Accidental Dip

This one was a happy little accident.

I kept seeing recipes for Vegan Macaroni and Cheese. I usually don't fall for the "healthy" version of comfort food recipes. It's almost always more trouble than it's worth, and ultimately disappointing. So I was skeptical, but intrigued, and decided to I give it a shot. I came up with my own mish-mash of several recipes I saw. And it was… ok. But I used the last little bit of brown rice macaroni I had in the cupboard for this attempt, so I've been staring at the extra sauce left in the fridge wondering what I could do with it. Then it occurred to me that it has the look and feel of hummus, so I sliced up some cukes and called it a DIP.

Perfection!

So I present to you… ACCIDENTAL DIP

---

ingredients:

• One medium SWEET POTATO
• One medium ONION
• One large CARROT
• Several cloves of GARLIC
• 1/2 cup of raw CASHEWS
• A few tbs OLIVE OIL
• A generous handful of Tower-Garden GREENS° (take your pick… spinach, chard, kale, collards, etc)
• Your choice of fresh or dried HERBS° (basil, oregano, chipotle, etc)
• A squeeze of LEMON JUICE
• 1/2 an AVOCADO
• a small handful of sliced GREEN ONIONS° or CHIVES° (and more if you'd like to sprinkle them on top later)
• SALT and PEPPER 
• WATER reserved from the boiled veggies

make it:
Chunk up the sweet potato, onion, carrot. Toss them into a medium-sized pot of boiling water, and cook until soft. You can either soften the cashews ahead of time by soaking them, like "real" chefs do. Or if you're more spontaneous like me, toss them in the pot with the veggies.

Also‚ you can either include the whole garlic cloves into the pot to cook with the veggies (which will mellow the flavour) or if you are feeling more adventurous, leave it raw and grate it right into the blender with the other ingredients to leave its BITE intact.

Spoon the cooked veggies into your blender jug or food processor (but save the water). Add the rest of the ingredients, using a bit of the veggie-water to get it to dippable consistency.

Taste it and adjust the seasoning if necessary. I found it bland at first, so I added more salt, garlic, and lemon. 

Let it chill or eat it warm on your choice of culinary companions: Mary's crackers, pasta, veggie sticks, or how about on a sandwich instead of mayo and mustard. YUM!!

As usual, I marked some of the ingredients with a dot (°). These are items that grow beautifully in your Tower Garden: grow your produce at home, indoors or out, organic and local, year-round regardless of your climate. I love it!

Enjoy!