math is all you need to know. The tender, slender form of asparagus combined with a slightly subtler flavor of broccoli equals my new favorite veggie! I was hoping that it would make every dish delectable but our second recipe turned out only “pretty good”. The best thing we’ve done so far was to simply blanch for a few minutes to get it nice and green (and hot) and then cover with salt, pepper, “butter” and a little lemon juice. Delicious all on its own!

It looks like broccolini has been around in the States since the mid-90′s but I’d only heard of it recently. It also doesn’t help that broccolini is a trademarked name and most grocers label it generically as “baby broccoli”. But whatever you want to call it, try it!