Amy's Kitchen Non-Dairy Beans and Rice Burrito with Chips and Salsa

Just a simple beans and rice burrito with hot salsa and tortilla chips. Nothing too special. From Amy's Kitchen.

The Triple Rock: Cook's Revenge, Chicago Dogs and Mac & Cheese

The Triple Rock is one of my favorite Minneapolis bar/restaurants to go to. It's a punk rock bar with an attached club for rock shows and it also serves American-style bar food. Here are a few dishes from a recent visit:

The Vegan Cook's Revenge:



This is one of my favorite things to order at the Triple Rock. "The Cook's Revenge" is basically whatever the cook wants to give you, no substitutions, no refunds, you get what you get. The only request that can be made is to make the dish vegan or vegetarian rather than meaty. I've had this 100 times, and I've had just about everything under the sun from PB&J to a 4-plates of food breakfast meal. Pictured above was a bowl of goodness: pinto beans and salsa covered with veggie sausage and smashed tater tot potatoes, which was then covered with their vegan nacho cheese and topped off with star-shaped veggie sausage. It was quite good.


Vegan Mac and Cheese:



Just what it says: big elbow macaroni noodles in a nutritional yeast sauce and topped with more nooch. Served with a GIANT piece of Texas toast.

Vegan Chicago Dogs:



This is two vegan Chicago dogs topped with peppers, tomatoes, onions, relish and mustard. Served with fries (and an extra side of vegan nacho cheese.)

Other favorites of mine include the Mock Duck sandwich, vegan nachos, their housemade hummus (REALLY garlicky), and "The Best Vegetarian Sub Ever."

Axel's Bombastic Black Bean Dip

The Saucy Coconut Food Blog is Back in Action! I know, I've said that before only to not post for weeks on end. Hopefully this time I'll stay true to my word and post more often. Well, this is a fantastic post to come back on:

Axel's Bombastic Bean Dip!

This is seriously the best bean dip EVER. I've made endless excuses why not to make my own bean dip: laziness, "too much work," and...laziness. There really isn't a good reason why I haven't been making my own bean dip. Yet it took my fiance, Axel, to have a heavy dose of inspiration in the kitchen to get me on the "make my own bean dip from now on" train.

This is a rough estimate of the creation of the best bean dip ever, but it will be recreated soon with more details and tweaking.

What's in it, roughly:
1 can of black beans, drained
1/2 can of refried black beans
1 can of pinto beans
1 can of Rotel^TM Original Tomatoes and Green Chilies
4 cloves of garlic (or less if you aren't a fan of garlic)
good shake of red pepper flakes for spice
good shake of cumin for flavor

Directions (sort of):

1. In a big bowl, mash almost all the beans up with a potato masher

2. Add the Rotel^TM, mix thoroughly.

3. Either mince the garlic into a paste, or blend it with a hand blender, or the Magic Bullet Blender.

4. Blend the bean mixture, and also place into hot pan and cook mixture. Add some of the whole beans that were set aside before you started mashing. Leave these as whole.

5. Add cumin, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste. Fresh chilies like jalapenos, habeneros, etc., would be great.

Serve hot OR cold with chips, fresh veggies, crackers, pitas, or anything else you can think of. This dip gets better and more garlicky/spicy with each passing day, so try and save some for tomorrow!