Twisted Recipe #7 Dat Salsa

I LOVE SALSA!

I am a beast when it comes to salsa. A very picky beast. That's why I've never made my own. It would destroy me as a person if I made  bad salsa; too much onion, too much cilantro, not enough green chilies...the horror! It's like lumpy ketchup! All I taste is tomatoes and fire!

But since I am hoping to open my own cafe, I am creating a menu filled with my own recipes, and salsa is on the menu. I did my research, I studied ten of the best salsa recipes out there. I combined the best and most simple of recipes, for when it comes to food I have but one rule; keep it simple, stupid...

Here's what you'll need for Dat Salsa:

1 TBS Lime Juice
1 TBS Cilantro
1 TBS Garlic
1/4 CUP Onions
1 TSP Salt
2 CANS Diced Tomato
1 SMALL CAN Green chilies
1/2 TBS Cumin
1 Diced Jalapeno

Ehh...ignore that huge bag of sugar...I tried it in the first batch and didn't much enjoy the sweetness...but I was far far too lazy to take another photo. Also the bowl of fruit is equally inconsequential...

Now, in the future I will totally use freshly chopped tomatoes, garlic, onions and green chilies...however, I am super lazy so I bought all that stuff pre-cut and packaged for my convenience, yo! 

So open that business up and toss it in that bowl! POW!

Next step is to blend it; any food processor or bullet type thing will do...

Mmmm, I know that looks nums, but you don't want to eat it yet. Those flavors have to set for a while, so chill it in the fridge, and in an hour or so you'll have some yummy salsa for the dipping!

Twisted Recipe #6 Egg-ish Sandwich

Now that I've been a vegetarian for a year I've come up some pretty tasty recipes to get me and my family by without the meats. This one, however, my mom gave me...I just made it better.

I've actually never been a great fan of egg salad. I always found it too bland, with great big chunks of awkward egg white just sitting like a lump of disappointment in my mouth. And don't get me started on the yoke; all kids of chalky unpleasantness. But, when my mom told me she had the perfect vegan egg salad recipe, I had to know it, I had to try it... What she made me was far better than any egg salad, yet if she didn't tell me beforehand that it wasn't egg, I would have assumed it was and that she was just simply the best egg salad maker ever.

So here is what you will need:

1 cup of Mayo or Vegenaise
1 stalk of Diced Celery
1 Diced Pickle
1/4 cup of Diced Green Onions
2 tablespoons of Diced Garlic
1 Rectangle of FIRM or EXTRA FIRM Tofu
2 tablespoons of Turmeric
1 tablespoons of Salt  {NOTE: mom uses black salt, but I have no idea where to by this...Amazon?}
2 tablespoons of Mustard

Dice everything very small:

Drain the Tofu and then mix all your ingredients in a bowl with your hands. 

Nothing does it quite so well as your hands....your clean hands...LOL

Now, mommy took this lovely stuff and simply placed it between two slices of wheat bread, cut it in quarters and called it all good. I couldn't stop there. This egg-ish salad is so flavorful: with savory onion and earthy turmeric, the bite of the pickle and the zing of the mustard...It needed something more than plain jane wheat bread... 

Sourdough bread (I used English Muffins here) Toasted, buttered and add melted Tillamook Cheddar (probably would have been over the top delicious if I had Extra Sharp Cheddar)

So good my mouth is watering as I write this. I'm remembering all that glorious exquisite marriement of this great symphony of flavors! Am I over selling it? ^_^ Nah...

Vegetarian Business

Okay, I started this blog because I loved coming up with cool recipes...but than I saw a documentary that changed my life. It was about how farm animals in America are treated. I was absolutely shocked. I didn't know things were so disgustingly horrible...I felt ashamed for having eaten meat my whole life. I couldn't eat it anymore, but I didn't know how to cook without it. I was taught that there should be meat in every meal...

I became vegan for some time (lost tons of weight, FYI) But my family truly missed cheese. Butter we could do without. There are so many other vegan options for that stuff...Milk, well, I never much liked milk other than on my cereal or in my tea. At first I switched to soy milk, but I've found Almond milk is AWESOMENESS. Even if I weren't so animal friendly when it came to my food, I would still only drink Almond milk, especially Almond Chocolate Milk.

As for cheese, I did my research for the most humane dairy and found that there are some companies that give a shit about animals.

Here's the skinny of cheese (cheese is very fattening) Cheese is made with milk. Duh. Milk comes from cows. More specifically, it comes from cows who have just given birth...

Humans obtain cow semen (rape)
Humans force it inside of a female cow (rape)
Humans force that cow to carry a baby (torture...for me at least, pregnancy was torture...)
Humans take the baby away from the new mother (kidnapping) 
Humans hook up that cow to a machine for hours at a time to steal that milk. (slavery and torture)
Humans kill cow once it can't have anymore babies for us to take away... (murder)

Basically we're evil...But we get worse. Cheese is made from partially digested milk. We need Rennet, an enzyme in baby cow's stomach that helps them digest mother's milk...To get it, we cut the stomach out of the caffs, dry it up, cut it up and use it to make the cheese we love so much.

But I found Tillamook Cheese Company. Instead of having one great big corporate farm, they get their milk from hundreds of family farms. These farms are under strict orders to treat their cows very well. They work 4 hours at a time at the milkers and are otherwise outside with their babies. They have names, not numbers and best of all, Tillamook uses vegetable rennet, no cow stomach needed...and their cheese tastes the best.

Tillamook isn't perfect by any means, (they still rape their cows for baby and milk making purposes) , but it's a step in the right direction. This is the cheese I'll feed my family until fake cheese steps up their game. 

Like I said, I didn't know how to cook without meat for some time, but I'm really getting the hang of this no-meat thing...hang enough to make some cool recipes. Heck yeah... From now on the recipes I'll be posting will be vegetarian in nature. Hold onto your butts.

My first recipe will be Tofu 'Egg' Sandwiches....with a twist, or course. ^_^