i have a serious brain disease. please bring me a cat.
Last week when making my grocery list I was looking for something full of late summer vegetables. Southwestern Fresh Corn Stew was perfect. Healthy and delicious. Nothing better than fresh corn. I used anaheim chilis but couldn’t really taste them in the finished stew. Next time I might throw a jalapeno in it for a little zing. Ate it with a little fake parm sprinkled on top.
It would be lovely if every restaurant was as ready to serve vegans as Woodfire Grill. And not something half-assed either. This was a full 5 course tasting menu every bit as complex and interesting as the meaty one looked to be. If you need a fancy special occasion option in Atlanta, give it a try. It’s expensive, but worth it. Be sure to call first and ask to make sure they can do a vegan menu for you.
Amuse: pickled cherry, avocado, oil cured olive
First course: local cucumber and athena melon, avocado, crispy bread, aged sherry, olive oil
Second course: local tomato salad, fennel, oil cured olive, marcona almonds, micro basil, olive oil
Taste: white gazpacho with golden raisin puree, espelette, and lemon oil
Third course: roasted mushroom and dried fig risotto, fresh fig compote
Fourth course: roasted spaghetti squash, toasted pecans, local peaches, smoked emulsion, green beans
Dessert: rich chocolate pudding and a blueberry/cherry sorbet (the dessert was different than what they had on the nice sheet they gave us with the menu, so the description isn’t as accurate or nice)
Oh, and if you’re like me, clean your car so the valet doesn’t feel the need to wear a hazard suit to park your car. 🙂
No biggie, just some lunch from Whole Foods. I rarely eat out for lunch, but had to run over that way and pick up Grover’s special million dollar cat food. It’s barley and wheat berries with curried corn on top, a few chunks of southern fried tofu and a big pile of garlicky kale.
Normally I really like this recipe for Stuffed Poblano Chilies with Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Wow, I guess I’ve been making it for almost 15 years. Sometimes I’ll mix some chorizo with the mashed potatoes. This time I threw a bunch of kale in with the potatoes towards the end of the cooking time. So back to the “normally” qualification up top. I got some weird poblanos. They’re hot. Just stinging hot. Serrano hot but without the flavor that normally comes with a pepper. So I’ve been eating them, but haven’t really enjoyed them as much as usual.
Now this Mexican Quinoa was another story. It’s a very easy side dish and it can easily be varied by using different salsas. I used Whole Foods’ store brand of chipotle salsa. This was perfect.
The beans are just some pintos that were hanging out in my freezer from a big batch made in the slow cooker. Originally the were going to be turned into refried beans, but I got lazy when it turned out Kevin wasn’t going to be home for dinner and just put them on my plate as is.
Lots of brown food, but better for you brown food.
We had a bag of May Wah chicken legs taking up space in the freezer because I don’t use a lot of this sort of pre-made fake meat stuff. So this week in an effort to use up some freezer stuff, we had wings. And you can see that Kevin had to pay for this by having not one but two vegetables as sides: kale chips and roasted cauliflower. I just googled for a recipe for the cauliflower and this one was the first result. You only need half the oil, if that, and I just left out the parmesan and chives. Kevin didn’t complain about it so I guess he liked it. That or he was too excited about wings to complain. Oh, and this was the sauce for the wings. I stuck to the recipe amounts because I wasn’t sure how spicy it would be. It wasn’t very spicy. Maybe next time we’ll cut in some spicier hot sauce.
