A New Dawn, A New Day...

...A new "tuna" salad.
I really need to post a bit more often. Much has happened in the literal months since I actually posted anything, and many recipes are sitting on the back burner waiting for me to write them up. One of the new things is that my more mainstream types of recipes are likely going to be posted at Busy Mommy, a site run by one of my dear friends who has opted to take me on as a writer for the Cooking Mommy page. I'm quite happy with the arrangement so far and am hoping she is too :)

On to more usual topics, or in this case, more experimental. I'm working more and more towards being a full out vegan, having only occasional lapses with cheese and even less occasional meals with meat. As such I've been branching out again and playing with more random foods, which lead to today's new staple recipe. I've been looking for all sorts of easy foods to replace things I am used to making on a regular basis. Tempeh has been making many appearances, but takes more time to prepare than I tend to want to give it for something like lunch. I was browsing around through a lot of vegan recipes on all sorts of sites and cookbooks and came across several for vegan "tuna" and "chicken" salads--almost all with the quote marks. The ones that were chickpea based appealed to me because I always have chickpeas on hand and have yet to meet a chickpea recipe I didn't at least like enough to finish. Most of them were rather complicated or had fairly long ingredients lists, so I ditched them and made this version, which I've stripped down to its simplistic roots. You could flavor this with whatever you want, but I'm sticking with just the pickles and hot sauce for the moment. Even my mother, who has not taken well to most of the stuff I give her to taste of late, liked this one and wanted to finish it with some crackers, a preparation I think would go over nicely. I myself stuffed it into a sandwich with tomato slices and were I ok with cheese right now I think it would make a great base to a melt with a slice of cheddar.


Vegan Tuna (or Chicken) Salad
Makes enough for about 3-4 sandwiches

Ingredients:
-1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
-1/4 cup vegenaise (or mayonaise if you so prefer, I don't)
-1/2 kosher dill, small dice
-salt and pepper
-1 teaspoon hot sauce (optional)

Directions:
Mash the chickpeas with a spoon or fork until there are no whole peas left. Mix in the vegenaise and stir, mashing as needed, until combined and the texture of tuna salad. Stir in the pickle and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the hot sauce if using. Serve with crackers, salad greens or in a sandwich.

Notes:
-You can add in whatever you happen to add in to tuna or chicken salad. My mom's version favors chopped onions and celery along with the pickles for both tuna and chicken salads, and she makes an easy pasta salad by mixing the tuna salad with cooked medium shells. I imagine this would work pretty well in that too, though the color would be different.
-This doesn't look vegetarian, so would make an easy sandwich to take along for lunch that no one will question. I for one am a little tired of people's continued interest in my lunch as the afternoon's entertainment. This doesn't look odd, even if you put it on salad greens.
-I like my egg/tuna/chicken/whatever salads a little on the dry side so as not to have them leak all over the place when trying to eat them. And because I don't really like the taste of straight mayonaise. So this recipe starts with a small amount of mayo/nayo, feel free to add a bit more if you like.