despite the craziness, we have still been eating

I have had my face buried in textbooks and been so in my head lately, that I just haven't had much free fun time to catch up on everyone's blog or even update my own too often. Mad props to all my blog friends who have busier schedules than myself and still manage to keep up with our interactions. I need to pencil in my blog time, for sure!
This past weekend, although a very sad one, did include some good food. Since Jared and I couldn't officially celebrate our third wedding anniversary last Wednesday (since Jared was working), we ended up going to one of our favorite places, Doc Chey's, for lunch on Friday. I got my very favorite dish there called Spicy Garlic Eggplant with Tofu.

On Saturday we made taco salads for lunch. I cooked up some tofu crumbles with chili powder, cumin, cayenne, salt and black pepper along with a can of drained kidney beans and a splash of salsa to put atop a bowl of chopped romaine lettuce, diced tomatoes, chopped avocado and diced red onion. Since it was a salad, we used my dad's tostada vinaigrette that we call Rex Sauce (mixture of white vinegar, water, canola oil, salt and sugar) and a splash of sweet Thai chili sauce. I also placed a few corn chips on the side to crunch over top. Yum!

On Saturday night, I was feeling like having a good ol' plate of food that is good for the soul. I made fried tofu triangles that were coated in cornmeal, chipotle powder, chili powder, cumin, lemon zest and salt (inspired by the Chili-Cornmeal Crusted Tofu out of Veganomicon) along with some Cajun style red beans and rice and corn on the cob. I'm sad to say that the red beans and rice was a tad bit disappointing but what else might you expect from a packaged product? The tofu was addictive and the corn was sweeter than pie!

Okay, so after class today, dropping off the recycle items, laundry and studying, I really hope to catch up on everyone's blog today!!!

stir fried rice, grilled Teese sandwich

Jared gets off of work kinda late so I try to make stuff that tastes amazing reheated. This week I cut to the chase and made 2 of my favorite dishes into 1: Stir Fried Rice. Early in the day I steamed jasmine rice and let it hang out at room temperature. When I was ready to eat I fried up a block of tofu in canola oil and set it aside. I diced a broccoli crown as well as a small zucchini along with a shredded 1/4 of a green cabbage and placed the washed veggies in a colander. I slowing poured boiling water over the veggies in the colander to slightly steam/wilt the veggies so they wouldn't be raw in my fried rice. I then fried up my cooked jasmine rice with a bit of canola oil, sesame oil and sesame seeds until the edges were browned and crispy. I added the steamed veggies in with the rice with a little Hoi sin sauce, soy sauce and red pepper flakes. At the last minute I combined the fried tofu. I topped it all off with chopped green onions and more black and white sesame seeds. This was nothing ground breaking but Jared really, really enjoyed it after a long day at work.

Is it true that one of my favorite foods of all times is back: Grilled Cheese!? Thanks to Teese and Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe for carrying it, we can again enjoy a grilled cheese sandwich when nothing else will do.
I'm not gonna lie, the very first grilled cheese I made with Teese didn't blow me away. The problem? I cut the Teese (insert joke here) too thick and it overwhelmed the whole sandwich. It tasted too soy milky and got really juicy/drippy when it melted (kinda like Buffalo mozzarella when it's melted). Plus I didn't think it was salty enough and kinda tasted like dill (not my most favorite thing). So, for my second grilled Teese sandwich, I cut the Teese thinner and added a bit of garlic salt, which gave it a salty bite and toned down the dill taste. Both times I made this I did add thin sliced tomatoes because I don't know about your tomatoes right now, but ours (from Florida which we got at our local farmers market) are so wonderful. Sweet, full tomato flavor and bright red! Plus I think grilled cheese sandwiches are a little boring without sliced tomato.
Perfection on a plate!

The price of Teese wasn't too bad either, about $8 for a pound of it (I have definitely spent more on an imported cheese before). I'm not sure it will be something we will always have around, because I could dangerously eat too much of it, but it is certainly the best non-animal milk cheese I have had since becoming vegan and I am thrilled I CAN have a decent grilled cheese sandwich once again.

Cold Udon Noodle Salad for Jared

AW, poor Jared. It's Sunday yet again and that means he is off to do a 12-hour shift at his job that is 30-45 minutes away (on Sundays . . . it's much longer on weekdays with more traffic). It rained the past 2 days here, which means Jared didn't get to ride his bike around town too much. Plus it seems to only rain on his days off. And the final kicker? Today is one of the most gorgeous days so far this year. Its chilly, breezy but crazy sunny and everything is green. Its a "go on a picnic" kinda day really. He's super grumpy about it and I really do feel bad for him. Plus I miss him like crazy.
So, I thought the very least I could do was to make him a big lunch that he can snack on throughout his long day. I made a HUGE batch of cold udon noodle salad with Chinese eggplant (a less bitter variety of the Japanese eggplant), orange bell pepper, fried tofu, green onions and black sesame seeds. The "dressing" for the salad included peanut butter, soy sauce, maple syrup, a healthy dose of Sriracha, sesame oil, chili oil, water, garlic, ginger (which I didn't have enough of) and rice wine vinegar. I wish I had used lime juice instead of the rice wine vinegar, which made the background too acidic without enough flavor to justify the acidity. I fried the tofu in canola oil with a little salt and drained them on a paper towel. In a screaming hot pan, I sautéed the eggplant chunks and orange bell pepper strips until they were just wilted. I think if not for the black sesame seeds and green onions, this wouldn't have been as good.
Jared said he enjoyed it, so I'm a happy lady.

A Very Happy (Birthday) Meal, Just the Facts, Ma'm

First and foremost, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JARED!!! I made one of his favorite dishes: Red Curry Thai Tofu with steamed cabbage, carrots and broccoli with jasmine rice topped with green onions.


I have been tagged by Billy from Vegan Talk for five facts about myself. Fun!!!

1. I am seriously considering going back to school, possibly in the medical field, probably nursing school to become an R.N. I have been thinking about this for years and it crosses my mind at least once a week. Both my mom and dad are nurses and it would be an honor to follow in their footsteps in a most respected path. It would most likely end my job hunting. I can admit that fear has stopped me from pursuing this but I am tired of being lost.

2. I collect stickers. I especially love cute stickers like animal in space suits (which Jared got me from Borders), Hello Kitty, butterflies and flowers. I have a severe weakness for them, stopping me in my tracks every time I see some at the store. I love to put them on envelopes and letters. I am eternally 5 years old in this area.

3.I love grocery/food shopping. I could easily spend an hour in any supermarket, farmers market, specialty or international grocery store. I love planning meals, making lists, shopping and then putting away my loot.

4. I have recently picked up playing guitar again after a long hiatus. I forgot how lovely it is to create something as pure as music. Jared and I are planning on starting a husband/wife group and hope to start recording soon.

5. I am obsessed with watching shows about crime, real or fiction. I love shows like Law and Order, the First 48 and pretty much anything on TruTV (formerly Court TV) or A&E. If it's mob related, even better. My obbession started with Unsolved Mysteries when I was a kid. The music in that show still scares me a little. Ironically, I hate horror movies. Funny how I am afraid of stuff that will probably never happen to me but fascinated with stuff that could.

I'd like to hear from everybody, but since I have to pick five, I'll pick Theresa from The Tropical Vegan, VeggieGirl, Kamutflake Girl, Leigh from Raspberry Swirl and
Vegan Cowgirl (doesn't her name rock?!)

Ikea finds, 100 calorie snack, Udon Noodle Splurge

This first picture isn't anything spectacular, just my breakfast of coffee with light soymilk and a piece of whole wheat toast with a little natural peanut butter. What I am excited about is the dishes and coffee press in the picture. We went to Ikea to find a lamp for our living room and I found this cute cup and saucer set, where the saucer is large enough on one side to have a piece of toast or other breakfast goodie on it. The cup and saucer were $6. I also have been wanting a coffee press and found this one for $12.
I <3 Ikea!

I'm sure everyone has seen those pre-packaged 100 calorie snacks on the market now. I have seen a few of my fellow bloggers making their own, and thought that was a good idea. Since I am trying to cut my fats and sugary carbs, I decided to make a 100calorie snack plate with veggies and sea salt. This plate had carrot sticks, cucumber spears, daikon radish sticks and cauliflower florets. It's amazing how tasty and filling 100 calories really can be.

Since I had extra calories left from the day I splurged on dinner tonight. I made a noodle bowl with whole wheat Udon noodles, lite tofu, cabbage and onions with a soy/teriyaki/sriracha sauce with sesame seeds and cucumbers. This meal was hefty, coming in at 500 calories, 14 grams of fat (it also had 11 grams of fiber and 21 grams of protein) but it sure was good . . . and I still have enough calories for an apple for dessert/snack later!

Finally, some cooking

So I finally got some cooking done. For breakfast, we had "Fronch" Toast from "Vegan with a Vengeance". This was the first time we had made this, and it was ridiculously good. We used Golden Pecan Bread from our local farmer's market.



For lunch, we had a lentil soup. This is just my basic soup that I throw in whatever we have lying around. This one contained: red lentils, fingerling potatoes, carrots, celery, garlic, shallots, zucchini, thyme, rosemary, and sage.



And for dinner, I used the Marinated Asian Tofu recipe from "Veganomicon" and grilled it. We had firm tofu that is made locally, but it was still a little too soft and didn't hold up to the grill as well as I would have hoped, hence, the little uneven pieces of tofu. Despite the random shapes, it still tasted great. I added that on top of stir-fried snow peas, carrots, broccoli, and green onions and rice.

un-sushi appetizer

Jared and I are eating out less to save money. Vegan sushi isn't expensive, per se, but when you order a salad, drink and factor in a tip, eating sushi out can get expensive. I was craving some sushi yesterday but realized I didn't have any nori wrappers . . . So, I made a un-sushi dish that incorporated all of the things I love in sushi and had on hand. I made a sweet & spicy sesame sauce with soy sauce, agave nectar, sesame seed oil, sriracha, green onions and black & white sesame seeds to put on top of thinly sliced avocado. I also made some steamed rice that I covered in more black & white sesame seeds. This was so good and surprisingly filling.

Harmony, Bake Off

After reading about Harmony Vegetarian Restaurant from Luminous Vegans' blog (who I actually got to meet today!) we have been there 3 times and it gets better every time. It is on the outskirts of Atlanta and takes a bit to get there but it so worth the drive. One of my favorite things they have there is actually something they give to use at the start of the meal. I eat it as both a salad and palate cleanser and it is made out of grated carrot, daikon radish and cabbage marinating in a sweet rice vinegar. I am gonna start making this at home because it s that good.

I got the General Tso's "Chicken" (my new favorite thing there)

and Jared got the "chicken" with sting beans, which also rocked!

Today was the 2007 Holiday Bake-Off at Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe. I ended up making an Amaretto Cheezecake with a cinnamon graham cracker crust. It actually turned out really good . . . But not good enough to win : (
Here are some pictures of the bakeoff goodies:


Jared and I at the bake off

It was a lot of fun being in a room full of like-minded people. It was especially cool to meet fellow local vegan bloggers (check them out Luminous Vegans), who we hope to hang out with in the near future.

Sushi!

We finally got our hands on Veganomicon and the very first thing we made was the Spicy Tempeh Nori Rolls (pg. 47). We couldn't stop there, so we also made a few of our own creations. I did the prep including making the rice, tempeh mixture and cut the veggies. I also made a sweet and spicy dipping sauce that had soy sauce, Thai chili sauce, agave nectar and sesame oil. Jared did the rolling and then I cut the rolls. We were a good team on this!
The Spicy Tempeh Nori Rolls were fantastic! They had the Nori seaweed, rice, tempeh mixture (tempeh, Vegenaise, chili and sesame oil), green onions and avocado. I highly recommend you make these. We also made four other rolls that contained some combination of grated carrots, cucumbers, green onions, avocado, spicy tempeh mixture and toasted black and white sesame seeds. Jared was even able to make an inside out roll which was very impressive! It was a lot of work, from start to finish about an hour to make all the rolls. When we sat down to eat, they were gone in about ten minutes!!! My fears of making homemade sushi are gone and we can't wait to make these again!

Veggieland

Jared and I were going to try this all vegetarian but VERY vegan friendly place on my birthday but it was closed on Sundays, so yesterday we finally made it out to Veggieland. Like a lot of restaurants around here, Veggieland is in a strip mall. The menu was vast, ranging from veggie burgers with loads of toppings, salads and hot dishes. PLUS, at least 5 vegan desserts! Despite being in the richy rich part of Atlanta (Buckhead area) the prices were incredibly reasonable.
Jared decided upon the daily special of Potatoes and Veggie Curry with Brown Rice. It was very tasty and was only $5.95.

For me, there were too many choices and I panicked. I got the chili hot dog that came with sweet potato fries and coleslaw. It was good but not great. This is something I could have made at home. I will say the coleslaw was awesome and made with vegan mayo! The sweet potato fries were a bit under cooked. Luckily, this whole plate of food was only $4.95, so at least I didn't feel ripped off.

What we will go back for was the vegan desserts! Jared and I shared the strawberry cake. It was a two layer yellow cake with vanilla icing and strawberries in the middle and a strawberry glaze on top. It was so good that I talked two other customers into getting a slice. The cake was the priciest menu item coming in at $3.95 but I love that a restaurant has vegan desserts and well worth the price to encourage them to continue making lovely vegan treats.

All and all, we will go back to Veggieland. I will take my time with my menu choice and pick something I couldn't make at home way better. Jared was very pleased with his dish and we both are in love with the dessert!
Veggieland
211 Pharr Rd Ne # B
Atlanta, GA 30305
(404) 231-3111

It's my Birthday!

So, it happened. I turned 28 today. First things first. My lovely husband bought me these birthday presents. I got a really cool tea press, which worked really well and a new garlic press since our old one was dead. He also got me cute stickers, a cool vegan cookbook called ExtraVEGANza by Laura Matthias and the August edition of VegNews magazine (which I now hope to subscribe to). Jared did an awesome job!

Since I needed to use the mung bean sprouts I grew last week I decided to make a miso noodle bowl for lunch today. I made a homemade broth out of celery, onion, carrot, garlic, ginger, fresh parsley, black peppercorns, soy sauce and mirin. I strained the broth and added miso paste. I cooked soman noodles in a separate pot. I added raw zucchini, snow peas and mung bean sprouts to a big bowl, added the miso broth and noodles and topped it off with a bit more veggies.

A big bummer having a birthday on a Sunday means having a nice vegan meal out was very difficult. Both of the places we tried going to tonight, Cafe Sunflower and Veggieland, were both closed on Sunday! Turns out a lot of places we like to eat at are closed on Sunday but since we usually only eat out on Saturdays, we never knew. Anyway, we ended up trying a place called Top Spice which is a Thai Malaysian place. It was pretty good and they had many things to chose from. We of course made sure no fish sauce was in our dishes.
Jared got Spicy Basil Tofu:

And I got Garlic Tofu (Sorry the picture is dark. We turned the flash off):

Originally, we were just going to get dessert out at Cafe Sunflower or Veggieland so we didn't make a birthday treat at home. Since those plans fell through and we didn't have time to make something, Jared and I bought an apple pie from our local health food store along with Soyatoo Whipped Soy Cream (which was absolutely AMAZING!).

peanut curry, chocolate covered raspberries

Last night I made Thai peanut curry sauce with tofu, steamed broccoli and jasmine rice (not pictured). I cooked red curry paste in chili oil (for extra heat!) and added coconut milk, agave nectar, soy sauce and natural crunchy peanut butter to it. Some of the peanut curry sauce was added to lightly fried tofu and centered in a ring of perfectly steamed broccoli. The dish was topped with green onions, which is a necessity. The reserved peanut sauce was added over the rice and broccoli after the picture was taken.

We also picked up some organic raspberries on sale at the farmers market that were just begging to covered in chocolate sauce. In a double boiler (well, a pan with a little water boiling with a Pyrex glass bowl on top), I melted dark chocolate chips with a bit of whipped Earth Balance (for glossiness) and Soy creamer (for smoothness). Very awesome!

tofu triangles, watermelon and the best dressing!

When we can't think of anything we want to eat but have tofu in the house, I almost always make this snack. Sometimes I press the tofu but this time I just cut the tofu into triangles and drained them on a paper towel. They were coated in corn starch and garlic salt and shallow fried in canola oil. I made a dipping sauce out of mirin, soy sauce, natural sugar, sriracha chili sauce, sesame oil, green onions and sesame seeds (both white and black).

My favorite part of summer, maybe the only thing I love about summer . . . WATERMELON! This one was pretty perfect.

Last but not least, the best vegan creamy style dressing ever. And I made it! It is a cross between ranch and green goddess. It is very naughty because it has the triple threat: Vegenaise, Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese and Tofutti Sour Supreme. I blended the three together with my immersion blender with a couple green onions, a handful of fresh parsley, agave nectar, celery salt, garlic salt, black pepper, onion powder and cayenne pepper.
I made a salad for dinner with spring mix, broccoli, tomatoes and of course the dressing.

The dressing also tastes amazing with tortilla chips. Plus I like the green hue with the yellow corn chip. Lovely.

Red Curry Tofu, Summer Fruit Salad

Tonight I made red curry tofu. Since we can't get awesome Thai food around here I have mastered, at least to our liking, red curry. I use a red curry paste that has dried red chili, garlic, lemongrass, shallot, salt, galangal and kaffir lime peel. I cook the paste in canola oil, add coconut milk, natural sugar and a splash of soy sauce (to replace the fish sauce). I fried up some tofu and sauteed cabbage, onions and carrots. I served the tofu and veggies slathered with the red curry sauce with steamed jasmine rice and green onions. Yum!

Also we had this summer inspired fruit salad with strawberries, peaches and blueberries with a light dressing of lemon juice and agave nectar.

Chinese Buddha

After a failed attempt to see The Simpsons Movie today we decided to go
out to lunch. Jared and I aren't huge fans of Chinese food but we love
this place in midtown Atlanta called Chinese Buddha. They have a meat
eaters menu and a vegetarian menu which is cool but a lot of their
vegetarian food does have eggs in it so we still have to ask a lot of
questions. This is a place we would take our parents to when they come
to visit since it would please a lot of palates.
I got Sesame "Chicken" with steamed rice.

Jared got "Beef" Satay with steamed rice.

raspberry peach topped waffles, Green Sprout

It's Saturday, so that means I made waffles this morning. This is one of the tastiest and easiest recipes ever. It has 1 cup of unbleached white flour, 1 tbsp baking powder and a pinch of salt with 1 cup soy milk, 1 tbsp agave nectar and a splash of canola oil added to it. This is a fluffy waffle batter so we have to stir it up every time we add batter to our waffle iron. The topping was a a couple of spoonfuls of raspberry preserves mixed with a splash of maple syrup with a perfectly ripe peach and raspberries stirred in.

We were running around today and went to Green Sprout for lunch.
I got Orange "Chicken" and

Jared got "Shrimp" and broccoli. They nailed the shape, color and texture of the shrimp, which freaked me out a bit.