Turning Veganese

I was never a fan of tuna salad: a lot of the ingredients creeped me out, particularly tuna and mayo. Mayonnaise is a creamy mix of oil and eggs which never comforted me conceptually. This was even before I became obsessed with microorganisms starting in high school, afterward, anything containing animal products, mixed up and possibly left out for hours and hours at room temperature turned my stomach. Even so there are a lot of things about tuna salad that I like, other than the promise cruelty and fishy smells. We decided to make pumpkin seed salad sandwiches for dinner today taking all of the things that are awesome about tuna salad and omitting the parts that stink… literally. We combined the following in a food processor:

1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds (soaked 8 hours)

1/2 cup of flax meal (more if you want a dryer mix)

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 generous tbsp tahini

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 dash hot sauce

juice from 1 lemon

I ran my food processor until the mixture was still chunky but relatively uniform and then I added a generous bunch of dill. I ran it until the dill was all mixed in and then added 2 stalks of celery that Brent chopped.

We put it on some bread that we toasted with some Follow your Heart gourmet cheddar cheese. This cheese was okay. The texture was pretty good and the flavor was reminiscent of the cheap orange cheddar that I was never particularly fond of anyways. It got soft when toasted but didn’t really melt like dairy cheese.

Back to the issue at hand, we smothered our sandwiches with our lemon dill spread and I have to say they were fabulous. If I had this to do over again, I might add a few tablespoons of veganaise  but it doesn’t need it. I might also try substituting sunflower seeds for pumpkin seeds but that’s also an arbitrary change.

We also included some sprouts that we started on Sunday. They’re usually ready by Thursday and make a difference for any wrap, salad, or sandwich by adding texture and spice. I also found some delicious multi-grain bread at a local farmer’s market so the guy was able to have a simple sandwich for the first time in a while. It was definitely a welcome change.

This is Christie and Brent, signing off!