Minimum Wage Peanut Butter & Strawberry Sandwich

Ninety-nine years ago, Massachusetts became the first state to set a minimum wage (for women and children only). I couldn't find a reference to the cent amount, but I did learn that the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in 1923. Pesky livelihoods!

The idea for this sandwich comes from my mother, who found inspiration in a magazine while waiting in an office. She can't remember which magazine or what was in it, exactly, only that there was fresh fruit where there normally isn't. Straight line from that revelation to replacing strawberry jam with strawberries from a local farm. Of course I use bananas all the time, but it never occurred to me to use berries because bananas don't replace anything, you know?

This was lunch. Dinner is a Chinese place. Hold the fish sauce, please.

INGREDIENTS:

2 slices of bread

peanut butter

strawberries

DIRECTIONS:

1. Spread peanut butter thickly on one slice of bread and thinly on the other.

2. Slice strawberries in half if small, in thirds if large. Arrange on heavily peanut-buttered slice. Close sandwich.

Kansas Red Kidney Bean Patty Open Sandwich with Green Spread

 

That title's a mouthful, and so is this recipe! Hahaha ugh. This one's named for the 150th anniversary of Kansas' admission as the 34th state. It makes use of the failed bread recipe from yesterday, which I thought I'd be able to fry like chapati bread. I was wrong. Since the dough is sort of sticky it made a mess in the pan. So I rolled it up again, flattened it out, and baked it. Bam. Kinda weird, but whatever. I think tomorrow I'll venture a third attempt at recuperating all that flour by boiling the dough. Bagels?

One thing to note is that I meant to use only 1/4 cup of water in the patties but wasn't paying attention to the measuring cups and used 1/3. There seems to be a new trend in my cooking of failure to properly mind water.

makes approx. 4-5 servings

Patties

INGREDIENTS:

1 15.5-oz. can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1/2 c. bread crumbs

1/2 c. vital wheat gluten

1/3 c. water

2 Tbsp. shoyu soy sauce

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 small white onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp. tarragon

1 tsp. sage

1/2 tsp. thyme

1/2 tsp. paprika

DIRECTIONS:

1. Fry the onion in a pan with some oil over medium heat. When translucent, add garlic for a minute or two. Remove from heat.

2. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Mash the kidney beans in a large mixing bowl with a wooden spoon or other blunt instrument. Add everything else, mix together, and knead with your hands until it holds together in a dough. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, form the dough into patties, and stick those suckers in the oven. After 15 min., flip them and flatten them out if need be, then bake for another 15 min.

Spread

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 c. cashews

1/2 c. water

1 red bell pepper
1 avocado, skinned

1 jalapeno, chopped and partially seeded

1 Tbsp. sunflower oil

2 Tbsp. tahini

1 handful cilantro

1/3 c. water

1/4 tsp. salt

juice of 1/2 lemon

ground black pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Soak the cashews in water for several hours.

2. Roast the bell pepper over your gas burner. If you've got electric you're out of luck. I held the pepper by the stem, removed the grate (or whatever it's called), and cranked the burner to Hi. Wait for the skin to sizzle and blacken. Once it's crispy, place the pepper in a bowl and cover (e.g., with a dish towel).

3. Puree the cashews and water in a blender. Add remaining ingredients except bell pepper. Puree.

4. Seed the bell pepper. It's turn has come, so jam it into the bottom of the blender and press the button.

"Bun"

INGREDIENTS:

1 failed recipe of yeast bread

DIRECTIONS:

1. Attempt to fry in a pan over high heat. Remove from heat, knead, and form into a patty.

2. Bake at 350F for 10 minutes.

This is one of the only meals I've eaten with a fork and knife since going vegan. Maybe it's because I like to cut things up pretty well before cooking them, but a knife is only really essential when you're trying to slice through flesh.

I recently bought a book from Friends of Animals by Lee Hall, On Their Own Terms. According to some guy on the back cover, "In this fascinating and illuminating book, Lee Hall calls [...] upon us to seek and celebrate a world where fish can swim, free in clean water, and bees and birds can fly in peace. And it offers a plan to make it happen." Can't wait!

Peanut Butter and Jelly and Apple Sandwich

I thought about coming up with a clever name for this one by riffing on Elvis and Johnny Appleseed or something. You can see why I decided against that and went with a more straightforward approach. The explanation for having this for dinner goes like this: I was hungry after work at 4pm, which is too early to make dinner, but I didn't want to eat leftover curry since I had it for lunch, but I also won't have time to cook a proper dinner since I'm going to a 6:30pm screening of White Material. So I needed a filling snack.

If you're wondering what in the hell I was thinking with this particular choice of snack, I'd like to point out that 1) peanut butter goes great with apples and also with jelly on a sandwich, so they must all combine splendidly (don't think too hard about this one), and 2) eating bananas in the dead of winter is weird. I know, we're importing them from the same place regardless of the season here in the US and storing them in state-of-the-art climate-controlled sections of huge supermarket warehouses, but... well, no buts -- eat a PB&J&A sandwich!

INGREDIENTS:
2 slices bread
peanut butter
jam
1/4 large apple (I used a Honeycrisp, but I think it would have been even better had I used one of the smaller Empires I bought more recently), sliced into 1/4 in.-thick pieces

DIRECTIONS:
1. Spread jam on one bread slice and peanut butter on the other.
2. Slice the apple and lay the pieces on top of the peanut butter. Complete the sandwich.
3. Heat some oil in a small pan over low-medium heat. You can use any old oil I suppose, but I think using peanut oil makes sense given what's on the sandwich. Another favorite of mine in situations like this is sunflower oil.
4. Cook the sandwich several minutes on each side, until browned but not burned (unless you're into that, of course).

While having peanut butter and banana get all melt-y together is delicious, I think the apple crunch is a nice change. It's like those people I've heard about who put potato chips in their savory sandwiches.