Category: vegan/veggie/ar

Sloppy Joannas

Still working off of my store of ingredients, Friday I poked around to see what I could make for dinner. I was going to make cheesesteaks again, but when I defrosted my chunk of seitan it didn’t smell quite right. When in doubt, throw it out. So what else to do with these sub rolls? Sloppy Joannas from Yellow Rose Recipes popped in my brain. I’d never made them but sure enough I had all the ingredients. Well, I didn’t have tomato sauce but I had tomato paste. Dilute with some water and tada! tomato sauce. Just for fun I tossed on some cheddar Daiya.

These were pretty good. They didn’t totally rock my world. I probably need to adjust the seasoning to my taste. They’re probably spot on for sloppy joes and I just didn’t eat those very often. Actually, I haven’t had since I was a kid. Kevin thought the Daiya tasted kind of weird with the sandwich innards. I didn’t think it was that off.

Also, the frozen french green beans from Trader Joe’s rule. They are going to become a freezer staple for me.

Bourbon black-eyed peas

One of the fun things about VeganMoFo is how it inspires you to try different things. This week, I only made a minimal soy milk and cereal run so dinners had to come from ingredients on hand. Of course, I could probably live for 6 months on my hoarded ingredients, but still. One meal’s inspiration came from Jessy’s bourbon baked beans post. I had sweet potatoes and collards on hand. And a bag of frozen black-eyed peas. Sure, those will work. And work they did! Kevin thought they were a tad sweet. I can see possibly cutting back the sweetness and/or adding something sharp like a bit of cider vinegar. But all in all this was a perfect fall meal.

Pasta in cheezy sauce

Dinner in a flash seems to be a recurring theme around here. If it’s not so flashy that I’m having someone else cook it, it’s often something that takes little fiddling. Bonus if it’s something that I can keep around for a quick meal without worrying about it going bad.

Enter the easy vegan cheese sauce mix. Your Vegan Mom posted the recipe a while back and ever since I first whipped it up I try to keep some around. I always keep frozen peas and pasta of some sort in the house. And I always have soy milk. So half a cup of the mix, plus one cup of milk equals sauce. If you’re feeling fancy, add soy curls, tofu, chopped up seitan log, whatever. Here instead of the peas, we had spinach on the side and I tossed in some tofu leftovers I had. Really you can just dump whatever you like in it. I only wish I had a vitamix to get the mix more powdery. I think the sauce would come out smoother.

Dinner and a show, eh

Sunday night we went to see Thievery Corporation with some friends. Beforehand, we grabbed dinner at R. Thomas Deluxe Grill. R. Thomas is one of those places where just about everyone can be satisfied. They have some meaty stuff, vegetarian, vegan, raw. They usually have a vegan desert too. While I do feel kind of bad for the birdies in cages outside, it’s a good place to go with mixed company.

They have several bowls that can be vegan. I got the Lucky Green Tea Bowl. Except they were out of bowls, so it’s on a platter. Doesn’t matter, it ate up fine. Tofu and veg stir fry in a miso green tea sauce on top of quinoa with pickled cabbage (I think) and a pile of greens. Half satisfied me and I ate the other half for lunch the next day.

Beth was sitting across from me and got one of the raw dinners, #2 I think. I enjoy getting them from time to time.

Thievery Corporation was really good. Ton of people on stage. At least 5 vocalists. Three encores. You can kind of see in the picture how packed the stage was with stuff. One of the last songs of the night they had a bunch of girls from the audience come up and dance on stage. There was one that looked kind of like Kate Gosselin and was doing the most awkward booty dance I’ve ever seen. She was also apparently dry-humping the sitar player. I’m sorry I missed that. Or not.

View from the old folks seats in the top balcony
View from the old folks seats in the top balcony

Burrito in a bowl

One of my lunches this weekend was a burrito bowl from Willy’s Mexicana Grill. There are a bunch of these all over metro Atlanta. We don’t go here often, but it’s cheap, filling, and fairly healthy food. Plus they have a nice tofu. I skip the salsa they have behind the counter and use the ones they have on the salsa bar. They have more flavor.