'Twas the Night Before...

I do a lot of cooking (and prepping for meals) the night before I actually plan to eat a dish. For instance, last night, I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen working on Sweet Potato Hash for the next day's breakfast, as well as Vegan Chicken Salad for tonight's potluck.

I was able to throw a bit of this creamy Sweet Potato Hash in the microwave this morning:



It's a recipe I developed to use in my cookbook. I can't give it all away, but basically, it's shredded sweet potatoes with veggie burger, onion, parsley, and some other stuff (secret ingredients until my book gets published). I had a ton of sweet potatoes my dad gave me a couple weeks ago. This was a great way to use them, and now I've got breakfast for the next couple days since I made a big batch. I served the hash alongside whole grain toast with the homemade organic strawberry jam that I canned last spring. I hand-picked the strawberries on a farm out in Millington, a small town north of Memphis.

For dinner, I went to a vegan potluck at the Sanssouci Collective. It's a co-op of vegan kids here in Memphis. They have potlucks every Monday but I'd never been until tonight. Mostly because the potlucks start at like 8 p.m., which is way past my usual dinnertime. I'm like an old lady on a feeding schedule. At 6 p.m., my stomach starts growling and I get really grouchy. But I snacked until dinnertime tonight, so I was okay.

I brought my own recipe Vegan "Chicken" Salad finger sandwiches:



I used these bean curd knots from the Midtown Asian market, but I'm going to try the recipe again with seitan. The bean curd knots were great, but I also want to include this recipe in my cookbook. And I'm pretty sure bean curd knots aren't widely available everywhere.

Other dishes at the potluck: Black beans and rice with tater tots (this was sooo delish!), spinach phyllo cups, pita with sesame avocado dip, and chocolate cookies.