Vegan Delish & Peanut Butter Coleslaw

I’m swiftly approaching the 2-year anniversary of when I became vegan (shall we call it a vegan-versary?) and I can’t believe how many changes and opportunities have occurred in my life in that time.

I’m often asked if I started following Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat to Live program first, or if I became vegan first? The answer may surprise you in that I was drawn toward the animal suffering issues before I discovered Dr. Fuhrman. It was after reading Alicia Silverstone’s book The Kind Diet that the realities of animal agriculture and what it means to have a animal’s life unnecessarily sacrificed for my food started to make me think. I then got turned onto Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s podcasts and was inspired by her wisdom to make that important decision to explore veganism. Then, about 2 months later, Colleen mentioned Dr. Fuhrman and that’s when I got my hands on the book that forever changed my personal health, Eat to Live.

In many ways, I feel that finding veganism was a turning point in my life where I finally took a stand and started making decisions on not only how I want to live my life, but what kind of an impact I want to have. It’s been an exciting two years filled with adventures, challenges and opportunities that I am enormously grateful for. Also, I can’t thank YOU, my blog readers, enough who have supported me and made me feel part of a very special community.

With all of that, I am overjoyed with excitement to finally be able to start talking about my vegan recipe app now…Vegan Delish!!! Check out how cute the logo is:

I’ve been so hard at work on this project and I’m starting to count down the days when it will actually be launched (my best guess right now is early October, 2012). While my blog will continue to be my baby and my way to connect with all of you, Vegan Delish is going to be the digital equivalent of a cookbook, but with a focus on whole food recipes and awesome features like a shopping list and social media sharing capabilities. My hope is that it will also become a way for vegan bloggers and readers to connect over our favorite recipes. I will give you more and more details about the app as we get closer to its debut, but for now you can check out the website: www.vegandelish.com and subscribe to the e-mail list so you don’t miss any important announcements or specials.

Thanks for being excited about this project, I really, really hope you like it.

This past weekend was so busy as I was working on the app and then Alan and I drove from our home near Palm Springs back to the central coast where we will be for the next few weeks. We stopped on the way at the Whole Foods in Santa Barbara and got food at the salad bar. I ended up with black beans and brown rice topped with grilled vegetables and some kale salad. I usually prepare lunch for us to eat, but I had run out of food at home and it was a treat to eat at Whole Foods. This was my lunch, followed by some grapes that I had brought along:

I picked up just a few provisions for the kitchen to hold me over until I can get to a farmers’ market, but the pickings were slim when I got around to making dinner. I pretty much only had these two fresh items to choose from:

I was inspired by the salad I had at Real Food Daily in Pasadena which was shredded cabbage and lettuces topped with a peanut-butter based sauce, peanuts and chopped cilantro. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought that far enough ahead to get any of the other ingredients, but it was inspiration, nonetheless.

I put the whole head of cabbage through my food processor to shred it:

Then, I got around to making the peanut butter sauce…the star of the salad. I simply stirred together peanut butter, rice wine vinegar, golden balsamic vinegar, unsweetened soy milk and a touch of maple syrup. This is what the dressing looks like:

I hardly ever use maple syrup in my cooking anymore, but in this case it was ideal. If I were to make this dressing in a high-speed blender, I would use dates to sweeten it. But, time was of the essence after a long day on the road.

I then just poured the dressing over the entire bowl of shredded cabbage and stirred it together. I also rinsed and drained a can of cannellini beans to help make the salad a meal:

And, boy oh boy, this was a meal and a delicious one at that! I topped the salad and beans with some freshly sliced red onion and I was happy. Maybe it was the sugar from the maple syrup, but I could have easily eaten a second serving of this salad:

I saved the leftovers for dinner tonight and instead had some more grapes for dessert. I’m looking forward to making this salad again, but doing a “fancier” version including other shredded lettuces plus the cilantro and making the dressing in the Vitamix with the dates.

Here’s the version of the dressing I used last night:

I hope you have a great Monday and I’ll see you back here on Wednesday. Until then, you can follow me on Facebook or Twitter or feel free to comment on this post or e-mail me at carrieonvegan @ gmail.com (one word) if you have any questions or thoughts.

Note: this post has been submitted to Healthy Vegan Fridays and Gluten-Free Fridays.

Tagged as: cabbage, golden balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, peanut butter, rice wine vinegar, soy milk

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