Summer Side Dishes

My friend Shannon is awesome! Not only is she one of the sweetest, prettiest and funniest people I know, she is an amazing graphic designer - she designed our wedding invitations!

And she's tough! She She picked up and moved herself from San Diego to Tuscon a few years ago - all by herself! And just when I thought she couldn't get any cooler - she surprised me by making one of my recipes!!

Check it out. She made the grilled yellow squash sandwich I blogged about a few weeks ago. She made it her own by adding blue cheese crumbles - yum! If I wasn't trying to eat vegan, I'd be all over that!

Yay Shannon! It's been so fun blogging about all my food adventures, but it's even more fun when I get comments. And, learning that someone made one of my recipes was the best thing ever!

Too bad Shannon didn't have this vegan macaroni salad to go with her sandwich...

I love macaroni salad! I can never order it anywhere because of the egg in the mayo, but thanks to vegenaise, I can make my own. I like mine with a lot of crunch so I added lots of diced up veggies.

Here's how I did it:

Vegan Macaroni Salad
2 cups cooked macaroni
3 Tbsp vegenaise
1/4 cup diced red onion
1/4 cup diced yellow squash
1/4 cup diced red bell pepper
1/4 cup diced collard green stem (could use celery)

Pretty simple, but really yummy!

And, if Shannon was still hungry, she could have had some chips with tomatillo salsa. I got a bunch of tomatillos in my last CSA box. When I finally made it to the store to get some jalapenos and cilantro (and a new food processor since I killed my last one), I whipped this up:

Slightly Roasted Tomatillo Salsa
1/2 lb tomatillos
2 jalapenos
6 cloves garlic
big handful of cilantro
juice of half a lime
1/4 cup water
a few grinds of sea salt

First I put the tomatillos, jalapenos and garlic in a pan and stuck it in the broiler. I checked it every few minutes, but they probably stayed in about 10 minutes total, so they had just started to brown.
I think next time I would roast them a little longer to see how the flavor would change.

Then I threw everything in the food processor, a little at a time to check the flavors.

It turned out really, really good!

I also want to try and make it without roasting and see how that turns out. Luckily, I got another bag of tomatillos this week, so I'll get to do some more experimenting.

Alright Shannon, get busy!! :)