Roasted Grape and Dijon Avocado Sandwich

I found an incredible idea on Lifehacker the other day that has completely changed my relationship with mushy grapes (and, potentially, all mushy fruit--stay tuned). It turns out that grapes can be roasted, and that mushy, almost-too-old-but-I-feel-guilty-about-tossing-them grapes are the perfect candidates for roasting. I've tried this twice now, once with coconut oil, and once with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Both times, I've loved the outcome, and they make our apartment smell incredible. Since I don't eat cheese and haven't had any crackers in the cupboard, I've just been snacking on them.

Then, a couple nights ago, in a flash of insanity and divine inspiration (same thing?) I added some to a toasted avocado sandwich, thinking that roasted grapes are kind of like jelly, and avocado is kind of like peanut butter, so maybe it would work. Well, it did. It was possibly the best sandwich I've ever eaten. (I'm not going to definitively saddle it with the superlative, though, because I've had far too many very good sandwiches.)

This sandwich is so many good things: toasty, fresh, creamy, sweet, and a little spicy. I've always been a huge fan of cranberry sauce on sandwiches, and this has a similar feel. So, here is my recipe for the best, weirdest sandwich I've ever made:

Roasted Grape and Dijon Avocado Sandwich

Ingredients:
2 freshly toasted slices of sandwich bread
1/2 avocado, sliced
1/2 tbsp dijon mustard (or to taste)
1/2 tbsp mayo (or to taste)
1-2 tbsp hummus
2 leaves romaine lettuce, washed and cut to sandwich-sized pieces
1/4 cup alfalfa sprouts
1/4 cup roasted grapes (RECIPE HERE), cut into halves
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Toast your bread, then quickly assemble the sandwich in the following order: Spread the dijon and mayo on one slice of toast, then add the avocado slices, salt and pepper, sprouts, grapes, and romaine. Spread the hummus on the other slice of toast to finish the sandwich.

As an alternative if you have a particularly ripe avocado, first mash the avocado in a bowl together with the dijon and mayo, and spread directly onto the toast. Guacamole can be substituted for whole avocado.

I imagine this recipe would work well as a toasted panino with the addition of provolone, smoked Gouda, or possibly Havarti, but in that case I would leave out the romaine.

Really Quick Vegan Pineapple Sorbet

In case you haven't yet had enough of my sad photography and my fantastic but vague recipes, here's another to keep you going. Enjoy!

Step 1: Add the following to a high-speed blender:
- a couple frozen bananas
- a cup or two of frozen pineapple
- two or three spoonfuls of frozen orange juice concentrate, or a splash of orange juice (this is more or less optional)
- two splashes of sweetened vanilla coconut milk beverage (or any non-dairy milk)

Step 2: Blend just long enough to get it smooth and creamy. Stop blending the second it's all blended, because the friction will start melting it, and then it will turn into a melted smoothie instead of staying the consistency of soft-serve.

Step 3 (Only for those with superhuman willpower. If that doesn't describe you, skip to Step 4): Transfer to a container and allow to chill in the freezer for 1-2 hours, if you like your sorbet more icy and frozen.

Step 4) Transfer to mouth.

Apple Carrot Juice

I spent a beautiful three-day weekend in Carmel Valley and Monterey with my mom and Meg, our poodle Charlotte, and Meg's ultra-adorable new toy poodle puppy, Holly. We did a little consignment shopping in Carmel Valley and took a nice walk by the beach in Monterey. I also had the pleasure of spending the night at Kellsy and Nick's new apartment, and got to hang out with them and a couple other mutual friends. It was incredibly relaxing. I love weekends trips that have no agenda, no plans, just chill people and laid-back fun. I'm thinking more and more about moving to Monterey for a while. I've never lived by the beach, and every time I visit Monterey, I feel drawn to its funny little scrubby trees, its crunchy vibe, and its alluring promise of a surfing education. I want. to learn. to surf.

The only downside to my whole weekend (and last week in general) was all the heavy food I kept chowing down. I had the same amazing vegan breakfast burrito (not vegan on their menu, but vegan thanks to the patient servers) two days in a row at From Scratch, a fantastic restaurant in The Barnyard. When I got home last night, I decided to top off my holiday weekend with a generous amount of "fettucini al cashews," which is what I call my pasta with creamy cashew cheese sauce. I approximately follow a combination of these two recipes for the sauce: the Detoxinista's recipe and this recipe from tofu-n-sproutz.

So needless to say, my taste buds have been happy little campers lately, but the rest of my body has been a little whiny. I woke up feeling pretty gross this morning, and plus I'm still battling a virus from January that turned into a stage five clinger. So I decided to take a day or two off from solid foods and blast my fussy cells (that's a technical term) with some micronutrients in pure liquid form. Plus, I have an overload of produce that is desperately crying out to be used before it goes bad, and juicing makes fast work of vegetable consumption. My trusty little juicer is a Black and Decker Juice Extractor.

I have all sorts of complaints about the design of this little guy:
- The chute is way too small and what's with the kidney bean shape? I have to chop everything up into tiny pieces before juicing.
- The juice receptacle is tiny.
- The receptacle doesn't attach to the juicer, so the vibrations scoot it away from the spout, leading to juice on the counter. The solution is to hold it against the juicer with your hand, or at least keep an eye on it so you can push it back into place when it starts wandering off.

Well, that's only three complaints. The truth is, I adore this thing. I can't remember how much I paid for it when I bought it used on craigslist, but I think it was $10 or $15. I'm not sure they make this model anymore, but you can buy something equivalent for $30-$50. Here's why this juicer is great:

- It looks like a tiny elephant.
- It works just as well as the huge, heavy, three-digit-price-tag juicer I used to own, but sold, because this one is just as efficient.
- It's light and tiny, and kitchen real estate is a hot commodity.

My breakfast consisted of this stuff:

I don't normally buy baby carrots, but they jumped into my Costco cart on a day when I thought I was going to eat all the hummus on the planet. Of course, I had barely made a dent in the bag, but now it's nearly gone, thanks to my juicelephant machine. I also have a bunch of organic fujis, and I included two of them, for sweetness and fending off doctors for a total of two days. (That's how it works, right? One apple = one day without doctors?) (I don't know why I'm trying to fend off doctors. I love doctors! I love my mommy, and I love The Doctor. Maybe I should eat fewer apples! Maybe fewer apples = more visits from mommies and Time Lords!)

Anyway, I ended up with this:

but that was waaaay too pulpy for my current anti-pulp mood, so I strained it and ended up with a creamy, delicious, sweet apple carrot juice. This cup, by the way, is a great cup. I got it at Target. It's insulated, holds thirty-two ounces, and comes with a fun reusable straw. It's also easy to clean, so it's usually what I put my smoothies in when I'm headed out the door.

The reason I don't usually juice is because of the leftovers. After all the fun of shoving food into a Swirling Chamber of Juicing Doom, you have all the pulp to deal with.

So I'm usually all about the blender action: no waste, very little clean-up, and no edible guilt-tripping byproducts; but when you've got a ton of veggies to get through, for fridge reasons or health reasons or both, juicing will get you there much faster. So unless you have nerves of steel and can handle the shame of throwing away all that precious plant fiber, you have to save it and do something with it. Today, I stuck mine in a container, tossed it in the fridge, and promised it a happy future reincarnated as something yummy, like quick bread or jam or cookies.

Tropical Green Smoothie

I'm not a good food photographer, or a good recipe-writer, but I wanted to write a quick post about the deliciousville that has been my standard breakfast for the past week. It's ultra-yummy and contains nearly all of my favorite whole plant foods.

How to (approximately) make my latest favorite smoothie:

Step 1) Buy a Vitamix.

Okay... you don't HAVE to buy a Vitamix, but it makes smoothies smooth like no other blender can.

Step 2) Collect the following:

2 frozen bananas
1/2 to 1 cup frozen pineapple
1/2 cup frozen mango
1 cup vanilla coconut milk (or plain sweetened, or unsweetened--the drink from the box, not the thick stuff from the can) (available at Trader Joe's)
1/4 cup frozen orange juice concentrate (or just use orange juice and skip adding water)
a handful of baby kale
a handful of baby carrots
1-2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
enough water

Step 3) Blend!

Step 4) Drink in the perfection.

There you go! At night, I sometimes make a second round, but leave out the water, and then it blends into a nice, thick sorbet-like consistency, which I eat for dessert. If you chill the sorbet version in the freezer for an hour or two, it's almost the same thickness as fro-yo.

My picture, sadly, doesn't show you what a pretty shade of mossy sage green it is in real life. Oh well.