Jackfruit, Take II

I hope everyone had a great weekend!! I love summer weekends, so much more to do, and so nice to be outside!

Flew the Coup

I’m happy to report the little birdies on our deck have officially flown the coup! Here they are on one of their last days in the nest. As you can see, the four of them were all definitely getting too big for their little nest, ha.

One of the little guys is still in our backyard. He can’t seem to get over the fence yet. His mom is still bringing him food, and I suspect he’ll be able to fly out eventually. As you can see from the below picture, he can fly for little increments, but just hasn’t gotten over the fence. We’re rooting for him!!

Thankfully, Bubba’s pretty old and doesn’t seem to have any interest in the bird walking around his territory that is the back yard.

Jackfruit Success

As you may remember from last week, we bought a jackfruit and it ended up being too ripe. This time, we opted for canned green jackfruit, and it worked MUCH better!

It looks much lighter in color than our actual jackfruit, and it confirms our suspicion that the last one was just too ripe for a meat substitute.

It pulled apart with very little effort. We decided to try to make a “tuna” salad, inspired by the TuneRahh Sandwich at FUD (also made with jackfruit). Doesn’t it look like tuna?

We discovered soy-free Vegenaise recently and used it in our “tuna” jackfruit salad to make this a fully vegan meal.

And the final product, alongside a fresh salad dressed with Erik's awesome homemade salad dressing:

I mixed together the pulled jackfruit with the soy-free Vegenaise, chopped celery, onion, and an assortment of spices. We were pretty happy with the results.

This canned jackfruit opens a whole new world of jackfruit “meat” opportunities! I’m excited to try more, and this jackfruit is very easy to work with.

Monday night we’re going to a raw food class at FUD that I’m very excited for. Pictures and recap will certainly follow!

Our 4th wedding anniversary is on Thursday so we figure it’s just part of our anniversary week celebration!

Jackfruit

Check out our little deck birdies now!

I went outside last night to water some plants and I was shocked to see the birds up and about, so big! It’s like they grew 3 inches over night.

Mom is as protective as ever (if not more), and I imagine these little guys flying away any day now. I don’t know how long it usually takes for them to fly, but I guess time will tell!

Until then, we will stay afraid to go onto our deck lest mom spread her protective wrath upon us!

Spicy Sweet Potato & Black Bean Pitas

We bought some Ezekiel brand pitas the other day and we have been putting them to excellent use. I love how they help make such a quick and easy meal.

This meal was a vegan version of one of our longtime favorites, Spicy Yam & Ground Turkey tacos.

Basically, I followed the recipe but used black beans instead of turkey, and added more sweet potatoes. Note: next time I will add more jalapeños. The extra sweet potatoes really drowned out the kick.

Stuff that pita with the sweet potato mixture, some vegan cheese, fresh tomatoes and guacamole and you’re good to go! Served along sautéed broccoli, zucchini squash and mushrooms:

Jackfruit

I mentioned earlier this week how we hunted down a jackfruit after eating vegan jackfruit based meals at FUD. We had never heard of jackfruit until eating at FUD, so I’m assuming I’m not the only one.

What is jackfruit?
-- Jackfruit is a species of tree that is part of the mulberry family
-- Native to parts of Southern and Southeast Asia
-- It can be a great meat substitute; the flesh of the jackfruit is starchy, fibrous and is a source of dietary fiber.
-- They’re huge, see?

My plan was to do a recipe similar to this. As you can tell, it very closely resembles meat, and looks delicious!

Buuuut …. our jackfruit is very sticky. One thing we didn’t realize is that most “meat” jackfruit recipes use very unripe jackfruit, because the more ripe it is, the stickier it becomes and doesn’t work with a savory dish. (And I mean STICKY). By the looks of it, it seems most people use canned jackfruit as well.

So we don’t really know what we’re doing, but we think this is too sticky to use like planned and I read from many sources that it will NOT work as a "meat" is too ripe. So, for now we have not concurred the jackfruit, ha. You live, you learn!

But mark my words, our adventures with jackfruit are not over yet!

Have you ever used jackfruit? Fill me in on any jackfruit secrets!