Peas & Thank You Broccoli Salad

Morning friends. Happy Sabbath. Our charming grandmotherly cleaning lady has run of our house and John and I are once again coffee shop working until Church. 

This picture is from 2 weeks ago - but it literally looks exactly the same. He's wearing a slightly different checked shirt today. 

So I thought I'd take this opportunity to do a recipe update that I skipped over in all the excitement of going to Colorado to see Shannon graduate.

I made this dish last week but never worked it into a post. As you may recall, one of my "25 by 25" - 25 things I want to do by my 25th birthday in October - is cooking all the way through the Peas & Thank You cookbook. I haven't yet made a page with all my recipe reviews linked, but that's coming soon. This is an adaptation of your standard broccoli salad - complete with some fakin bacon.

I used to love broccoli salad. I have very happy memories of rare nights when Mom and all of us kids would go to the Roth's Deli when cooking just wasn't going to fit into the nightly schedule. Along with the chicken fingers and the potato wedges, broccoli salad - though a rare choice - was always super tasty. Around the age of 11, I became a vegetarian, and broccoli salad didn't make the cut.

Until last week, I'm pretty sure it had been 13 years since I had anything so closely resembling the classic.

This recipe combines Vegenaise with some smoky bacon (I used Lightlife), red onion, dried fruit and cashews for extra crunch.

The day I made it, I only let it set up for 2 hours in the fridge and I wasn't so sure about it. Most of it was perfect, but the red onion was little too strong for me.

However, the next day it was perfect. The time to sit and soak up the flavors toned down the sharpness of the onion and it was just right. I loved how filling it was without feeling heavy. I had it for lunch 4 days in a row - and it just kept improving.

I would definitely make this again. Just let it set up in the fridge for a whole day.

Do you have a favorite recipe that gets better with time?