i have a serious brain disease. please bring me a cat.
It’s about time to torture you with another flood of photos of fancy vegan food from a Herbivorous Friendship Society vegan supper club. I introduced the concept back towards the beginning of VeganMofo, so for this post I’m just letting the photos speak for themselves. Sadly, I don’t have descriptions. When each dish comes out, Chef Billy Cole tells us all about it, but it falls out of your brain while you enjoy the deliciousness and good company. And yes, there are four desserts this time.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Kevin’s company does this reward trip, usually every June, and we get to go. Free trip, woohoo! This year’s trip was to Playa Del Carmen. Mexico. His company chose an all-inclusive resort as they are wont to do, Royal Hideaway Playacar. This one is also adult only, which was a nice bonus. Also, we got to go with our friends Ken & Leigh again.
Before I talk about food, here are a few photos from around the resort.
Our room:
Kevin playing beach volleyball
A couple of bird friends at the beach
These little guys, agouti, were everywhere. We called the scrabbits because they were like half squirrel and half rabbit.
Now, on to food at the resort. I emailed ahead and was assured there would be plenty of vegan options for us. The reality when we got there was a little different though.
It was lunch time when we arrived. So we settled in then headed to one of the cafés. There was an arugula quinoa salad on the menu that came with hummus and pita. Well that sounded reasonable! Except it was very, very small. A side, not a meal. So we ended up eating a bunch of fries and chips & guacamole until we were full.
Dinner was with the company and all arranged ahead of time. It was a buffet for everyone else, and then we were brought separate plates. On the buffet, there were a few appetizers we could get into:
No such thing as too much guac, I suppose. That jicama salad was a nice surprise. And this was our dinner: a bunch of veggies and a portobello mushroom cap. I’m glad there were appetizers.
The next company dinner, they took us over to the buffet to show us our dish, all covered in cheese. Yay. So they put something together in the kitchen that was basically the same as what you see above presented slightly differently.
Some beans would’ve been cool, but it just wasn’t meant to be I suppose. The staff also seemed pretty confused about the whole vegan thing, despite the assurances I had via email. They clearly had it confused with gluten free. *sigh*
Now breakfast, breakfast was pretty awesome. The hot foods were pretty much off limits, but they had vegan cereals, soy milk, fruits and a make your own smoothie bar. Grab a bowl, throw a bunch of stuff in it, including peanut butter, and the dude will mix it up for you. Or they had a smoothie of the day. Right on.
I’ll admit, it was pretty awesome to chill under a cabana while a regular supply of cold adult beverages were brought right to me. But it was in no way worth what it costs to stay in a place like this.
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of delicious vegan food in Playa Del Carmen. It just wasn’t at this resort. But we were only here four days. So look for future posts full of tasty bits that we ate when we finally got out of the resort.
One of the cool things about Vegan Mofo is that while you’re cruising around checking out other people’s posts, you get ideas for new posts of your own.
This happened to me yesterday as I read Bianca’s post about vegan sugars. It’s true, it can be hard to find vegan brown sugar and powdered sugar in certain places. And sometimes even when you find it, it’s really expensive.
A while back, our supplier for the bakery was out of vegan brown sugar. For a few weeks. Our supply was completely cached and we had to figure something out. Buying retail bags would be way too expensive. Since brown sugar is just sugar and molasses, you can just add sugar to molasses! Der. I just googled how to make brown sugar to get the ingredient ratio. After this, we just kept making it instead of buying it. It’s cheaper and easy to do.
At home this is especially handy when you don’t bake often and would rather not have an extra bag of stuff you rarely use taking up space in your cabinet. So here’s how to make brown sugar:
1 cup vegan sugar
1 tablespoon molasses for light brown sugar, 2 tablespoons for dark brown sugar
Mix together with a hand mixer or stand mixer. Use immediately or store in an air tight container.
While Atlanta does have a few all-vegan restaurants, we don’t have enough to keep me from getting bored. It’s a good thing we have lots of non-vegan restaurants with vegan options. Here are just a few examples:
First, the Kimchi at So Kong Dong Tofu House isn’t vegan. So don’t eat that. But, there are a few vegan options on the menu. Get the Vegetable Tofu Dumpling Soup. If you ask for spicy, you will get spicy. They don’t mess around. You can get vegan Bibimbap. And this is the Bibim Gook Soo, a cold noodle dish that is amazing. Also, DONG.
At Lee’s Bakery, you can get vegan banh mi (ask them to leave off the mayo), tofu spring rolls and pho. Can’t decide? They have a half sandwich/pho combo so you don’t have to. Also, it’s super cheap!
Chai Pani serves Indian food snacks in Decatur. This is either the Bhel Puri or Green Mango Chaat. I’ve had and enjoyed both and both are filled with crunchy things so it’s hard to tell.
This, this is a samosa. It’s fairly large and filling. The best thing to do here is go with some people, get a few things and then everybody eat all the things. Must haves: the Kale Pakoras and the Matchstick Okra Fries. If you don’t like okra because of the slime, try these. Slime free!
Fuego Mundo is a South American wood-fire grill in Sandy Springs. It’s kosher and they have vegan and gluten free options. Seriously, if you have a diverse group, this is a great place. I typically go with the tofu steak, grilled and seasoned. They have a bunch of vegan side options. Sometimes I’m good and I do quinoa. And then sometimes what you see below happens. Hey, at least I got a salad.
Ammazza makes a vegan pizza with a house made cashew cheese sauce. We’ve actually only been once to have it and found it meh. But since everyone else raves about it, I figure we could be the problem here. I’m willing to give it another shot some time.
El Myriachi is kind of like El Myr except it’s filled with families instead of smoke. If you aren’t into screeching children, avoid during peak hours.
The food is similar to El Myr but not the same. They have a taco salad in a fried tortilla bowl, so that’s pretty awesome. The first time we went, the guacamole was diluted with stuff. It was just wrong. El Myr has the best guacamole ever, avocado lightly seasoned. That’s all you need. But El Myriachi’s guac has moved towards El Myr’s style in subsequent visits so I think it’s all good now.
My standard at El Myr is the tofu taco. It’s pretty much the same here except they don’t do the BBQ tofu.
Kevin got a chimichanga because of the frying. It came with proper unadulterated guacamole on the side. Looked pretty good.
I’ve actually been going to Queen of Sheba since 1998, my very first night in Georgia. The food has been consistently delicious all these years. The veggie combo is where it’s at. Tofu tibs are great. And a few years ago they added a larger veggie combo with even more delicious things on it for when you have the monster munchies. This is the bigger veggie combo plus an order of tofu tibs. The far plate is the regular veggie combo.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are many more options, but these happen to be the pics I had on hand. Do you have any favorite vegan eats at unexpected places?
When you find yourself in the possession of three five-gallon containers of peaches, you need to figure out how to get them prepped to use in baked goods in the quickest, easiest way possible. It’s probably too late for this season, but now you’ll know what to do next Summer.
First, cut an “X” in the bottom of the peaches.
Then blanch the peaches in boiling water for a minute or two.
Then plunge the peaches into an ice water bath.
Now the peels should slip right off. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the kind of peaches that release from the pit easily too. If not, you’ll have to slice them off the pit. But hey, at least the peeling was easy, right?