Broccoli and Fried Rice

We had a cold snap awhile back. For all my friends up north who are laughing at me, no, really, it got cold. The temperature was in the low 20s for a few days and there was just enough "snow" to cancel work and school. This is all to say, I had to harvest my garden. And by my garden, I mean these two stalks of broccoli. One of which probably should have been harvested a week earlier.

You keep your broccoli in a podiatry mug, too, right?

How do you feed two measly stalks of broccoli to two adults for dinner? Fried rice, of course! I made rice as part of a meal earlier in the week and planned ahead so we'd have some leftover. Fried rice (and really stir fries in general) is one of the easiest ways to get a vegetable-filled dinner on the table fast. Most of the time will be spent chopping vegetables, which means if you can get moderately efficient with your knife skills (check out some videos on youtube), you can make this meal in about twenty minutes.

The fried tofu was surprisingly eggy.

Most fried rice recipes call for 2 parts rice to 1 part vegetables/protein. We like to increase the amount of vegetables, so we usually do a ratio of 1 part rice (often brown rice) to 1 part vegetables. You want all your vegetables to be chopped about the same size. You don't see broccoli in stir fries very often, but it's actually a great use for it. All the tiny bits of broccoli mingle with the rice, and you can use every bit of the stem.

Vegetable-Filled Fried Rice

2 teaspoons canola oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 onion, any size, chopped

2 cups chopped vegetables [see note]

fried tofu, in cubes or slices (optional)

2 cups cooked rice

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon mirin or sake

salt to taste

Heat oil in a wok or large saute pan over high heat. We'll be adding all the food in shifts, and you'll want to keep stirring as you cook everything constantly. Add chopped onions and cook 1 to 2 minutes, until fragrant. Add garlic and cook 30 seconds or until fragrant. Add chopped vegetables starting with those that are hardest and need the longest cooking times, like carrots. Cook 2 to 3 minutes, until the vegetables turn a bright color. If you're using spinach, bean sprouts, or scallions, add them just before you add the rice in the next step. Add the rice and the tofu, if you are using it. Cook 3 to 4 minutes longer, until the rice is heated through and slightly crispy. Add the soy sauce and mirin or sake and cook a minute longer. Season to taste and serve.

A note on vegetables: The thing about fried rice, and stir fries in general, is that any vegetable works. Use whatever is hanging around your fridge or freezer. Carrots, bell peppers, greens, scallions, broccoli, corn, peas, turnips, celery, green beans, asparagus, sweet potato, lima beans, greens, sprouts. Any vegetable that's generally cooked will likely work. Hard vegetables like carrots should go in first and quick-cooking vegetables, like many greens and bean sprouts, can go in briefly at the end until they wilt or warm. Alternatively, use a frozen vegetable mix that includes carrots, peas, green beans, and lima beans.

You can chop the vegetables any way you like, so long as they're all chopped the same. Cubes are easiest, but other shapes, like julienne, are fun for a change.

Home Cooking

Kris over at Two Vegan Boys has challenged everyone to eat more at home and less at restaurants. Really she challenged everyone to eat entirely at home for a year, but Dewey and I aren't up for that challenge yet. She'll be blogging what she eats for dinner every night here.

We have noticed over the past few months a rapidly rising food budget. Or maybe just a lack of a food budget. Either way, I'm committing to cooking more of our meals at home, and doing so with my eye on the food budget.

As part of this, I'm going to be posting more of our ordinary home dinners. They aren't always exciting, they won't always come with recipes, and (this one kills me) the photos won't always be pretty. But they'll show what one vegan and one along-for-the-ride omnivore eat for dinner. I'm also committing to trying more recipes from the cookbooks I've been buying faster than I can use them.

Above is last night's dinner. A thrown-together enchilada soup made from all the leftovers in the house: enchilada sauce, corn, carrot sticks, black beans, potatoes (leftover from making latkes), a minced chipotle chili, tofutti sour cream, and some seasonings. The only thing we bought to make this was a can of beans.

The biscuits are cornmeal biscuits from Vegan Brunch, and they're amazing. Really easy to make and the perfect pair for some Tex-Mex-inspired soup. I mixed the dough and put half of them in the oven, and while they baked I made the soup. I think the entire meal took about 35 minutes to make, including clean up. Half the rolls went in to the freezer for future lunches and dinners.

If you've hesitated about buying Vegan Brunch because you rarely eat brunch, don't let that stop you! I've made lots of great recipes from this cookbook, and rarely before 6PM. I think with the exception of cinnamon rolls, most of the recipes in the book make great dinners. And I promise not to judge you if you eat cinnamon rolls for dinner occasionally.

Celebratory zucchini soup

I've left behind my crummy night job, and I'm beginning a new (sane?) daytime job tomorrow. That means more sunny hours for cooking, photography, and gardening. Ooo boy!

To celebrate, I scrounged through the produce lurking at the bottom of the fridge and came up with one zucchini and one yellow squash, a little worse for time. Coincidentally (magically?) I saw a recipe for zucchini soup in last week's Meatless Monday newsletter. I can't ever say no to soup.

[Meatless Monday aside. I really like this organization. They have a great nutrition news roundup, and I love the vegetable-packed message. But I've found the recipes to be hit or miss. This one was a hit, though.]

Here's my version of the soup, modified to fit the contents of my fridge.

Summer Squash Soup

oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 summer squash, cut into 1-inch pieces
vegetable broth
2 teaspoons dried tarragon
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

Sautee onion in just a smidge of oil until soft. Add the garlic, and cook 30 seconds longer. Add the summer squash, tarragon, and enough vegetable broth to just barely cover the vegetables. Simmer 10 minutes or until the squash is soft. Blend with an immersion blender (or transfer to a blender in batches). Stir in nutritional yeast. Serve hot!

February: Some Updates

It's been a busy month. I (finally!) found a job. Unfortunately, it's third shift. It's put a bit of a cramp in my photography and gardening since both of these things need sunlight.

In general Dewey and I have been busy improving the house, introducing the cats to one another, and just generally adjusting to the new schedule. But I've found a bit of time to squeeze in my hobbies here and there.

At the top is a puttanesca scramble from Vegan Brunch. It's a tofu scramble with tomatoes, olives, and capers. I had a lot of leftover ingredients from an antipasto salad, and this was a perfect way to use them up. I wasn't sure what I would think of this, especially since the antipasto salad wasn't a hit. But it was great.

I never wrote a review of Vegan Brunch, but some of our favorites are the courico tacos made with soy curls, the chocolate beer waffles with sweet cashew cream, and the (virgin) Bloody Moskowitz.

This is the baked potato soup from Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food. This cookbook has found a steady spot in our diet now that I have less time for cooking. Those are chopped green onions on top of the soup. I've been obsessed with them lately.

A little "aha" cooking moment from earlier this month. You have a microplane grater, right? They're lovely. They're great for zesting or grating small things like garlic or nutmeg. And they won't tear up your sponge (or your knuckles!) the way a traditional grater does. Anyway, if you turn the microplane grater upside down while you grate, it collects whatever it is you're grating.
I've put together the frame for my new square foot garden, but I've decided not to plant until we get the lawn regraded. Anything planted now will just get torn up then. Bummer for now, but in the long run, fixing the lawn so water doesn't drain under the house is more important.

And finally, I took Lizzie's advice (though her comment seems to have disappeared since then), and went with a chicken wire compost bin. Hopefully by this time next year I'll have enough of my own compost that I won't need to buy any to build a second square foot garden.

CSA and Moving Update

Saturday morning, we picked up our CSA veggies. Look! Potatoes! And green onions!

Itty bitty thinned carrots! And carrot tops, which I use like parsley.


And turnips! Er, turnips. What do you do with turnips? (To start with, you refrigerate them. I learned the hard way.)


I thumbed through my eleventy-billion cookbooks and finally settled on Turnips in Mustard Sauce from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. This cookbook is great for "what am I going to do with this?" cooking. And it didn't let me down.

I don't like to post recipes from cookbooks unless I change them significantly, but let's take a look at braising. Braising is great for root vegetables. Carrots, potatoes, beets, even radishes, are great braised. So no surprise that it worked well for turnips.

To braise, cut the vegetables into equal sized pieces so it cooks evenly. This can be hard with something knobby, but braising isn't about perfection. Brown the vegetables in a bit of oil. Sprinkle with some good old salt and pepper. Then add about a cup of flavorful liquid (I used vegetable broth this time, but wine works great, too) and simmer covered until the food is tender.

And here is the beauty of braising. After the food is cooked through, remove it to a bowl and leave the drippings in the pan. This is where the magic happens. Add a bit of starch to thicken (the recipe called for cornstarch, but the only starch I had was mystery bulk bin flour. Possibly spelt flour. Or maybe whole wheat pastry flour.) It doesn't really matter what starch you use, what does matter is that you mix it with a bit of liquid before adding it to the pan. This will prevent dreadful clumps from ruining your sauce. Add any seasonings you like (like mustard!), and cook until reduced to a thickish sauce.

Drizzle your pan sauce over the braised vegetables and sprinkle on whatever herbs you have on hand. Braises aren't always pretty, but a sprinkle of herbs will cleverly disguise this. (Jazz hands!) I used carrot tops. Because it's all I had.

We just moved into a new house, and the kitchen is the only room we haven't unpacked yet. Which is why I cobbled lunch together from some soggy unrefrigerated turnips, carrot tops, and mystery flour. But it was a tasty cobble, so don't hold it against the turnips.

Ode to Soup

1. black bean soup
2. yellow pea and coconut soup
3. squash soup
4. Asian-style cabbage soup
5. black bean soup
6. tortilla soup
7. squash soup
8. squash soup
9. broccoli soup
10. cashew butternut squash soup
11. Thai curry soup
12. matzah ball soup
13. tortilla soup
14. green coriander and ginger broth
15. cholent
16. rajmah

Chili on My Mind

Ever since the chili cookoff, I've had chili on my mind. The third place chili at the cookoff was a masala chili made by a woman who teaches Indian cooking classes here in Austin. Her masala chili and coconut chili were two of my favorites, and I'm glad she won.

I kept thinking about her masala chili all week, so I pulled out my copy of 660 Curies by Raghavan Iyer. Sometimes I think all the choices in this book have kept me from making more recipes. How do I pick which of the 660 curries to make? But this time, I opened the book with an agenda. I wanted to make rajmah, or kidney beans. I found a recipe for tamatar malai rajmah (slow-stewed tomato sauce with kidney beans), and it was exactly what I wanted.

The recipe turned out pretty well, though not as rich as I would have liked, but that's because I modified it. It calls for 1/4 cup fried onion paste, and that's one of the other reasons I haven't made many recipes from this book. Many call for small amounts onion paste or another kind of paste, but the recipes for these pastes make large amounts and don't keep long in the refrigerator. All that waste annoys me. And I'm pretty lazy. Instead I sauteed diced onion. I also left out the 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream the recipe calls for since Dewey is still on a low-fat diet.

But still, my chili craving wasn't over. Dewey has been asking for cholent lately, so it was the perfect time to make Jewish chili. Cholent is a stew that Jews make for Shabbat, when they can't cook any food. Cholent is started in a slow cooker or on a hot plate just before sunset on Friday night, it cooks all night long at low heat, and then it's eaten at Saturday lunch. Such a long cooking time, even at low heats, makes the beans and vegetables really soft, but in a good, comfort food way.


Vegan Cholent

1 T oil
1-2 onions
4-5 cloves garlic
3 red or yukon gold potatoes
2 carrots
2 1/2 cups mixed dried beans*, soaked for 8 hours
1/2 cup bulgur
vegetable bouillion cube**
water
12 ounces dark beer
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoons tarragon
2 teaspoons thyme
1 tablespoon paprika
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper

Turn on the slow cooker and heat the oil. Chop the potatoes and carrots into large pieces. You want them to be fairly large because they're going to cook so long. Add the onions and garlic to the slow cooker, cover, and let cook for about half an hour. Add the potatoes, carrots, drained beans, and bulgur. Add the bouillon cube and enough water to cover the beans. Add the beer, soy sauce and all the spices except for the salt and stir. Cover and cook 6-12 hours***, stirring occasionally. Once the beans are soft, add the salt. If the beans look dry, add more water. Eventually, the liquid will thicken into a tasty brown sauce. When you're ready to eat, adjust the salt to your taste.

*I used chickpeas, black-eyed peas, pinto beans, split peas, and lentils. Really, any combination of dried beans, peas, or lentils will work, just be sure to use at least three kinds.

**Feel free to use vegetable broth in place of the bouillon cube, or even just water and a bit more soy sauce.

***I know this is a big range for a cooking time, but this is a recipe that is meant to be flexible.

CSA week 1

This stir-fry used the bok choy, tatsoi, and purple beans from this week's CSA. We didn't have enough of any of these vegetables to feed even one person, but combined all together (and with the addition of green and red bell pepper), it made a great meal.

Whole wheat pasta with broccoli rabe and vegan sausages. I ate mine with a garlic olive oil sauce, Dewey had his with tomato sauce.

Pantry Soup

Dewey and I have something fluish. So there hasn't been much cooking going on. Lots of graham crackers and peanut butter and whole wheat English muffins with EB and marmite on my end. Dewey's been subsisting on frozen pizza and ramen. We're both topping it off with lots of gingerale. I'm trying not to remember the last time we ate a vegetable.

Yesterday, I was finally able to stand up long enough to make real food. So long as it didn't require too much standing up. So I threw together a bunch of pantry staples for a quick Thai-style soup.

This was half a bag of frozen vegetables, some pearl onions that have been languishing in the freezer, lite coconut milk, vegetable broth, noodles, a bit of red curry powder, and about a cup of basil from the garden.

Asian-style Cabbage Soup

This soup, despite its looks, is one of my favorites. It's loosely adapted from this recipe on Epicurious.

I love this recipe the way I make it. It uses up that half head of cabbage that lingers in the vegetable bin. It has soba noodles, which are made from buckwheat, a diabetic-friendly grain. And it easily scales to fit whatever amount of cabbage or noodles I have on hand.

This is, very loosely, how I make the soup.

Asian-Style Cabbage Soup

1 head cabbage, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons sesame oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1-inch ginger, minced
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons Sherry
3 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce
vegetable broth
2 bunches of soba noodles

Saute cabbage in sesame oil until tender but not mushy, about five minutes. Add garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the other seasonings and enough vegetable broth to cover by about two inches. Bring to a boil. Add soba noodles, and cook according to the directions on the package.

Review: Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food

I'm really excited about all the great new vegan cookbooks that are coming out. Thanks to a gift certificate that showed up at just the right time, I was able to try one of them out.

Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food by Alicia Simpson delivers exactly what it promises. The recipes come together quickly and without too much mess in the kitchen. The trade-off is that some of the recipes rely on vegan convenience foods such as chik'n patties, tvp, and vegan cheeses. There are a number of new vegan cheeses that actually taste good, including sheese and cheezly. Unfortunately, these are hard to find in most of the U.S. still. And, in general, I'm not comfortable using these highly processed foods in my diet very often.

But that said, those products are in just a small number of recipes. Probably less than 10%. There are still plenty of recipes using whole food ingredients. I can tell that some of these recipes will be going on our list of foods to cook when we just don't feel like cooking.

The first thing I tried was the Fettuccine Alfredo (sauce two). It was incredibly good. Dewey and I have tried a few Alfredo recipes, and I think we've found the one we'll return to. Very occasionally, since this is definitely not health food. [No photo of this one.]

I also tried the Caesar salad dressing (sans croutons so I could have stuffing on the side). Again, Dewey and I both loved this. We've been eating salads with every meal this week.

There's an interesting recipe for tahini coffee that I couldn't resist. I have a weakness for unusual recipes. The coffee part of the recipe name is just referring to the color, NOT the taste. So don't expect coffee. It's sweetened with blackstrap molasses. I have to admit I almost never drink sweetened beverages because of my diabetes, so I wasn't as fond of this as the other recipes. But if you like tahini and molasses, you'll love this drink.

This is red beans and quinoa, a riff on red beans and rice. I really loved this. I'm a sucker for meals in bowls. The beans come together in less than ten minutes, so you can make this meal in the time it takes to make quinoa, usually about 20 minutes.

Other recipes I'm looking forward to trying out are gallo pinto (a bean dish for breakfast!), spicy soba noodles in peanut sauce, and wait for you stew.

Tortilla Soup Redux

My friend Merf's tortilla soup is one of my favorite ways to use summer squash. This soup is never the same two times in a row. This time I added about a quarter cup of salsa to the broth. Dewey isn't really crazy about squash, so I was happy that he liked this.

When I planned to make this earlier in the week, it was about 60 degrees. It was in the 90s today when I finally made it. Whoops. So I had to follow it up with a mango fruit bar. To maintain balance in the universe and all.

Brown Rice and Bowls

This is one of my favorite quick bites. Brown rice with EB, lemon juice, Tabasco, soy sauce, and a sprinkle of dill.

Salad

I've been trying to make an effort to eat more raw fruits and vegetables (and more fruits of any kind really). Whenever I get a perfect piece of produce, I thumb through all my cookbooks and scour the Internet for just the right recipe. But really, fruits and vegetables are pretty awesome all on their own. Sometimes, I forget that.

This salad is exactly what it looks like. Two mandarin oranges (so easy to peel and no seeds!), an avocado, 1/4 red onion, and lemon juice and zest. That's it.

Vegan Frito Pie

Dewey has asked me to make my Texas chili four or five times since I first made it. He brings the leftovers to work for lunch (almost unheard of for him). He even brought a triple batch to work for a potluck and then called me up excitedly to tell me they made great frito pies.

So we had frito pies for dinner the other night. Fritos, Texas chili, chopped white onions, and Ctate's Queso. (The recipe is temporarily offline because they're going to bottle and sell it.)

Diabetes--does it get in the way?

There's a lot of talk lately about Sonia Sotomayor and her type 1 diabetes. Will it affect her ability to be a Supreme Court justice? Of course not. Mostly.

Trying to tell someone how diabetes affects your life is difficult. It changes everything. And at the same time, it's not a big deal.

In a story about Ms. Sotomayor and her diabetes, Time Magazine ran this photograph of a woman injecting herself with something. And yes, you can take insulin injections in your arm by squeezing it up against a chair or wall, but there are easier ways to do it. (And ways that look less like a hype getting a fix.) The most common places to give yourself an injection are the stomach, legs, and butt. They're easier to reach and they have more fat as well.

If I were to pick a photograph to show what diabetes is like, it would be this:



Yup. Food. I eat a lot of food in bowls. When you have type 1 diabetes (which I've had for 23 years), you have to count every bite of food you eat. For me, the easiest way to do this is to eat out of bowls. This far up the bowl is one cup. This far, two cups.

Pictured there, one cup beans, half a cup rice, for a total of 50 g carbohydrate, which translates to 7 units of insulin. I do a mental calculation like that every time I eat.

And that's the hard part of having diabetes. It's counting everything you eat. Thinking about when your next meal will be every time you step out the door. Keeping track of five prescriptions that need to be renewed at different times. Carting around a bag of supplies everywhere you go. Noticing that you walked three miles today instead of two. It's six doctor's appointments a year. Four to ten blood sugar checks a day. No vacation.

But all these things I do, they're what keep me healthy. Sometimes I'll catch someone giving me a look when I test my blood sugar. I guess testing reminds people that I'm "sick". Which is ironic. Testing my blood sugar and taking insulin make me healthy. If you ever notice me ignoring my diabetes for days on end, like a normal person, start worrying.

Occasionally, my blood sugar goes low. And I lose fifteen minutes or so of time waiting for things to come back into focus. And that part isn't such a big deal.

Twenty-three years into this, I have no complications so far. Statistics tell me I'll die seven to ten years earlier, probably from a heart attack. I'm not going to spend a lot of time worrying about dying at 87, rather than 95 (the age my great-grandmother lived to).

There are a lot of factors that should be considered before choosing Ms. Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice. Her diabetes just isn't one of them.

Vegan Texas Chili

Texas chili isn't like chili anywhere else. Texas chili never ever has beans. Ever. Once you add beans, Texans will politely call it a bean stew. Some people say that Texas chili shouldn't have tomatoes either, but no one pays much attention to that rule.

I've been wanting chili for a few weeks, and nothing is hitting the spot. Dewey makes a very nice, er, four bean stew, but it just isn't chili to me. The no-bean rule is always a problem for vegetarians because once you add those beans, it's not Texas chili anymore. A sausage patty recipe on A Veg*n for Dinner gave me the idea of using bulgur in place of the meat. And it worked wonderfully. The bulgur soaked up the flavors and kept a nice chewy bite. This was pure comfort food.

Bulgur Texas Chili

1 or 2 tablespoons oil
small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne (optional)
1/2 tablespoon chili powder
1/2 cup bulgur
3 1/2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 can rotel (I used mild)
1 can water
2 tablespoons tomato paste

Fry the onions in oil until they are soft, about five minutes. Add the garlic and cook another 30 seconds. Add all the spices and stir to combine. You can leave out the cayenne to reduce the heat a bit. Add the bulgur and stir everything together again. Combine the soy sauce and ketchup and pour the mixture over the bulgur. Stir continuously until combined.

Pour in the can of rotel (or about 10 ounces diced tomatoes). Fill the can with water once and add to the other ingredients. Add the tomato paste and stir everything once more. Bring everything to a boil and then turn the heat down to a simmer. Simmer covered for 20 minutes.

Taste and adjust the seasonings. If the chili is too dry, add some water. Texas chili can be anywhere from moist to somewhat soupy, whatever your preference. Serve with tortilla chips, fritos, or cornbread but NEVER rice. (Another one of those rules.)

Tex Mex leftovers

Dewey and I eat Tex Mex pretty often. And this is how the leftovers usually end up the next day. Last night, Dewey and I ate tacos with Spanish rice, black beans, red bell peppers, and onions. Today, I made a bowl full of Spanish rice, black beans, and wilted spinach with garlic.

Often, I'll make the rice for this by replacing some of the water with leftover salsa. (Sometimes I feel like Steve Martin in Father of the Bride running through the aisles of the grocery store, ripping packages of buns apart. Salsa and tortilla chips NEVER run out at the same time. I always have too much of one or the other.)

I topped the whole thing with Crystal's queso. This is THE vegan queso recipe. The recipe is offline temporarily because Crystal and her partner will be mass producing it for sale. Congratulations, guys!

Garden update: The kale was eaten by SOMETHING. It is no more. The carrots turned out the be grass. I planted tomatoes, and half of them have already succumbed to spider mites. Good thing I'm not counting on this garden to provide all my food.

Quick, Easy Dinner

Broccoli soup with garlic bread. This took maybe 15 minutes of hands on time and a bit of waiting for things to boil. A quick, healthy weeknight dinner.*

Dewey likes to watch "Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares." He's been wanting to try a recipe for broccoli soup from one of the episodes. The recipe: boil broccoli in salted water, puree with a bit of the boiling water, and serve with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of pepper.

*Dewey insists on adding "easy-peasy lemon-squeezy". There is no lemon in this recipe.

Taco Salad

In college every week, a lot of the Jewish students met up for a Shabbos lunch. Someone made this taco salad once, and for months after it showed up at every meal. There are so many variations though that no one ever got bored.

Taco Salad

lettuce
broken tortilla chips

toppings (choose several)
red, green, or yellow bell peppers, chopped
tomato, chopped (or canned in the winter)
corn (frozen is fine, it will thaw as you chop your vegetables)
peas (frozen is fine)
black beans
kidney beans
pinto beans
red onion, chopped
green onions, chopped
cilantro, chopped
pumpkin seeds
sunflower seeds
avocado, chopped
veggie pepperoni
veggie taco meat (the recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes is great)
other vegetables, to taste

dressing
salsa
vegenaise, or your favorite egg-free mayo

Tear your lettuce into salad-sized pieces. Don't worry about filling your salad bowl too full, the toppings will press the lettuce down some. Prepare all your toppings in bite-sized pieces. Be sure to choose a variety of colors. Spread your toppings on top of the lettuce, one topping at a time so you get a layered effect.

Prepare the dressing, mixing 4 parts salsa to one part vegenaise. (For a whole foods approach, just use plain salsa.) Just before serving, add the broken tortilla chip pieces to the salad. Don't add them too early or they'll get soggy. Serve the salad with the dressing on the side.