Buddah's Feast - My Version

There's a wonderful vegan, gluten-free restaurant in my city called "Kind Food"  http://www.kindfood.com.  For those of you saying to yourself "she's crazy, vegan smeghan; give me real food", just hold on there a sec.....

The food there is outstanding and you'd never miss your meat, or dairy, or wheat.  My favourite is a dish called "Buddha's Feast", a concoction of organic brown rice, grilled sweet potato, diced red onion and tomato with almonds, sunflower seeds, herbs, olive oil and tamari.  OMG, it's seriously good food!

I decided to experiment and recreate the dish at home.  I'm very happy with the results!  Here's my version of Buddah's Feast:

Ingredients:

• Brown rice, cooked and cooled
• roasted pumpkin seeds (buy them in the bulk food)
• roasted sunflower seeds
• red onion
• sweet potatoe, cooked or roasted
• dried cranberries
• avocado
• cilantro

Dressing:

• olive oil
• tamari (sold in the Asian aisle, like soy sauce, usually gluten-free)

Directions:

Thinly slice or dice the red onion.  Rough chop the cherry tomatoes.  Cube the sweet potatoe.  Toss together with the rice, the dried cranberries, the pumpkin and sunflower seeds.  Make the dressing from about equal parts olive oil and tamari (you don't need a lot for flavour). 

Tear the cilantro in pieces and add to the "feast".  Gently toss with the dressing.
Add cubed avocado just before serving.

FEAST to your "healthy heart's" content!

  

Notes: 

• Lightly toast the sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds separately in a toaster oven or on top of the stove.  This gives the seeds a nutty, roasted flavour which really enhances them.
• I also made this dish with roasted yellow beets in place of the sweet potatoe.  It was good,  but not quite as good as the sweet potatoe.