Finger Food

This week involved lots of finger food! I love eating with my hands (that's why I enjoy Ethiopian, Indian, and other similar foods so much!). I've been overwhelmed with all my new cookbooks (not that I have stopped purchasing them!), but trying to make a dent in the recipes I want to make. Here are the treats I made for my friends on Valentine's Day and for our recent Sierra Club meeting. They are the Peanut Butter-Chocolate Squares (or were they bars?) from The Joy of Vegan Baking. They actually made more than the recipe called for (I cut them pretty small, since they taste so rich!), but they were so completely easy! I used up some rice krispie cereal I had (it was still good, don't worry!) and there was no baking involved, so it was a win-win situation all around. They were smooth, a little crispy, and completely yummy! One of my favorite vegan desserts ever, due to their Reese's Peanut Butter Cup flavor!
Here is another shot, take more from the side, so that you can see that they really are pretty thin. I wonder how they'd be in a smaller pan? Anyway, not healthy one bit but soooo very good! So, I had to move on to some healthier grub.







Like I said, it was the week of finger food. I was still on a sandwich kick this week, and trying to save some money, so here was the cheap and easy (ha, ha) Eggless Salad Sandwich, from The Everyday Vegan. It reminded me so much of the egg salad sandwiches I devoured every week when I was a kid! I used to make my own lunch every night before school the next day, and I always made egg salad sandwiches at least once a week. It amazes me how many children (at the school where I teach) have their entire lunches made for them every day, when they are in the upper elementary grades! Get kids into the kitchen, get them involved in their food choices, and let them do some work, for goodness sake! These were filling and flavorful. Tofu has a ton of protein and calcium, and it's perfect for 'faking' egg textures.
Also for the Sierra Club meeting, I made the Roasted Red Pepper-Almond Hummus from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. I am trying to make as many of her hummus and dips as possible - there are so many! This was excellent, too, and pretty quick to make. Great with pita bread and veggies sticks. The only problem I had was when I was roasting the red pepper. It calls for jarred peppers, but I can't afford those and it's so easy and healthy to roast your own! However, I hadn't done it in a while, and I used Veganomicon's recipe for roasting peppers. In the past, I have used high heat until they are black, then you throw them in a baggie and wait for the steam to loosen the skins for peeling. However, the book doesn't call for getting them black or peeling them, so the temperature was much lower. I had to keep them in the oven so long, they almost completely dried out and I couldn't peel them. So, I threw the pepper into the hummus batch with the burnt skins and all.... and it was still good!
All in all, it was a great week for vegan finger food. Tonight, I move on to make The Everyday Vegan's Black Bean and Millet Patties (I have lots of millet to use up!) and for the week's lunch, Peanut Sesame Hummus with rice crackers and snap or snow peas. Loved reading everyone's posts this past week! I still laugh when people ask me, "what do you eat?" My answer....everything and anything I want!