Category: vegan/veggie/ar

Madras Sri Ganesh Ram Palace

Hey, guess what? I ate out again. That’s fucking shocking, isn’t it? I’m just going to come out and say that I don’t think I could live anywhere that didn’t have a South Indian restaurant. But I want it to be a little bit inconvenient. Otherwise I’d be waddling around with an additional hundred pounds on my frame. No joke.

While we have a number of good Indian restaurants in Atlanta, Madras Sri Ganesh Ram Palace is by far my favorite. Thankfully, it’s not all that convenient for me being out by Stone Mountain and all. It is a vegetarian restaurant but there are plenty of things vegans can eat. The server will be glad to help you with any questions.

Need some convincing? That’s okay, I came prepared with food porn. I bet there are a dozen pics of Medhu Vadai floating around in my archives. What’s not to like about savory lentil flour doughnuts?

Kevin’s favorite is Gobi Manchurian: battered, deep fried cauliflower in a very spicy sweet sauce:

Dosas are a favorite of mine. So is the Chole Batura. But I like to work my way around the menu because everything is so good. This is the first time I got the Uppatham with vegetable curry. The Uppatham come with another dish on the menu that isn’t vegan, but they happily changed it out for me. And it was lovely with carrots, potatoes and other veg in a spicy sauce that was warm but didn’t blow my head off. The Uppathams did a great job of soaking up the sauce.

Uppatham extreme close up:

You’re hungry now, aren’t you?

Dinner at Cafe Sunflower

Yes, indeed, there has been a lot of eating out going on. I’m still working on pre-farmer’s market run photos though, so eventually you’ll see I cook stuff sometimes.

This past Friday, we had dinner at Cafe Sunflower with some friends. It’s an Atlanta vegetarian institution.

We started off with some fried okra and fried tofu. I’m not a big okra fan, but these were pretty good. Low on the slime factor. The tofu was excellent.

Then as my entree I had the Kung Pao Soy Chicken. Here it ends up being somewhere between Chinese and Thai in flavor. I think there’s Thai Basil in it or something. And it comes with brown rice so I can pretend it’s all perfectly healthy. Kevin had the stuffed acorn squash but it was extra blurry so no pic of that.

The best part about going to Cafe Sunflower is the vegan CAKE. Say hello to peanut butter mousse cake:

Not everything is vegan, but just ask. The servers with be straight up with you.

Eating out, take away

So much eating out lately. Too much. It can be harder to make good choices when eating out. Especially when tempted by Soul Vegetarian’s mac and cheese. I’m not going to say that these are super healthy choices, but at least they include some good veg, even some raw, and healthy grains.

This is the small salad combo at Soul Vegetarian with carrot salad, eggless salad and beets on romaine with sprouts, cucumber and tomato. Oh, and their prince dressing. Sure can’t forget that. And a side of corn bread. The fun part about eating a bunch of beets is the surprise you’ll get after they, uh, work their way through.

R. Thomas is a local restaurant here in Atlanta. They aren’t even vegetarian, but have a decent number of veg*n options. They also have grab and go food you can pick up at a few different markets around town. This one was my lunch one day. A bean wrap, eggless wrap and quinoa salad wraps with a raw cabbage salad.

Teese Pizza

The past couple of weeks, I haven’t had a chance to get over to Your DeKalb Farmer’s Market like I normally do every week. So I’ve been living off of freezer food, occasional Trader Joe’s or grocery store quick stops for essentials, etc. This pizza was one of those meals. I had some pesto, fakeroni and Teese in the freezer. So all I needed for pizza to happen was a crust. Trader Joe’s to the rescue! They sell dough balls in the refrigerator section for $1.19. A cheap and easy pizza solution.

With all the Daiya posts lately, you would think that I’ve completely forgotten about Teese. The Teese mozzarella style works really nicely on pizza. I didn’t feel like washing my grater (see, lazy), so I just sliced it thinly and then cut into sticks and scattered them over the top. They still melted up nicely.

Mac & Cheese

Apparently I can’t stop with the Daiya. I swear they aren’t paying me. Or even sending me free cheese. I’m not opposed to that though. 😀

How is it that there are so many styles of vegan mac & cheese that are so freakin’ good? You have ones based on nutritional yeast, cashews, whatever magic Soul Vegetarian puts in theirs, etc. So I had to see how Daiya would do. And the answer is, quite well thank you very much. Because I’m lazy, I used this recipe. I still had some lunch meat log so I chopped that up in place of the veggie ham. I also made a half batch so I wouldn’t be eating nothing but mac & cheese for two weeks, not that there’s anything wrong with that. When making it, I went with the lower amount of soy milk and I think I would like it saucier so next time I’ll try the higher amount at least. The taste was spot on though. I say this as someone that hasn’t eaten cheese in years, but I have been through a ton of vegan mac & cheeses and this one seems to hit closest to the blue box kind. I’d love to get the opinion of an omni or vegetarian on Daiya.

Seriously, how 70s does this plate look?