Your Vegan Mom

Natalie Slater's Cujo Chow

Keep reading. I'll get to the part why this snack bowl looks nothing like one of Celine Steene's (always) gorgeous photos.

In her adorable, well-crafted, thoughtful, delicious, personal and fun new cookbook, Bake and Destroy: Good Food for Bad Vegans, Natalie Slater describes this recipe: 

Rabid Puppy Chow fans might recognize some of these ingredients. (Heh, get it? Rabid.) “Puppy Chow,” for the rest of you, is the somewhat unappetizing name for the traditional mix of chocolate, peanut butter, and rice cereal that showed up most often at sleepovers and school parties. In this version I’ve added some tasty new elements and even a superfood or two for good measure. 

Mashed Potato and Kale Taquitos

 

You guys, I don't really want to talk about taquitos.

Anupy Singla's Aloo Tikki

Over the summer when Desmond's swim teacher asked him what his favorite food was, he answered, "Indian food."

I'm not sure if that is entirely true or if that was simply all he could recall eating.

Cookbook author, Anupy Singla is completely responsible for my recent obsession with Indian cooking and my five-year-old's worldly palate.  She's an Indian American Mom and former reporter who so, so successfully translates complex Indian flavors to the time constraints of the home cook without dumbing down the dishes one bit.  Her recipes are realistic and super flavorful.  

Crackers

 

 Did you know that you can make crackers faster than you can convince a 5-year-old to put on his shoes?  And definitely faster than you can get two kids dressed and in the car and out of the car and into the supermarket and back into the car and onto wherever you were headed with your crackers in the first place.  

Sweet Potato Tots

 

It's Valentine's Day next Tuesday, and that, of course, means that you need to know how to make sweet potato tots.  Can you think of a better way to show your love than with the delicate crunch of fried potato giving way to its sweet and creamy insides as it's dipped into a cool and smoky sauce - each nugget lovingly shaped between your fingers rather than shaken out of the freezer bag? Homemade tater tots?  That's love, man.