brussels sprouts Archives

A bittersweet post

Recently I had to replace the hard drive in my MacBook Air. After I’d already decided I was doing Vegan Mofo. I caught the early signs of a failing hard drive, so nothing catastrophic happened, everything was backed up, and thanks to the cloud it was pretty easy to get up and running again.

My iPhoto library is kind of a bloated mess, so I’m probably going to end up manually choosing photos to import. That’s going to be time consuming, so I’m not going to deal with that right now. Instead, I just imported all the photos from my phone. Any past photos I want to use for blogging are on there anyway. If not, I know where to find them.

As I’m going through the photos I’d just imported from my phone, right early on in the first few is a set from Dough‘s holiday party the first year we were open, 2012. Ria Pell kindly hosted it at her second restaurant Sauced, just down the street from us. It was a more upscale place than her signature Ria’s Bluebird, but totally cozy even in its coolness. We’d actually looked at that spot for Dough, but decided it was going to take more work than we could handle. But she made it beautiful and brought out its best features.

Sadly, just a few months after our party, Ria passed away. Ria’s Bluebird lives on, but there will never be a replacement for Ria.

Sharing this special holiday meal she created for us seems like a perfect way to kick off Vegan Mofo. Oh, and keep in mind, she was not vegan, her restaurants were not, but she always took care of us well.

holiday menu at Sauced

The arugula kiwi salad:

Beans & Greens

Spaghetti squash in mushroom sauce

Eggplant Napoleon

Tempeh bacon, spinach & mashed potatoes

My blurry plate, one of them. I must have missed getting a picture of the brussels sprouts, but here they are!

Spiced soy ice milk with candied hazelnuts

Cardamom apple tart tatin

Yes, everything was amazing as it looks. And now I’m hungry.

Dinner at Sauced

We keep forgetting about Sauced. But we finally remembered and decided to go with Kevin’s parents. I started off with a lovely cocktail that had muddled avocado in it.

We had a couple of starter munchies. Guacamole with taro chips and tomato jam. The tomato jam look it to the next level.

Oh, whoops. Forgot to grab a pic of the seitan and potato skewers before we started digging into them. So here are some bits and pieces.

Kevin and I both had the Sketti and Neatballs, seitan in a red sauce over spaghetti squash. Destroyed. I need to try making spaghetti squash again.

And this was a brussels sprouts salad with parsnip chips (I think) on top. I’ve seen recipes for raw brussels sprouts salads, but never had one. A+++ would eat again.

For dessert we went over to Irwin Street Market and had some Jake’s Ice Cream. They have a couple of vegan flavors on hand.

Easy cheezesteak calzones

You know, there’s no shame in making your life easier through some pre-made ingredients. We don’t all have time to spend a couple of hours preparing meals each night. You can still make some good stuff though.

Trader Joe’s round these parts has vegan refrigerated pizza dough balls in white & whole wheat. Sometimes they have an herbed version too. Pizza dough = calzone wrapper.

Now, get your favorite fake beef strips. I used a Gutenfleischer’s steak cut up. Fry it up in a pan with sliced onions and bell peppers.

Divide the dough ball into 4 pieces. Roll out a piece into a circle. Sprinkle the center with your favorite vegan cheese. I used the white Daiya. Add 1/4 of your steak mixture. Fold over and seal up. Bake that shit. 350F for about 15-20 minutes.

See? Doesn’t that look amazing? Because they aren’t saucy, these are also easy to eat on the run. We had them with a mess of roasted brussels sprouts. Wash, stem, cut in half. Toss with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast about 20 minutes at around 400F stirring once in the middle of the cooking time.

Boom.

Awesome birthday dinner

For my birthday this year, Kevin took me to Cafe Sunflower. It tends to be the default special occasion restaurant for veg*ns in Atlanta, but really it’s good any time. While not 100% vegan, there are tons of vegan options and the staff can help you figure out what’s what. Also, kind of rarity for Atlanta veg restaurants, Cafe Sunflower serves beer & wine.

We started with fried brussels sprouts in a sweet sauce. They’re fried, so of course they’re tasty. But I really like brussels sprouts so I prefer them steamed or roasted if I’m cooking them at home.

Kevin had one of his regular favorites, the stuffed acorn squash.

And I had the pepper crusted tempeh. Under it that’s romaine lettuce, potatoes and a balsamic reduction sauce, I think. All rockin’.

And I don’t know if they’ve always had this lighting at the tables, but it’s very friendly to food blogging. 🙂

For dessert, I made my own birthday cake. It was a black forest cake and I utterly failed to take any pictures of it.

Mmmm…healthy crap

I think somewhere in a previous post I threatened to eat some raw kale. And I did too. A big ol’ pile of it with leftover tofu from this meal cubed on top. Some sliced carrots and slivered almonds thrown on just for fun. And a side of brussels sprouts because I love them.

Yes, this is an exceptionally lazy post. But hey, I haven’t missed a day yet!