Category: vegan/veggie/ar

Super Vegan Friendly

The Tomato Head in Knoxville, Tennessee is what vegans wish most omni restaurants were like. The menu is mostly pizza, sandwiches and salads. The twist is that the word vegan appears all over the place. Soy cheese. Baked tofu, A vegan version of their pesto. Vegan chocolate chip cookie. Of course, there’s also a bunch of meaty stuff, but the vegan options are much more than that one thing you can have.

I had the Kepner Melt sandwich, not a vegan sandwich as on the menu, but they happily subbed a couple of things and made it vegan for me. Fresh spinach, organic baked tofu, soy cheese for the jack cheese, herbed tomato, pineapple, roasted onion, walnut, vegan pesto for regular pesto and mustard. Nummy. I’m going back for dinner.

kepner sandwich

Raw, Half Raw, Not Raw

What’s there to do in Knoxville? Sit in the hotel and blog apparently. I kid. I’m heading out in a bit to walk a nature trail by the river, stomp around a victorian cemetery and eat lunch. But first, the blogging.

fettucini alfreda

First, the raw. This is Fettuccine Alfreda from Vegan World Fusion Cuisine. I could drink gallons of this sauce. I want to pour it on everything.

cheezy broccoli rice noodles

So I did. This is just rice noodles & broccoli with the cheezy sauce from above. Half raw.

currant scones

And, while I was at the gym Thursday, I watched Ina Garten mix up a batch of scones full of butter and cream. I needed to make something to bring with me to Knoxville, so when I got home I made…scones! These are the Classic Currant Scones from the Joy of Vegan Baking. Decidedly NOT RAW. And NOT HEALTHY. But, REALLY FREAKIN GOOD. I think watching Ina’s technique helped me make these perfect. Mostly I paid attention to how the Earth Balance was cut in making sure it was still in little bitty chunks rather than creamed thoroughly. It can be a little tricky since it softens faster than butter. Especially now that it’s all warm out, and in if you’re me and haven’t turned on the air conditioning yet.

Not Cooking

Here are some more tasty raw goodies we’ve been munching on.

Moroccan Carrot Salad from Raw Food Made Easy

morocca carrot salad

Walnut Paté spread in celery sticks, from Raw Food Made Easy

walnut paté on celery sticks

Just some red bell pepper strips

red bell pepper strips

Carpe Diem Carrot Almond Paté Nori Rolls from Vegan World Fusion Cuisine

carpe diem rolls

Aiyah’s Garden Living Corn Chowder from Vegan World Fusion Cuisine

living corn chowder

So, is this stuff any good? The next pic tells that story.

clean plates

Raw Food

This past week, we’ve been eating a lot of raw food. But I’ve failed to take pictures of most of it. I already had Raw Food Made Easy by Jennifer Cornbleet. I chose it as my first little step into raw because it seemed like most of the recipes could be made without any crazy kitchen equipment. I don’t think I’ve even seen a recipe call for a dehydrator yet. And my blender, crappy as it is, has been able to handle everything put to it.So what have we tried? Below is the first dinner, cucumber soup and not tuna paté on red bell pepper planks. I’m not sure exactly why she uses tuna in the name because it is in no way fishy. It is good though. More like a chicken salad in flavor though. I’ve also used it smeared into celery sticks, on ryevita crackers and mounded on a chopped salad. I didn’t know how I’d feel about cold soups, or, more accurately, room temperature soups, but these have been really nice. The cucumber one was made creamy with avocado and was flavored with dill.

cucumber soup and not tuna pate

What else have we tried? The Piña Colada Smoothie, Marinara Sauce on zucchini ribbons, Walnut Paté, Cream of Zucchini Soup, Papaya Lime Soup, and Not Tuna Sandwiches. The patés keep for a while in the fridge, so they’re good make ahead items. Other than going to the store, the only other thing you really need to think about in advance is soaking the nuts in some of the recipes. Otherwise, the prep work isn’t any more labor intensive than anything else I would make. So I’d say this is a good book to use if you want to take baby steps into raw food.

San Francisco Re-cap

Good grief am I behind! I think I’d better just quickly recap the San Francisco trip and move on.

So, I left you all at Cha-Ya and promised Maggie Mudd porn. For the porn, you’ll just have to head over to my flickr account. I had a cup with lychee coconut and tarmack (peanut butter chocolate goodness). Yeah, that’s a strange combination, but I wanted them both and didn’t want a huge amount. That didn’t stop me from digging into Kevin’s waffle cone banana split. But he needed the help. It was HUGE.

Saturday morning, we went to Alcatraz. It’s about the only touristy thing I really enjoy doing in San Francisco. I mean, you get a boat ride, 2 even, views of the city, views of the bridges, views of Alcatraz. Stomping around Alcatraz with your little headset you get all edumacated. Plus there are some amazing photo opportunities.

While we were down that way, we had to check out the sea lions. They’re stinky but really cute! On several of the docks, the males were having wrestling matches. One would stake claim to his dock and challengers would fling themselves up on it and wrestle with him until one of them was pushed off. On other docks, sea lions were just sleeping away ignoring all the barking going on.

Next, lunch at Herbivore, Divisadero where we had a shwarma war. Kevin got the “chicken” shwarma and I got the regular one. I think it was kind of a draw. But I will say that the seitan they used in mine wasn’t very shwarma like. It was cut in strips instead of slices. And it wasn’t seasoned like I would season shwarma. Oh, and of course, there was dessert, chocolate cake.

After that, we went to Zeitgeist to meet my friend Lisa. I hadn’t seen her since ’98. So we had fun catching up and I got a little loopy on 2 margaritas. Oh, and while we were there, someone I used to work with at Kinko’s said “hey.” Wow. So he gave me the rundown on a few people we used to work with. Small world and all that.

Saturday night we went to see Goldfrapp at the Warfield. The sound guy needed to be fired, but even so, it was a good show. And Alison said she was sick but she still managed to belt out a pretty full show. Unlike Elizabeth Fraser back when I saw the Cocteau Twins a million years ago. But I’m not still bitter…

Sunday, we managed to sneak in a breakfast at Herbivore, Valencia, before we had to go to the airport. I had the tofu rancheros and Kevin got the french toast. And we shared it up like we do. Both were great, but I really liked the batter on the french toast. It was a lot thicker than I’ve had it come out for me. I need to play with that because it made it that much better. We got blueberry cornbread for the plane and Kevin also got a doughnut. But since one of the kitchen guys splattered me with ketchup, I got a doughnut too! The cornbread was sweet and almost more like cake. The doughnut was also cake-like rather than, whatever the other kind is called. Good though and a really unhealthy way to end the short vacation.