Udi's Archives - Strength and Sunshine

The Ultimate Vegan BLT that’s also gluten-free and soy-free. Smoky eggplant bacon, crisp lettuce, ripe tomato, and a homemade tahini based mayo, sandwiched between two toasty pieces of your favorite bread. Lunchtime will never be boring again!

I’m serious here. The is the ultimate BLT. I’ve always been fond of BLTs and hadn’t had one in years and years! As a little girl, my favorite place to get a BLT was…believe it or not, Friendly’s! They made the best and I always got one with a side of mashed potatoes (yea…I have no idea). Obviously, since I was diagnosed with Celiac and don’t eat meat, that meal was soon a no-go. Thus, I hadn’t had one of those glorious white toasty sammies in so long. Add in a soy allergy, and most vegan BLTs are out of the question too (i.e. tempeh/tofu won’t work!). But I don’t let silly things get in the way of my cravings!

But what’s a girl to do? Well, considering I was gifted the wonderful fabulous Excalibur Dehydrator for Christmas, the solution was rather simple. The “bacon” would be made from the glorious nightshade of eggplant! Thinly sliced, coated in smoked paprika, and dehydrated for a couple of hours. Bam! Vegan bacon at it’s finest!

I’m serious, this tasted like bacon (from what I remember). No, I lied, it tasted BETTER than bacon! That might just be my love for all things smoked, but I digress, you’ll love it too! If you don’t have a dehydrator though, you can make this in oven. You’ll just have to super thinly slice the eggplant and cook it at a very low temperature for a few hours.

So not only do we have wonderful smoky plant-based bacon on this BLT, but also an egg-free “mayo”! If you weren’t excited enough, this also ties into the giveaway at the end of this post. Again, there are a lot of soy-based vegan mayos out there and they all are just so processed and icky. Plus, I didn’t need a whole jar, so I decided to make my own.

Soom tahini and Silk cashew milk to the rescue! The perfect healthy vegan mayo with my favorite ingredients! The tahini was a no-brainer, but with the splash of cashew milk, I created the perfect creaminess for a wonderful spreadable mayo. You get a chance to win some of my favorite tahini too! Soom makes the absolute one and only best (I rave about it all the time. From my first taste, to now slathering it on everything!

I’ll give you this crazy delicious recipe first though! Basically, if I could eat this for lunch (or dinner) every day, I would. It definitely satisfied my BLT craving! Feel free to use what ever type of bread is you favorite! I wish I’d had a rye bread…that would have been killer!

The Ultimate Vegan BLT

Ingredients: (ingredients for 1 sandwich, with additional eggplant bacon for more sandwiches)

To Make 1 Sandwich:

+ 2 Slices of Toasted Gluten-Free Whole Grain Bread

+ 3 Thick Tomato Slices

+ 2 Leaves of Lettuce

+ 4 Slices of Eggplant Bacon

Tahini Mayo:

+ 1 TB Soom Tahini

+ 1 TB Cashew (or Almond) Milk

Directions:

+ For the eggplant bacon, follow directions in recipe link.

+ For the mayo, simply combine the tahini and milk in a small bowl and mix together until you get a creamy spreadable consistency.

+ To assemble the sandwich, first make sure you toast you bread. Then, in this order, layer one slice of bread with half the tahini mayo, 3 tomato slices, lettuce, the eggplant bacon, and finally the last piece of bread spread with the rest of the tahini mayo.

+ Slice it pretty and devour! So good! My mouth is watering….better go set that dehydrator again!

I actually think this may be one of my favorite recipes now on the blog. I really love this sandwich! I never make sandwiches like this either. It’s usually just the nut butter + fruit butter combo or a hummus tortilla sandwich. This BLT is super fancy for me, haha! I need to start making more sandwiches now!

Now for the giveaway! I asked Soom if they would let me give some tahini away since I absolutely adore them and their tahini! They were totally on board with the idea, so they’re letting me giveaway 1 Soom Sampler which includes: 1 12oz jar of tahini and 1 12ox jar of chocolate tahini! You want to win this…you do!

I also have another crazy tahini recipe for you guys, yet to be posted. It was between this glorious BLT and the “other” secret recipe. I went with the sandwich though 😉 But don’t worry, the other one is coming too! Now, make this sandwich and enter the giveaway which will be open for 1 week! I’ll choose the winner and contact them directly!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So tell me:

+ What’s your favorite sandwich?

*Recipe linking up for the week! Allergy Free Wednesdays, #RecipeFridays, #RecipeOfTheWeek, #StrangeButGood, Gluten-Free Wednesdays, Real Food Friday, Gluten-Free Fridays, Tasty Tuesdays, Savoring Saturdays, Healthy Vegan Fridays, Real Food Recipe Roundup, Tasty Tuesdays, Meatless Mondays, Lena’s Tasty Tuesdays!*

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Happy Wednesday! Once today is over you will be able to smell the sweet smell of the weekend at last! I always like to share a food or recipe post on Wednesdays since I can link-up with Jen’s WIAW a share in the blogger/foodie love. I never show a real day of eats and it will stay that way but in addition to today’s new recipe I have to share with you I wanted to show my typical lunches. During the week my lunches stay the same and I alternate between two things. On the weekend things can be a little switched up since I have more time so I will make a smoothie or something like that, that isn’t practical for school. But the two main things I eat are as follows…

A Sunflower Seed Butter + Apple Butter sandwich on Udi’s Multi-Grain Bread (this picture is form the Summer so I had time to grill my sandwich on my mini George Foreman Grill…sadly now I don’t), some sort of crackers for crunch and a side of easy to cut up and eat fruit (like grapes, kiwi, or berries).

A Hummus sandwich which is made by using two GF corn tortillas, slathering each one with hummus, and stuffing copious amounts of spinach (or other greens and veggies) in the middle. So Good! Plus I will have crackers again for some crunch and a side a veggies (Snap peas and the best!)

These combos are both so good and perfect for me and I never get bored of them since I always switch up the little things in each. But I can tell you I hate wrapping up my sandwiches (especially the hummus sammy…it is so floppy and really hard to handle…but worth it) and getting all my snacks ready for school. I do this all the night before except I make the sandwich in the morning so it stays more fresh. Then I get to eat in my Ancient History class since I have no lunch period. O the joys of school.

Now for the new “recipe”. It is really quick and I just threw it together so I hate to call it a recipe but o well. So instead of sprouting lentils again last week, I sprouted black beans! I used the same method although they took one more day to get to the sprout I wanted. But I loved them and even though I have been eating tons of beans and legumes lately my stomach has been pretty good with it. I believe it is the sprouting since that breaks down all the hard to digest compounds. So if you find beans and legumes hard to digest, sprout them and I am telling you your body will be happy!

Spicy Green Sprouted Black Bean Salad

Ingredients: (Serves 1)

– About 1/2 Cup to 3/4 Cup of Sprouted Black Beans

– A Big Handful of Spinach (torn)

– 2 Small Celery Hearts (chopped)

– 1/4 Cup of Cucumber (chopped)

– 1 1/2 tsp of Salt-Free Stoneground Mustard

– 1/2 tsp of Turmeric

– A Few Dashes of both Onion Powder and Garlic Powder

– 1/8 to 1/4 tsp of Fresh Cracked White Peppercorns

Directions:

– Bring a pot of 1 cup of water to a boil and add the beans for about 10 minutes. Remove and set aside.

– Get all you veggies and spices together and then add the beans to a large bowl with all the other ingredients. Toss and coat everything around.

– Next pop the bowl in the microwave for about two minutes, stirring half way through. Take it out, taste, adjust seasonings to your liking, and enjoy!

I also have two other memorable dinners that I loved recently and wanted to share…they deserve the attention.

First up is Smoked Paprika Turmeric and Parsley baked Salmon + a Micro-baked Sweet Potato with Cinnamon and Hemp Seeds. This Salmon fillet was so good. Like the best I have had…ever. I guess sometimes ShopRite’s seafood department does get it right!

Next is a random bowl of goodness that consisted of a can of salt-free Tuna, Mixed Greens, Smoked Paprika Plantain Fries, salt-free Stoneground Mustard, Lemon Juice, and more Smoked Paprika. I have been loving throwing together these bowl type dinners! So easy and fun and a nice change from my normal dinners.

Okay that’s all for this WIAW! Remember to link up and join in on the fun!

So tell me:

What has been you most stellar dinner creation lately?

Do you like throwing together random bowls of ingredients when you have no idea what you want? I totally love doing this now and will definitely be keeping this idea for a go-to when I am in a dinner rut!

The Ultimate Vegan BLT

A Typical Lunch and My First Sprouted Black Beans

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