Perfect Protein Salad

There are some dishes that just make me feel so connected the vegans who came at least a generation or two before me. You know, that super 1960s and 1970s vegan food? The stuff people ate before Daiya cheese and Beyond Meat?

I'm talking about stuff like nut loaves, carob, nutritional yeast crepes, and all manner of whole beans and grains. One such dish is a long-time standard of mine — Perfect Protein Salad from The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen.

I had hoped to spend much of Mofo recreating a few recipes that I cooked the most when I first went vegan and only had a handful of dishes under my belt. But Mofo is halfway gone, and this is the first such post about an old standby. But I've been making this soybean and wheat berry dish since at least 2005 or 2006.

It's from the famous Moosewood vegetarian cookbook, written and published by Mollie Katzen in 1977. I got this book as a gift in college, when I was a vegetarian but not a vegan. The book isn't vegan, but many of the recipes include vegan instructions. For example, this recipe calls for cottage cheese, but Mollie suggests subbing out crumbled tofu. I also used vegan mayo for this. That's mixed with crunchy soybeans, chewy wheat berries, cucumbers, scallions, carrots, and dill.

In the recipe's intro, Mollie mentions making this one day when soybeans and wheat berries were the only foods in the pantry. How '70s vegan! Right?

Anyway, I love this dish so much. It's so cool and crisp and perfect for these last few dying days of summer. Because the book is not mine, I don't feel comfortable reprinting the recipe, but you can find an adapted version (that isn't vegan, but you know what to do) on The Parsley Thief blog.