LD and I have a tradition. Every year, I ask him what dishes he’d like me to make for his birthday, and every year – without fail – he picks mac salad.** That’s it. Just mac salad. A huge frikkin tub. Which he feasts on for like the next week.

And I have to admit, it’s pretty good. Probably not the healthiest meal I’ve ever blogged, but really effin yummy. Plus it’s a great dish to end the summer with.

Don’t let the photo scare you. I know it looks like some scary radioactive science project, but orange macaroni isn’t all that photogenic. That, and my gourmet food critic photographic isn’t all that gourmet.

I developed my own recipe by veganizing this non-vegan recipe. (Again courtesy of All Recipes, I think.)

Macaroni Egg Salad

Ingredients

2 cups macaroni/small pasta
6 eggs
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 ½ cups mayo
½ cup plain yogurt
4 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 teaspoons paprika
½ teaspoon garlic salt

Directions

1) Cook macaroni; rinse and drain

2) Combine ingredients and refrigerate

And here’s my vegan version.

Kelly’s Egg-free Mac Salad

Ingredients

4 cups macaroni
3 cups vegan mayo (e.g., Nasoya Nayonaise or similar)
8 tablespoons ketchup
4 tablespoons parsley
1 teaspoon garlic salt

Directions

1) Combine the mayo, ketchup, parsley and garlic salt. Taste and experiment with the mix as desired.

2) Cook macaroni; rinse and drain.

3) Combine ingredients; add extra mayo (or pasta) if the salad is too dry (moist). Flavor to taste.

4) Refrigerate and enjoy cold.

Notes

If memory serves correctly, I usually double this recipe to fill up our largest Tupperware container.

LD tops his bowl of mac salad off with some hot sauce and (vegan) Baco Bits, but I wouldn’t recommend adding these ingredients in until you’re ready to down a bowl of the salad. The hot sauce is a pretty individual taste, while the Baco Bits will get all soggy if you let them soak in the mayo/ketchup mix for an extended period.

You’ll also notice that I eliminated a few ingredients from the original recipe; feel free to experiment and reintroduce them to my veganized version. Except for the eggs, of course!

Another suggestion: press a block of firm or extra firm tofu, chop it up into egg-sized bits, and add it to the salad. I do this when I make (real) egg salad for my doggehs, and they love it.

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* Initially I named this recipe “Kelly’s Eggless Mac Salad”, but upon seeing the title in my post draft, I realized how incredibly stupid I was being. Just as I refer to myself as childfree, not childless, so too is this recipe egg-free, rather than eggless. “Less” implies that something is missing, be it from my life (baybeez) or my meal (eggs) – when in fact I’m happily free of each. So egg-free it is.

I guess now it’s time to tackle my habitual use of “meatless” vs. “meat-free”!

** Happy birthday, Shane!

(Crossposted to.)

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Tagged: recipe recipes vegan veganism vegetarian vegetarianism pasta macaroni mac salad macaroni salad eggs eggless tofu nayonaise flickr photos elbows eggfree herbivore meatless meatfree

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Food & Recipes, Human. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.