Awesome Asian Slaw

When you think of cole slaw, what comes to mind? Mayonnaise? Oil? Fast food chicken restaurants?
All of those may be the case...BUT...there are lots of other ways to make slaw. Slaw that won't give you your entire daily calorie intake in one sitting.

I got the latest issue of Vegetarian Times magazine in the mail, found this recipe for Asian slaw and decided to try it. It is delicious...AND...healthy. Yay!

Asian Slaw

Here's what your finished product will look like.

Prep only takes a few minutes and this recipe uses ingredients you probably have in your pantry. If you don't have some of these items, buy them and you'll find yourself using them again and again.





Ingredients:

• 3 Tbs. low-sodium soy sauce
• 2 Tbs. no-salt-added creamy natural peanut butter (I only had chunky PB and it was fine)
• 5 tsp. natural cane sugar (most dark brown sugar is this)
• 2 Tbs. rice vinegar (you'll use this a lot if you make sushi rice)
• 2 tsp. toasted sesame oil 
• 1 clove garlic minced
• pinch of black pepper
• pinch of cayenne pepper
• 4 medium carrots, julienned (mandolin slicer with julienne attachment works amazing for this)
• 2 medium zucchini, julienned (use mandolin slicer if you have one)
• 1/4 cup chopped dry roasted peanuts (these are totally optional)

Natural Peanut Butter going into soy sauce mixture

Whisk together soy sauce, peanut butter (warm it for a few secs in the microwave if it's too tough to mix), sugar, vinegar, oil, garlic, pepper and cayenne in a bowl. Stir in carrots, zucchini and peanuts. Chill in fridge for about 1 hr.

This tasty slaw makes a wonderful and delectable side dish, or an alternative to your traditional salad.

Garden Risotto

If you can cook rice, you can make this extremely flavorful risotto dish. It can be made as a main or side dish and one of the great things is that you can use virtually any vegetables you have in your fridge in it. It's all vegetarian/vegan except for the parmesan cheese...which you don't have to use, though the cheese does give the risotto a lovely, slightly creamier texture.

 (Adding finishing touches to Risotto - putting Parmesan cheese in pan.)

I found the recipe on FoodNetwork.com from Ellie Krieger's show. If you haven't seen it, she does a lot of healthier dishes that are often vegetarian. I made the Garden Risotto as a co-main dish alongside slices of marinated, baked tofu. For the tofu, get a 14oz block at the grocery store, cut into 1/2" slices and drain from the pkg. Then soak the remainder of the moisture out of the tofu slices with a thin dishcloth.


My marinade was made up of:

• 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
• 4 cloves minced garlic 
• 10 leaves of minced fresh basil

Mix all ingredients together in a shallow bowl or cassarole dish and put tofu slices in there for about 10 mins on each side.

Click here for the Garden Risotto recipe. It takes about 10 or 15 mins longer than the recipe on Food Network indicates, though is well worth the wait. It also makes a good 6 servings so it's great if you want to make the full amount and then have leftovers for side dishes for the family the next day.

*I didn't have spinach like the recipe called for so substituted chopped zucchini and chopped green bell pepper, along with the peas.