Vegan Caesar Salad

It had been years since I had had Caesar salad. It wasn't one of my most favs but I wanted a change so I went in search of a vegan recipe. In my quest to start eating raw food (I'll go into that in another blog) I have purchased some raw food preparation books. In one of the books I found a recipe which I have made a staple at our dinner table.



VEGAN CAESAR SALAD



The greatest thing about eating vegan is that I am often surprised at the ingredients. People have gotten very clever with what they use to obtain certain flavours in foods. This recipe is made almost entirely from avocado! At first my kids loved the salad...'til they noticed that the leftover dressing on their plates was green! "Why is it green?" they gasped. You see, they don't like avocado! Eventually my oldest son got over the fact that it was avocado...the yougest one, well, we're still working on him! It's all in his head. It's a great salad.

This salad can be made 'raw' or if you like, you can make it 'rawish' as I do. I add a couple ingredients which are not defined as raw.

The recipe is a very slightly modified version of the one I found in The Everything Raw Food Recipe Book by Mike Snyder (with Nancy Faass and Lorena Bull).

By the way, I use organic ingredients whenever possible.

Ingredients

2-3 cups romaine lettuce, rinsed, patted dry

1 avocado, peeled

2 tbsp olive oil (cold pressed is 'raw')

1 clove garlic (or more to taste) - could also use garlic powder

1 tsp salt (or less)

1 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 cup water

4-5 strips of Yves Veggie veggie bacon strips

handful of dry roasted soy nuts or raw almonds/cashews

1/2 - 1 cup sliced button mushrooms (or more)

method

1. Tear the romain into bite size pieces and place in a mixing bowl.

2. In a really good blender or food processor combine the following until creamy: avocado, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice and water.

3. While the blender/processor is making a racket in your kitchen, cut up the veggie bacon strips into bitty pieces and fry them to a crisp in some oil in a pan. Once crispy, place on paper towel and pat dry.

4. Add the creamy dressing from the blender/processor to the greens in the mixing bowl.

5. Toss in the fresh veggie bacon bits and mushrooms and give'm a good toss together.

6. Find a lovely plate on which to serve the salad. Put the handful of roasted soy nuts on top.

To make this a raw recipe, omit the veggie bacon bits and roasted soy nuts. In place of the soy nuts you could add raw pine nuts.

The Everything Raw Food Recipe Book says this salad serves 2. I suppose it would if that's all your gonna eat. If you have other items on your dinner table this would feed 4.