What I Ate: BLT Couscous Salad

You know my love of sandwiches knows no bounds and as sound as that may seem on the surface to you meat-eaters, it's often difficult to translate successfully into a vegan diet.

So I'm always looking for new and interesting takes on classic sandwiches, and in America it's hard to get any more classic than the BLT. Hell, it's hard to find a food more insanely popular right now than bacon.

As an aside, while I personally find bacon to be among the most disgusting meat options out there — even as a meat-eater I prefered turkey bacon to the pork variety — vegan bacon alternatives leave a lot to be desired too.

I've tried my hand at making my own bacon with tempeh and various seasonings. The taste and smell is pretty close, but distinct enough to not gross me out (a room full of bacon stench is enough to me wretch. For realz.). But there's also a tempeh bacon available at Mother Earth Foods in Parkersburg that's pretty delicious too.

So anyway, back to the BLT. I found an AP article the other day for a BLT couscous salad and it sounded amazing.

I love couscous, a granule made from moistened semolina rolled in wheat flour. The version I get is easy and quick to make and ridiculously healthy. A single cup is 1 gram of fat, 22 grams of protein and has 40 percent of your calcium needs, according to Wikipedia.

So last night, my girlfriend and I threw together a veganized version with the tempeh bacon we got at Mother Earth, some homegrown tomatoes, romaine lettuce and couscous.

And let me tell you, it was tasty, easy, light and incredibly healthy. Without the fat from real bacon, our BLT salad was filled with protein, healthy fats and loads of vitamins and minerals. And it was incredibly filling too, thanks to the magicalness of couscous and tempeh.

Try out the recipe, veganized or not, and I'm sure you'll agree.