Foodie Friday: Tuna noodle, is that you?

It's Foodie Friday! Foodie Friday is my weekly feature that gives you a window into my kitchen. I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to read cookbooks, and I love to inspire people to give vegan food a chance. Thus, Foodie Friday was whipped up and baked to perfection.

Sometimes I make a random vegan recipe and it takes me back to my animal-eating days. There are tastes and textures that you never forget, and my mom's tuna noodle salad is one of those things that has stayed with me. So although the tahini rotini with broccoli and lemon from Vegan Planet has only noodles in common with my mom's salad, it took me back to those elementary school weeknight dinners served from a large Tupperware bowl.

I have to admit that I wasn't crazy about tahini rotini when we had it for dinner. It was just kind of bland and blah. When I had the leftovers for lunch the next day it was much more interesting--sitting in the fridge overnight somehow made the tahini sauce thicken up enough to resemble canned tuna mixed with mayonnaise! It even sort of looked like tuna noodle!

Freshly made tahini rotini on the left, with orange-dressed asparagus from 1,000 Vegan Recipes, and day-after "tuna noodle" rotini on the right.
More 1,000 Vegan Recipes fare:

Orecchiette with rapini, a tower of johnnycakes. I think orecchiette is my new favorite pasta shape. It means "little ears!"
Italian truck-stop artichoke risotto and lemon-glazed baby carrots with cranberries. Also, I love my kitty plate.
These were my own creations:

A steak sandwich on French bread: Trader Joe's vegan steak strips sautéed with onions and garlic, topped with dijon mustard. This had everything you'd want in a steak sandwich, without the agonized slaughterhouse mooing and cholesterol. Brownie sundae: So Delicious Creamy Vanilla soy ice cream topped with crumbled chocolate coconut brownie and diced World Market dried chili mango strips and drizzled with Torani pomegranate syrup.
For dinner last night, we had teriyaki tempeh with brown rice (from 1,000 Vegan Recipes) and red bell pepper strips sautéed in toasted sesame oil:


I've now made 65 of the 1,000 recipes! My goal is to make it to 100 by the end of this year. If Jason didn't ask for repeats so often, I'd be progressing a lot faster, but I'm just happy to be making healthy, delicious food that he wants to eat over and over again.