Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe Ice Cream Social

How awesome is it that Atlanta's one and only vegan store, Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe, is having an ice cream social saturday night to celebrate their first year on Highland Ave anniversary.
They are the coolest.
We'll be there, will you? Hope so. You should be.



<3
Lori

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.

last post of the year- Faux Feta Cheese Pasta

Growing up, a weekly meal my dad and I would make was feta cheese pasta. It was a very simple, yet delicious meal of thin spaghetti, feta cheese (sometimes we got the special French variety from our local Middle Eastern grocery store), green onions and garlic cooked in olive oil with salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper. That's it. It was a dish I thought I would never get to have again as a vegan since feta has such a distinct flavor and texture that is hard to match. When I saw Leigh from Raspberry Swirl (Leigh is also co-owner of Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe in Atlanta) had made a pizza with some faux feta cheeze (and had some at at Cosmo's for sale) I got very excited. We ended up going down there soon after and buying a package of the lemon oregano variety with very high expectations. While the faux feta smelled exactly like feta and had a nice crumble to it, the taste and mouth feel of it was not feta like . . . to me anyway. Jared thought it tasted pretty right on, but you have to understand how much feta cheese pasta I ate as a kid (and grown up), so I knew what I was missing. It didn't have that melty but still intact texture I was craving, in fact is was a bit on the grainy side to me. Oh well. It wasn't a complete flop. The green onions, garlic and olive oil with the salt, black pepper and cayenne was exactly as I remember with the pasta. I think a lot of people would really like this faux cheese product, unless they are ex-cheese snobs like I am and have a very delicate palate for that sort of thing. Any way, I hope everyone has a fun but safe New Year's Eve and wonderful start to the New Year!

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.

Nog Cheezecake

***UPDATE- MAKE THIS THE DAY BEFORE YOU PLAN ON EATING IT. IT TASTES EVEN BETTER THE LONGER IT SITS!***

Ever since I heard about the 2007 Holiday Bake-Off at Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe I have been racking my brain as to what I would make. I knew I wanted to try something new, which is brave and bold for a bake-off. I felt a craving of eggnog come over me. Then I remembered my Dad making a Pumpkin Cheesecake, so I decided to start searching for and practicing a vegan holiday cheezecake. Today I made a Vegan Eggnog Cheesecake I found on the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen blog. I followed this recipe exactly this time, just to see what the taste and texture would be like. It rocked, if you are an eggnog fan like I am. Since one of the rules in the bake-off is that if a recipe from another person's cookbook (and I assume also someone's blog) is used, it cannot be an exact copy of the recipe. So, I think I am going to try to incorporate pumpkin in my cheezecake, use brown sugar instead of regular sugar (not bleached!) and use Disaronno Amaretto, which is apparently suitable for vegans. OR maybe I'll just use the Disaronno and add cinnamon in addition to the nutmeg. Who knows . . . I'll come up with something tasty though.
I cannot wait to make a few changes to see if I can win one of the categories in the bake-off! If it doesn't work out, at least I found an awesome vegan cheezecake recipe.

Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe

Jared and I are still relatively new to Atlanta and spend most of our weekends exploring. This weekend we were driving around in the Inman Park area of Atlanta. I was singing really loud, dancing around in the passenger seat and looking out the window when I saw it . . . the word VEGAN on a store front! I said to Jared, "I think I just saw a vegan store." Jared spotting a parking spot and immediately pulled over. Sure enough we were walking into Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe, this awesomely intimate and adorable all vegan store (duh!).
They had a more than adequate book selection, where I picked up
They also had a great selection of cosmetics, supplements, tons of vegan snacks and loads of cute shoes, bags, shirts, wallets and belts.
I love that Atlanta keeps surprising us. I love that we have a community to support stores like this. You too can check out and shop at Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe online. If you are ever in Atlanta, check them out at 672 Highland Avenue NE.