vegan/veggie/ar Archives - Page 76 of 92

Reconnecting…

One of the things I did this trip was reconnect with a couple of old friends. Friday, I spent half the day with Sheree. We met shortly after I moved to California in 1987 and were roommates from 89-92, I think. Oh the tales we have on each other. 10th Street Garage. Wild Irish Rose. That’s all I’m gonna say.

Anyway, Sheree and I lost touch around ’94. So we had a lot of catching up to do. Turns out we were living parallel lives in many ways including when and how our cats died and when we bought our first new car. I also got to hear about how some other old friends are doing.

Keeping stuff in order, I should post Cha-Ya now. Kevin and I headed there for dinner Friday night. Vegan Japanese. Here’s the menu.

Edamame

edamame at cha-ya

Senroppon Salad (Shredded Salad) Shredded daikon, turnip, cucumber, and carrots with alsuage tofu, radishes, soybeans, kaiware, pine nuts, Soy-vinaigrette dressing.

senroppon salad at cha-ya

Cha-Ya Roll Tempura sushi filled with avocado, yam, and carrots. The entire roll is lightly battered and deep-fried. Served with a special house sauce. This was AMAZING. But then you probably knew that once you read “battered and deep-fried.”

cha-ya roll

Soba noodle rolls. These were disappointing. The soba noodles weren’t really flavored at all. And neither were the veggies. Blah.

soba rolls

Taku – Sui (Gyoza and Veggies In Clay Pot) Pot stickers, tofu, zucchini, napa cabbage, snap peas, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, silver noodles, and mushrooms in a light broth and served with a ponzu citrus sauce. This had the most amazing veggie broth I’ve ever had. I could drink it by the gallon.

taku-sui at cha-ya

Meh, I’m running out of time. You’ll just have to wait for the Maggie Mudd post.

cha-ya outside

Millennium

millennium menu Thursday night we went to Millennium for dinner. And yeah, it is all that and a bag of chips. Unfortunately, all the pics are crappy. It was all candle lit and I wasn’t going to be rude and use a flash.We started off with some fried potatoes that were absolutely perfect. Big planks that had a thin and crispy outside and perfectly soft inside. I have no idea what was in the dipping sauce that came with them, but it was brown and yummy. The thing about Millennium is that the food is all crazy complicated. Sometimes, you just can’t figure it out.I also got these Vietnamese inspired dolmas. They were crusted in sesame seeds, had a thai coconut curry sauce and there was a salad with avocado. Amazing with a sharp bite of lemongrass. I’ve never had such a light and lovely thai coconut curry.Kevin got the black bean torte. It was as if that mole tortilla stack I made a while back went to an Ivy League school rather than tech school. Smokey wonderful black beans and several sauces & salsas. Crap we could have stopped here. But no….I had these edamame shiitake cakes with brown rice and coconut sauce, greens, and then there were a bunch of vegetables up under the greens, mostly asparagus and sugar snap peas. So good! I did have to walk away from some brown rice though. I mean, had to squeeze dessert in somehow.Kevin had a chard roulade stuffed with tofu cheese. It had tiny black beans and asparagus on the side.The dessert picture didn’t come out well enough to consider posting. We let the waitress pick and she brought a small orange bundt cake soaked in more orange, covered in caramel sauce and with mint sorbet on the side. How many times can I say “holy crap that was good?” I ate my half, but I may have lost a few years off my life for finishing it. It may well have been worth it.

Breakfast at Herbivore

tofu scramble at herbivore

Kevin is going to be soooo mad that I went to Herbivore for breakfast this morning while he had to sit in his class. Hey, I had to eat, right? I chose to go to the one on Valencia, since I spent a lot of time in the Mission when I lived here. It was nice to see some familiar landmarks like that big ‘ol prison looking building, the Bombay Market and Munroe Motors where I threw away a lot of money trying to keep my Triumph running.

It was kind of hard to decide, but I ultimately went with the tofu scramble with spinach, tomatoes and mushrooms. The scramble was nice and moist from the tomatoes, but not soggy. Nutritional yeast was used, but not with a heavy hand, not that that’s a bad thing. And it was crumbled up really tiny. I don’t care, but some people like it chunky better.

The potatoes were partially mashed redskins. It was almost like they used a panini press on the grill to get the creamy & chunky inside and crisp and brown outside effect. They may have been slightly salty, but overall amazing. Although I really can’t tell you why they were yellow.

The toast was a nice artisan bread with lots of holes and a crisp and chewy crust. It came with a jam that was tart and might have been made in house.

Anyway, no real complaints here. Maybe Kevin and I will try the Divisadero location.

Teese Bread

Hey, three pounds is a lot of Teese…so expect to see a few more Teese goodies here. I’ve been wanting to bake more breads, because I really don’t have a lot of experience with it. Then I ran across this recipe. It reminded me of the cheese breads I ate in Italy many years ago and seemed like a good way to use up some Teese. All I did is swap out Teese for regular cheese in the recipe. Since the recipe’s already posted online, I’ll just give you a few pics of the process. teese bread starter bread mixer action shot teese bread before baking teese bread done teese bread innards Oh yeah, and dinner one night was teese bread dipped in pizza sauce with spinach so we could pretend we were eating healthy. teese bread and pizza sauce

Citrus Multi-Grain Salad

Salad
1 cup Lundberg wild rice/brown rice blend, cooked
1 cup quinoa, cooked
2 tangerines, peeled, sectioned and cut into bite sized pieces
1 blood orange, peeled, sectioned and cut into bite sized pieces
2 scallions, sliced

Dressing
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 medium clove of garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon orange or tangerine zest
3/8 cup olive oil

Garnish
1/8 cup walnuts, chopped and toasted lightly in a dry pan

Mix together all the salad ingredients in a big bowl. Whisk all the dressing ingredients except oil together in a separate bowl. Gradually whisk in oil or use immersion blender. Add dressing to salad, to taste. Sprinkle toasted walnuts on top. Eat cold or at room temperature. Will be better if flavors can combine for a couple of hours.