food Archives - Page 57 of 93

South Indian Food Love

You know, it actually took moving to Atlanta before I had really good South Indian food. The few places I tried in San Francisco in the 90s were definitely of a Northern sort, and gringoed to boot. I will say that I’ve been back to SF since and discovered perfectly lovely South Indian food between Union Square and the Tenderloin.

Atlanta, though, has a ton of South Indian options. Even so, sometimes I like to cook it. I’m too lazy to bust out enough dishes to fill a thali, but recently I did manage two dishes and dosas. I think a full out scratch recipe for dosas isn’t hard, but making them from a box, a box less than $1, is way easier. It’s pretty tasty for a mix and will do when you’re feeling lazy from making two other dishes.

Both of these dishes come from Healthy South Indian Cooking. This is not even a vegetarian cookbook, but it has many, many vegan recipes. I’ve gotten so I don’t mind some meat recipes. Usually they can easily be veganized.

This is a blurry Potato Okra Mandi. I accidentally made two things that were pretty soupy. D’oh. This one is full of sour tamarind goodness. I’m not usually a fan of okra, but they don’t slime up in this dish.

I thought Beans Kootu was more dry last time I cooked it. Heck, it probably was. At least it wasn’t a full on soup. Sugar snap peas in a coconutty bean sauce.

And here it is all together with the dosas.

Speaking of Indian stuff in Atlanta, one of my favorite places to stock up on supplies is Taj Mahal Market. Spices, beans, mixes, chutneys, thali, etc. This week I made a quick trip up there during lunch for black mustard seeds and came back with that plus red lentils, tamarind paste, saffron, black salt, coconut milk, two dosa mixes, young jackfruit in brine, roasty tasty (peanuts covered in a bean flour coating, not fried) and rose spread:

Even if you don’t need anything, it’s worth stopping in for a browse.

Vermont Sourdough with increased whole grain

You people might be tired of looking at these, but I’m still amazed every time I open the oven and pull one of these loaves out. I did that? This time I went with the Vermont Sourdough with increased whole grain from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread. And again, it’s about perfect. The rye flour in it doesn’t weigh it down at all. It does take some planning to produce a bread like this, but it’s totally worth it.

I enjoyed my first slices with a raw kale salad and marinated grilled tempeh. A pretty healthy lunch.

Slip & Slide Party

It’s not as dirty as it sounds. Well, yeah, it was dirty. But in the muddy kind of way. Danielle and Matt hosted a slip & slide party to celebrate her art show at Youngblood. We brought over our soft serve machine and I cranked out a huge batch of vegan waffle bowls. Yep, vegan waffle bowl sundaes. We know how to do things in Atlanta.

Here’s my waffle bowl making station. The vodka gimlet helped when I wasn’t pouring them all over the floor. D’oh.

Here’s a lovely waffle bowl sundae. Mmmmm….

Oh, and this isn’t the little plastic sheet of a slip & slide. This was an inflatable, 2-lane slip & slide, with palm trees and a pool at the end. Insane!

Oh, you need action shots? Here, they’re taking a cue from Wipeout and spinning around before heading for the slide. Kevin didn’t quite make it.

Cookie Time

Most of yesterday was spent busting out cookies for Danielle Distefano’s art show opening at Youngblood. If you didn’t come down last night you missed the cookies, but the show runs through August 31st. So you can still check out all the lovely ladies. And I dare you to get out of Youngblood without buying something.

So what about those cookies? These cute little guys are Almond and Rosewater cookies. I even made Kevin decorate some of them.

Kevin suggested we do some thumbprint cookies. These are kind of a pecan shortbread filled with strawberry jam. All filled by Kevin!

Sometimes, you just have to make something ridiculously decadent. Chick-O-Stick white chocolate chip cookies are absolutely decadent. Where the heck do you get vegan white chocolate chips? From Cosmo’s of course! Chick-O-Sticks? Your local gas station or convenience store.

These were a last minute decision. How can you make a bunch of cookies without including any chocolate? So I made a batch of cappuccino cookies with chocolate chips.

Washington DC Food Porn

Wedding, monuments, art, yada yada yada. I think what most people reading this want to see is the food porn. If you want to see that other stuff too, it’s in my flickr account.

We landed Friday afternoon and after we got settled into the hotel, went out in search of food before meeting up with everyone at the Brickskeller. Teaism in Dupont Circle turned out to be one of the options in between the two, so that’s where we went. They had a few vegan options right off the menu. I got the bento box and Kevin got a seitan stir fry.

When the food came out, it looked small to me at first. Until I started eating. It was deceptively small looking food. Turned out to be really filling. The bento box had grilled veggies, edamame, sweet potatoes, brown rice and tofu. The grilled veggies and edamame were served cold. I liked that, but I know it might put off some people. Here are a couple of dark, blurry pics along with a middle finger for anyone that has a problem with that.

Saturday, we had certificates for breakfast at the hotel. Fruit, peanut butter and jelly sammiches, coffee, juice. Standard hotel stuff. We had lunch at Java Green. I try to get to Java Green every time I’m in DC. This particular day part of the proceeds went to Compassion Over Killing. Bonus! I felt a little carb heavy from breakfast, so I opted for the Chili “Chicken” Wrap and a live juice mix, I forget which one. The wrap turned out to be crazy hot. Someone got extra happy with the rooster sauce, I think. Whew! I like hot, but wow. I think Kevin’s sammich was “chicken” and “cheese” on a ciabatta roll.

I should have taken pics of our food at the wedding. We had cucumber and avocado sushi rolls and a tofu veggie stir fry that the made up for us special. It was really nice of them to cater to us like that.

Sunday morning we headed to Sticky Fingers for breakfast. We split a soft, fluffy and fresh cinnamon roll. Then Kevin had pancakes and I tried the grilled cheese made with Daiya. I had it on whole greain bread, so that makes it healthy, right? To me, Daiya has the tastiest vegan cheddar style cheese I’ve had yet. Plus it gets all melty like Teese does. Can’t wait until Cosmo’s has it in. Also, there’s a pizza chain with some Metro Atlanta locations that is going to start carrying Daiya.

Sticky Fingers Grilled Cheese — Sticky Fingers Grilled "Cheese"

Apparently most vegan friendly non-asian restaurants near us Sunday were closed. So we ended up at Pizzeria Paradiso. I think I liked it more than Kevin did. The brick oven did lovely things for the crust. They didn’t have any fake meaty toppings, so we went with basil, red onions and red bell peppers. I think they were using Follow Your Heart cheese. It couldn’t have been too bad. We ate it all.

For such a short trip, we definitely packed in a lot of sight-seeing and yummy vegan food. The best way to approach DC is to say that you’re coming back. Because there’s no way to do everything in one trip.