I heart Colleen Patrick-Goudreu

She is the founder of Compassionate Cooks - and has a fabulous vegan podcast that I get through iTunes, called Vegetarian Food for Thought. I have learned so much from listening to her, AND the clincher was today, when I made her "Better Than Tuna Salad" - which came out great!

(from Greenoptions.com)

Better-than-Tuna Salad
Serves 4-6, depending on serving style: sandwiches or side dish

1 can organic garbanzo beans/chick peas, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup (or more) eggless mayonnaise (Wildwood’s Garlic Aioli, Nayonnaise, or Vegenaise are great options)
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
3 scallions (white and light green parts), finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
1-2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1/2 teaspoon sea salt or to taste
Black pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS
1. Add the chick peas to a food processor or blender and grind them down into small pieces. You can even grind them down so it becomes somewhat like a thick puree. The ultimate texture is up to you. Grinding the beans is optional, but I find that it’s easier to eat it as a sandwich this way; plus, it really does resemble tuna in taste and texture when the beans are ground up. It's best if you use the "pulse" button on your food processor so you can control the ultimate texture of the beans.
2. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix well. Season with salt, pepper, and the amount of aioli/eggless mayonnaise you desire.

Serving Suggestions:
*Wonderful as a sandwich filling on a hard roll or stuffed in a pita
*Serve on crackers as an appetizer or party dish
*Serve as a side salad – great for picnics and BBQs!

Variation Suggestions:
*Of course you may also use beans made from scratch, as opposed to canned beans.
*Use cubed, steamed tempeh for a “Better Than Chicken Salad."
*Use potatoes for a tasty potato salad.
*Use mashed extra firm tofu for an “eggless egg” salad.
*The walnuts are optional, but they add a really nice texture.
*You may sprinkle some kelp flakes in as well, to really add to the “fishy” flavor.


I used red onion instead of scallions, and just estimated most of the quantities, and I used Nayonnaise. I chopped everything with a food processor to get it done quickly. But I'm thinking a simple version of just the chickpeas, onion, mayo, maybe celery and/or walnuts would be great for making back-to-school bag lunch sandwiches. Yum! And no dead fish or tortured chickens were involved!

my (lacking) memory

People who know me well know better than to ask me the plot of a movie, book, or play, if it has been months or years since I've seen/read it. For some reason my brain doesn't hold on to narrative. I'm not sure what's wrong with me. I can tell you whether or not it was a good movie, book, or play, and whether or not I liked it. I can recall how it made me feel. Who was in it? Maybe. (You know, that guy who was in that other movie, with that other guy where they, uh... oh forget it.) What exactly happens in it? No clue. A vague remeniscence of the general subject matter, ok, probably, but actual plot? Never. Not unless I've seen it over and over again. Sure I can tell you the story of the Wizard of Oz, but only because I've seen it a zillion times.

I say my brain doesn't hold on to the plot, but that's not exactly accurate. More than once, I've rented a movie that I've already seen. I've even read the summary feeling fairly certain that I'd never seen it, but in the first few minutes of the film, a light bulb goes on. The synapses connect, and an overwhelming "oh yeah!" feeling brings the whole story flooding back to me. It's as though the information is tucked away, but I just can't get at it. It's frustrating at times, but nothing I can't live with.

Take, for example, "Gone With The Wind." I know I loved it, I know it's about the Civil War, I know Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler are in love, and that he's a soldier, that he goes and comes back, and "Frankly... I don't give a damn." What doesn't he give a damn about? Not sure. I know Tara, the plantation, burns. I know a thing or two about Hattie McDaniel. I know Scarlett has some kind of "let's worry about it tomorrow" thing going on. This is actually quite a bit more than I can remember about most movies, which is next to nothing, but still I can't say what happens, in what sequence, or retrieve the details from my mind. I haven't seen it for several years, but I know if I saw it tonight, it would all come back to me during the first scene.

This weekend I stored several more narratives in my memory banks, wondering as I always do, "Will I remember this in a week? A month? A year?" How can I stop losing this information, or at least, losing the pathways that let me unlock the information that just sits there? This weekend I saw a play, "Eurydice", three movies: "Mon meilleur ami", "The Fan", and "Sicko", and I finished one book, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. I don't really have the time or the desire to keep notes about these stories. I wish I could talk intelligently about them a year from now, but I don't know if it will be possible! ("The Fan" was worth forgetting, but the others were good, and "Sicko" was great.)

Is it from the countless hours I spent watching terrible TV sitcoms as a kid, that kind of vegetating I did in front of the tube where the brain is virtually turned off? How many times did I go to the kitchen to get a snack during a commercial, and not even remember what it was I had been watching? Of course all those Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island and Bewitched episodes are also stored away, somewhere beside the Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof Kieslowski films, just next to the Vonnegut novels, and behind various musicals, plays, and operas I've seen over the years. I guess there's some comfort in knowing they're somewhere in there.