Vegan Potato and Carrot Salad

My wisdom tooth was extracted last Friday, and the aftermath was horrible! When the anesthesia started wearing off, my right jaw area started swelling too, then I started to feel piercing pain on my tongue, down to my throat (like a sore throat. I know, really weird!). Painkillers + cold compress didn't help much... Making my weekend nothing but 48 hours of whining. I had to skip several events, too- my high school friend's birthday, MOTHER'S DAY, and today's badminton practice. gaaah!!!

Anyway, I felt better after a couple of days, that's why Lou and I were able to date yesterday, somehow. Umm, sorry, forgot to tell you, DATE -- for us -- means strolling in a grocery store so we can refill or weekly food stash, so that -- being homebodies -- we can both remain sane and happy throughout the week! (Hehehe!) And I'm really happy to grab the ingredients of a potato salad version in my mind right now. Lou has always requested to have this for his daily bento, but I always procrastinated, thinking that potato salads are always loaded with carbs + calories from the mayonnaise ...making them fattening. Right? So... Here's the healthy version ...finally.

First, I made vegan sour cream made from CASHEWS (recipe adapted from ohsheglows.com)

Then I mixed it with potatoes and carrots (both boiled), and raw red onions.

YEP. That's it!

Vegan Potato and Carrot Salad Leda Brigino's pin on Pinterest. Ingredients: 1. 1 large potato, diced 2. 1 large carrot, diced 3. 1 medium red onion, minced 4. 1 1/2 cup vegan sour cream (recipe here) 5. 1/4 tsp salt 6. crushed pepper Instructions: 1. Boil potatoes and carrots for 15 minutes. Drain and let it cool. 2. Transfer potatoes and carrots in a bowl, add the onions, and toss with sour cream. 3. Add salt and pepper as desired. Makes 4-5 servings. As you might have noticed, my sour cream turned out to be curdly, instead of creamy! A lot of things went wrong actually - I used roasted cashews (instead of raw cashews), I might have added too much water, and I probably didn't soak them long enough. It still tasted great, though! ...but yeah, I really need to work on my vegan sour cream, the next time I have to use it again. :)

This shall keep me ALIVE for the next few days as I'm still not allowed to eat hot foods. I've been eating ice cream and -- would you believe -- I'm tired of it. Haha! NOTE by the way: I am NOT a vegan. It just feels really great when I eat healthy alternatives like this, time to time!

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Yesterday, I also had a morning yoga asana practice, which really helped me ease my toothache -- it was a gentle practice (because a too yang one might break my stitches), which had mostly seated poses held for 1 minute each (with the help of a round timer app in iPad!). Not sure what pushed me to do so! But whatever that is, it was good ...really good. For the first time in ages, I was able to complete a straight 60-minute self-practice without distractions! And while my primary intention was to calm myself from the possible psychological toothache, it still turned out to be a satisfying, sweaty practice. Now I remember one of the important things our YTT teacher told us - "your practice doesn't have to be the usual" ... "do the kind of practice that your body needs at the moment". I really should learn how to listen to my body ...all the time. :)