The Porter & Mayer Hawthorne

Last Friday we had tickets to see Mayer Hawthorne at the Variety. Beforehand we met friends at The Porter for dinner. We started with the Belgian fries and they were ridiculous. Slathered in garlic oil. So good.

The vegan option at The Porter is the black bean burger. Oh, look, more fries. Now, given the reputation The Porter has for their food, I was expecting a little more from this black bean burger. It was .. okay. Not bad at all, just nothing memorable about it. Although that red pepper mustard was delicious.

Beer was consumed as well. I started with a Hopscotch, then dialed back the % to a Terrapin Easy Rider. It was like going from Winter to Summer. Easy Rider could become a regular summer beer.

We didn’t arrive at the venue until towards the end of the opener’s set. And our favorite seats were already taken. So we headed to the balcony. We found a pair with a perfect view except for the people shuffling to and from the stairs.

We first saw Mayer Hawthorne as an opener for Chromeo. Even if you aren’t 100% into the Motown, blue-eyed soul kind of music he puts out, the show is fantastic. It really is a good time.

And here’s a better view from the floor. These days there’s no need to be that person holding up their phone or camera the whole show because someone else definitely will.

Baked pasta & cheese, Tex-Mex style

After making a pot of chili, I flipped back a few pages of The Happy Herbivore to the Baked Shells and Cheese recipe. One of the variation was to add a can of chili and make it a chili mac. So I just added a cup and a half or so of the chili to it. I’ve always been a fan of nutritional yeast cheezy sauces, but I don’t think I’ve ever made one that uses silken tofu in it. It made the sauce really creamy. Very nice. Apparently it’s like glue on plates though. My dishwasher wouldn’t get it off. I had to hand wash some of those dishes. The top is sprinkled with bread crumbs and a little Daiya.

Meanwhile, there was still chili leftover. It went on to become lunches and top grilled hot dogs. I really stretched that one out!

Chili and cornbread

Sometimes I’m smart about menu planning. This particular week, I decided to make a chili, then a chili mac. It cuts the boredom of eating the same thing for days on end. I chose the Chili sans Carne from The Happy Herbivore. There were a couple of weirdish ingredients, like curry powder, but I just went with it to see how it would be. And it worked out well.

There’s a law or something that says you can’t have chili without cornbread, right? This batch is the recipe in Veganomicon with a drained can of diced green chilies tossed in.

A little Daiya on top.

And you can see the chilies in the cornbread slice. I might’ve also slathered it in coconut Earth Balance.

Dinner at Sauced

We keep forgetting about Sauced. But we finally remembered and decided to go with Kevin’s parents. I started off with a lovely cocktail that had muddled avocado in it.

We had a couple of starter munchies. Guacamole with taro chips and tomato jam. The tomato jam look it to the next level.

Oh, whoops. Forgot to grab a pic of the seitan and potato skewers before we started digging into them. So here are some bits and pieces.

Kevin and I both had the Sketti and Neatballs, seitan in a red sauce over spaghetti squash. Destroyed. I need to try making spaghetti squash again.

And this was a brussels sprouts salad with parsnip chips (I think) on top. I’ve seen recipes for raw brussels sprouts salads, but never had one. A+++ would eat again.

For dessert we went over to Irwin Street Market and had some Jake’s Ice Cream. They have a couple of vegan flavors on hand.

 

Dumplings and Hunan Salmon

Maybe it’s all the years of Chinese food being one of the few vegan options when eating out, but now it generally isn’t my first choice when eating out. I don’t hate it or even dislike it, I guess I’m just not excited by it. I like Thai, Vietnamese and Korean much better.

But we still go out for Chinese and it’s still good. This time we headed to Green Sprout to celebrate J.J.’s graduation. We started off with steamed dumplings. They were okay, but I like Harmony’s and Chinese Buddha’s better.

And I had Hunan Salmon. It’s vegan salmon, duh, lightly battered and deep fried with a nice assortment of vegetables. Don’t get me wrong, it was good and I was happy to eat it and the leftovers. But like most Chinese food I just can’t get excited about it.