Summer Orzo Salad

Don't forget about orzo! It's perfect for this light summer salad. (I ate almost the entire thing....) Dress this very lightly - there are plenty of flavors to carry the pasta.

Here's what you need:
1 lb orzo prepared according to package
6 oz feta cheese minced
1/2 C red onion minced
handful fresh spinach chopped small
1/2 lb fresh green beans, cut in 1 inch pieces and boiled until fork tender
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/2 C Parmesan cheese

For the dressing whisk together the following:
1/4 C olive oil
1 T lemon juice
1 T red wine vinegar
1 t dried oregano
1/2 t dijon mustard
1/2 t honey

Double Strawberry Muffins

One thing I like to do is to transform old favorite recipes into something new and vegan. That's exactly what I did here. I took a perfect blueberry muffin recipe and made some logical swaps and created an excellent strawberry muffin. I call it 'double strawberry' because some strawberries were fresh and others were dehydrated.  The dehydrated fruit really gave the muffins a hit of flavor!  These would be delicious served with softened cream cheese. 

 Dehydrate them long enough that they're past the chewy stage, but not so long that they fall apart.  Hard for me to say how many berries or how long to dehydrate - just aim for having 1 heaping cup chopped berries for this recipe.

Here's what you need:
6 T non-dairy butter, softened
1 C sugar
1 ripe banana
2 C flour
1/2 t salt
2 t baking powder
1/2 C non-dairy milk
1 C chopped strawberries, some fresh, some dehydrated (measure after chopping and dehydrating)
chopped walnuts for garnish

Here's what you do:
Cream butter and sugar. Add banana. Mix in milk. Gently add in the flour, salt, baking powder being careful not to over mix. Gently fold in the strawberries. Spray the muffin papers well and fill them about 7/8 full. Garnish with chopped walnuts.

Bake immediately in a 375 degree oven for about 25-30 minutes. Allow to cool before removing them from the tin. Delicious!