Three Vegetarian Meals You Can Serve to Omnivorous Friends

Hi friends!  Yowza, has it really been almost a MONTH since I my last post?

I thought I better poke my head out here (hung down in shame though it is from my lack of blogging!) and say hello.  May flew by with all sorts of fun:  one minute it was Cinco de Mayo and a travel weekend with two of my cousins then the next thing I knew it was Memorial Day weekend (woot woot for holiday weekends)!  And then a few days later it was already June and time for my mom’s visit.  Phew!  Busy month! It will continue at this pace until late June as I have a lot on the calendar.  I keep joking that I’m going to have to take off the entire month of July to catch up!

The weather has been wildly windy but wonderfully warm so whenever I have a free chance to get out of the kitchen and soak up some vitamin D I’ve been doing that.  I’ll let that be my excuse for my lack of blogging time.  ;D

In the midst of it all I have still been making my “Shari style” meals.  We had some friends over for dinner one night, so I made an Asian-inspired BBQ.   (Most of my favorite meals are still the ones where I take what would be a meat-lover’s meal and find a way to make it vegetarian.)  Saute shredded cabbage, shredded daikon radish and shredded carrot with a good quality organic hoisin sauce and you have a great substitute for pulled meat sandwiches.  You can serve it as a lettuce wrap or on top of a slider bun, open-face style.  Garnish with a little fresh chopped basil or cilantro.  I also made a batch of black rice (also called Forbidden or Japonica rice), tossed with a sesame vinaigrette and mixed with some shredded carrot, edamame and topped with some chopped tamari almonds.

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I love the flavor of buffalo wings (minus the chicken) so here I marinated slices of organic sprouted tofu in some Frank’s Red Hot sauce and grilled it.  I took a small amount of some really strong blue cheese (you don’t need much), poured in a little almond milk and used a fork to mash the cheese chunks down into a thick sauce to serve on the side.  I loved this meal!

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We’ve been grilling a lot lately since it’s been so hot here.  Here I grilled a homemade black bean burger, along with some zucchini slices and sweet potato fries.  (Fans of Alexia frozen fries:  put your fries right onto your grill if you don’t want heat up your kitchen with a hot oven – just lay down some foil or a flat cast iron griddle to keep them from falling through the grates).

Do you have any ‘meaty’ favorites that you like to convert to plant-based?

Have you been grilling out a lot already this season? 

– Shari B. =)