Category: food

The laziest bowl of food

Saturday afternoon I’d planned on going grocery shopping. But I had a headache and decided to wait until Sunday. Oh, what’s for dinner then? After rooting around in the cabinets a bit, I came up with this concoction. Start with some ready to eat rice and an instasoup.

Let’s see, a vegetable would be good. How about some frozen green beans? Sure! So, a little rice in the bottom of the bowl, some vegan broccoli cheese soup, next and green beans. I did add some nutritional yeast to the soup because I could. Oh, and sprinkled parm on top.

It was actually really good. And made enough that I had some for lunch as well.

Saturday eats and bike ride

How have I lived in Atlanta for 13 years without ever having gone to Ria’s Bluebird? Well, I fixed that Saturday morning. Got there bright and early to mostly beat the crowds and tried the Bionic Breakfast with a side of spicy tofu. It was delicious especially topped with sriracha. The tofu was good, but ended up making it too much food for me. It made me sad to leave some behind but we were headed out for a bike ride afterwards and I didn’t want to carry leftovers.

After eating, just outside, we found this. Looks like something that could be explained by alcohol.

Jared and I headed out on a bike ride. We kept out Memorial towards downtown, then headed North, took Marietta St., cut back across 17th St. and headed to the new section of Piedmont Park. Looks like it is no longer a secret.

It was HOT, so a visit to King of Pops was sounding good. Except he wasn’t on the corner yet. We thought about heading to the Ponce festival, but headed to The Porter instead. They open at 11am on Saturdays. Yay! Apparently beer makes a great recovery drink because I felt awesome the rest of the ride home. I ended up riding a total of about 24 miles. I forgot to set my bike computer and only got a few legs on map my ride. I really wish that app didn’t eat so much of my iPhone’s battery.

Easy weeknight dinner

It’s helpful to have a few meals you like that you can easily make out of non-perishable items that are easy to keep on hand and easy to make. This one is a great example. Whole wheat spaghetti, alfredo sauce, frozen turnip greens with diced turnips, and vegan parmesan on top.

Two favorite condiments

Vegan Parmesan

Let’s face it, a pile of spaghetti in red sauce looks pretty naked without some parmesan on top. I’ve never found the prepared versions you can buy to be exactly right. Parma seems to come closest. But there are tons of recipes out there for making your own. Which is always cheaper. After working my way through them, I’ve settled on a favorite: the recipe in Yellow Rose Recipes. Of course, I’m a tease for telling you that because I couldn’t find the recipe posted online. So maybe you should just try to hunt down a copy of the book if you don’t have it already. It’s a good one!

Gomashio

Gomashio can be so simple but adds magic to a variety of dishes. You can buy vegan versions in markets that have Asian goods, just watch the label for bonito (fish). Sometimes they have all kinds of veggies in them in addition to the sesame seed base. But my favorite is this simple recipe from How It All Vegan. If you’re afraid of seaweed, you can leave it out, but the amount in this recipe is not enough to make it fishy tasting. I sprinkle this with a heavy hand on just about any Asian dish I make. It also takes salads to the next level. Try it!

A mighty need

Thursday after work, since I had the car, I headed to Performance Bicycle to pick up some tubes and because I’d never been there before. It’s kind of huge, lots of stuff. After that I popped over to REI to use up my dividend that I’d apparently already used up. For some reason I was feeling super bloated and crappy. This got translated into “go buy a big pile of food for dinner from Chat Patti.”

Chat Patti used to be my go to way back when I was just vegetarian. Then a couple of years ago I found out that vegan friends found plenty of tastiness there as well. So I pop by every once in a while when I’m up that way. Especially since we’ve lost track of our favorite South Indian chef.

This is a very casual place. Cafeteria-style, order at the counter, get to go or eat there. Usually rather than trying to make some kind of decision, I just get a veggie thali, hold the dairy and let them put whatever on it. And for $8.99, the amount of food is ridiculous.

The thali usually comes with a dessert, but they all have dairy, so she put something else in there to replace it, not sure what though. The down side of me not picking things out is that I can’t really tell you what they are. And, of course, it’s going to make it hard for me to order some of these things again. Like this. I’m going to call it Indian nachos. A pile of fried with a variety of sweet chutneys on top. So freakin’ good.

 

 

 

 

The next box contained 3 chapatti breads, a potato pea samosa and sambar (I think.) The leftover chapatti survived nicely overnight in the fridge and refreshed in 15 seconds in the microwave to go with my lunch the next day.

And, the next box had rice, chana masala and some bean thing. See what I mean?

And here’s what I ended up eating for dinner:

A normal person might’ve gotten three meals out of this but I devoured the leftovers for lunch. It’s probably a good thing this place isn’t convenient. Nothing here was crazy spicy, but I have had food that’ll make you sweat here before. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.