Chilli bean (no)quesadillas with salad

Ever since I got my sandwich press I've been trying to think of delicious things to squash in it. I wanted it in the first place because a favourite snack of mine was a baked bean-and-cheese toasted sandwich...of course I don't eat cheese any more so it's been kind of hard to think of things, because melting is the fun part! haha.

Anyway, we have thought of heaps since then, and this is one of them. I did splurge and buy some vegan cheese which I'd read had excellent melting ability (important). I rarely ever buy vegan cheese (tofutti better than cream cheese is an exception because it really is better than cream cheese) one, because of the hideous expensiveness, and two, because before I was vegan, I was a huge cheese eater (I worked in a gourmet Italian delicatessen for over a year before I couldn't stand it any more - we got to eat the cheese and olives [and meat ugh] for free so we could tell the customer what it was like. I just made stuff up about the meat) and imitation cheese just does not cut it. Not here in Australia anyway, our choices are rather limited. (I'm very curious about this wonder daiya from the US - maybe Australia will import it...in a million years).

Cheezly super melting edam style is what I decided on. I've had other cheezly before and it was really quite yuck. I can't remember which one it was. This one was fine - it actually melted, and the taste wasn't offensive. I wouldn't say it tasted anything like real edam cheese, but what can you expect? Haha.

I also bought some sour cream - it's chilli, you gotta have sour cream! ...I knew I should have got the Tofutti brand one. I've had that before and it's divine. This one? Tasted like yoghurt. Sweet sweet yoghurt. It's supposed to be sour! Oh well - plus side, it's relatively cheap, and I read the ingredients and it has probiotic cultures in it so I'm going to try and use it as a starter for the soy yoghurt I want to make myself. Commercial stuff is way too sweet to be healthy. The sugar probabaly kills the cultures. And vegan starter culture is impossible to find here. I was going to ask my favourite vegan store (just opened up the road, hooray!) to order some in, but I'll try this first.

Anyhow, the food.

I made up a bean chilli recipe from the Oxfam cookbook (pretty much the same as any other Mexican bean chili recipe - beans, tomatoes, cumin, chilli peppers, onion, capsicum, garlic).

Yum. ALWAYS a good fallback if I can't think of anything to cook. Or if you feel like you're getting a cold.

The recipe said to mash half the cooked beans and stir them into the chilli mixture, but I kept them seperate and just mixed in the whole beans. The mashed ones I spread (or tried to, they were dry - next time I'll mash with some water) onto some round multigrain wraps (make sure yours are vegan. Many of them use glycerine as a humectant and rarely specifys which kind), grated some of the cheezly edam on top and folded it over and squished in the sandwich press. The cheezly melted, but it would have worked better if the bean mush was hot when I grated it on. (I made this in stages through the day).

I served the (no)quesadillas with some of the chilli on top, with a dollop of yoghurt sour cream and a side salad with: nasturtium, spinach, yellow capsicum, red onion, kalamata olives, green beans, sunflower seeds, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. There was avocado but I forgot to put mine on!

This was a very satisfying meal to make. The cheezly was a treat. I doubt I'll buy anymore until I have a full time well paying job. Hur, hur.