Thai Cabbage Salad

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired up with Karen from Karen’s Kitchen Stories. It was incredibly hard to decide what to pick from her wonderful assortment of recipes. I had “narrowed” it down to sixteen finalists and had to tap my fiance to help decide.

Karen has some beautiful bread recipes, including Danish Apricot BraidDemerara Sugar & Honey Challah, Gruyere Cheese Bread, Hokkaido Milk Bread, Kimmelweck Rolls, and Whole Wheat Challah. I have never made bread before (unless you count banana bread or zucchini bread!), so I was excited to try one of her recipes, but in the end I chickened out.

I wanted something pretty easy and quick since I wanted to make the recipe as soon as possible when SRC buddies were announced. We had just put an accepted offer on our first home and the thought of packing and baking at the same time was overwhelming. Plus, we recently discovered a Lao/Thai restaurant nearby that makes amazing salads and thought this might be a close re-creation.

If you have a food processor, this salad is easy peasy. If not, you might want to buy pre-shredded ingredients. I like the color that the purple cabbage adds, but it is noticeably tougher in texture than the green cabbage. In the future, I’d use 3/4 green and 1/4 purple cabbage, or all green cabbage.

I made extra dressing because that’s the best part. I plan to have it tomorrow with some spinach, broccoli/carrot slaw, and baked tofu.

Checkout the other recipes in this month’s Secret Recipe Club round-up, or head over to Karen’s Kitchen Stories and check out other amazing recipes such as Spicy Parmesan & Herb Grissini, Biscoff Cheesecake (!!), Boca Negra Cake, Boston Cream Pie (my all time favorite dessert), Chocolate Hazelnut Madeleines, Ovaltine Macarons, Asian Take-Out Style Spareribs, General Tso’s Chicken, and Mini Chocolate Espresso Pots de Creme.

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Fast & Easy Black Bean Soup

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For some reason I don’t make too many soups. Something about them just seems daunting. This soup is fast, easy, and healthy. The best part is that it only uses one pot and one blender (or food processor). If you have an immersion blender, then this is truly a one-pot meal.

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I’ve made this soup several times in the past month and it’s easy to customize. It’s also pretty cheap to make, especially if you stretch it by adding some rice or quinoa to it. I’ve also added frozen corn and peas to it to add some more nutritional value. As it is, it’s under 500 calories per warm, hearty, bowl.

The version pictured here has vegan chorizo in it instead of dried chorizo, and is topped with some chopped gouda and sesame seeds.