Remember ants on a log? The celery, peanut butter and raisin combination was one of my mom’s favorites to make when I was growing up. Last night, I combined ants on a log with this wonderful idea from Martha Stewart Living  (I told you I shouldn’t read this magazine too often!).
With endive leaves swapping places with the celery, avocado instead of peanut butter, and scallions instead of raisins, this vegan treat is a healthy, low-calorie, low-carb alternative to ants on a log. Dinners like this are a really easy way to fill yourself up and get a potato chip-like crunch without a zillion calories. And I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you all yet, but I freaking love chips. Celery and endive are obviously not chips, but sometimes alternatives like this really do help!
The Martha Stewart Living recipe was part of a story about smoked trout in the January 2012 issue of the magazine. I don’t eat meat, so I had to get creative. Instead of using flaked smoked trout, I used smoked paprika to add some flavor. The smoked paprika tastes a little like BBQ chips, too.
Ingredients
1 avocado
2 tsp. lemon juice
salt & pepper
smoked paprika
scallions
2 endive heads
ziploc bag
Directions
Rinse scallions and endive. Chop scallions into small pieces and set aside. Separate endive leaves from the head and arrange them on a plate. Pulse avocado with lemon juice until smooth, adding salt and pepper part way through.
Spatula the avocado mixture into a ziploc bag. Trim a small opening in one of the corners of the bag (check out this post for pictures of what this should look like). Pipe the avocado like frosting onto the endive leaves. Place a few scallion slices onto each leaf. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika to taste. You can skip on the paprika, but it will be kinda bland.
no paprika
with paprika
On a related note… my dog is terrible.Â
In making this for dinner, I learned my little dog is a sneaky little thief! I made this and set one plate of food on my kitchen table and another on the counter. I go upstairs for 20 minutes, and when I get back to the kitchen, I find THIS!
Notice how she only ate the fatty and delicious avocado part. As always, her shame face combined with mild shaking made me feel really bad when I had to tell her, “No, bad dog!” But I know she understands what she did was really wrong. What’s amazing, though, is the fact that she managed to grab a single piece of endive and not disturb the jar of paprika, my camera (thank goodness), or anything else on the table.
Seriously. How did she do this?!
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