Creamy all-in-one bowl

When I’m scanning recipes in Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites, I tend to get visions of buying even fatter pants and possibly investing in a rag on a stick.

But the Creamy All-In-One Bowl didn’t look too terribly waist expanding, so I gave it a go. Tofu, broccoli and pineapple in a creamy peanut butter dressing over brown rice. Look, bonus fruit serving! And it was really good. The dressing had a nice tang.

ATL Vegan Drinks – February

We don’t make it out to enough of these. ATL Vegan Drinks is a vegan dinner once a month with drinks and usually a special menu. The Wrecking Bar was already offering some vegan items and featuring vegetarian specials every Tuesday night so it was a good choice to try out.

We started off munching on some fries. They were excellent, but be aware that the special sauces that normally come with them aren’t vegan.

And a pretzel. It was really salty, but it advertises that right up front. You can just pull off some of the salt chunks. Looks like I got to that pic a little late…

The turnip parsnip soup was delicious. The two roots really worked together to mellow each others favor.

I ordered the Braised kale, mustard greens & apple strudel with chipotle-hop BBQ. It was not too heavy on the pastry and packed full of greens. So good. The BBQ sauce wasn’t as smokey as I was expecting but still good.

Kevin had the Sweet potato pancakes with vegetable goulash. It was tasty, but I was into my greens more.

I also got to taste the Falafel and the Vegetable pappardelle with pesto with seitan. Both good. Apparently they make their own pasta in house. Their seitan had a really nice texture as well.

Since The Wrecking Bar is a brewpub I had some, uh, beer. The first one was the Jemmy Dean Stout which was okay. It lacked a certain fullness I expect with a stout. The Victor Imperial IPA was excellent though and a bit of an ass-kicker. Go slow on that one.

Thanks again to Brett for organizing these. It’s a real asset to Atlanta’s vegan community.

Falafel salad and hummus

Here’s another great use of those Trader Joe’s frozen falafel balls. Just break them up on top of a salad. Use tahini sauce as the dressing. We have a falafel hut here that has a falafel salad on the menu. It’s awesome when you’re feeling a falafel but not the bread.

What goes with falafel? Hummus! I just ate it with some tortilla chips. This one is home made all the way back to dried beans. Canned beans sometimes aren’t cooked soft enough. Cooking your own gets them as soft as you want. The top is sprinkled with sumac and a little olive oil.

A return to Saravana Bhavan

While we were chasing our favorite Indian chef all over town, we skipped most of the other restaurants in favor of his. Now that we can’t find him, we’ve had to branch back out. First Chat Patti and now Saravana Bhavan.

It’s hard to resist Medhu Vadai. Savory lentil doughnuts. Mmmm.

Sticking to my standards, I also got the Mysore Masala Dosa.

The inside is spread with a red spice mixture. It’s not really hot, but it is warming as you eat it you can feel your innards getting toasty.

And I finally made it to the blob of potato goodness in the center. It was a little bit oily, but not too bad.

Chocolate chip cookies

You know, if you make the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the bag of chocolate chips and just replace eggs with egg replacer or flax eggs and butter with Earth Balance, they come out awesome. Seriously, it’s as easy as that. I don’t make them often because I will keep shoving them into my face until they are all gone.