West Indian Rundown

Some cookbooks are pretty straight forward and just give you the recipes with minimal commentary. And then some almost read like a memoir. Passionate Vegetarian is the latter. The whole book, 1000+ pages, is sprinkled with stories about food and the author’s life. It’s also a “joy of cooking” type of book where sections like “great grains” show you different things to do with quinoa, kamut, etc. I like these sorts of cookbooks for when you run across something a little unusual and want ideas on how to use it. While the book isn’t vegan, there are plenty of vegan or veganizable recipes. And the recipes are interesting, not the same old thing.

This past week, I pulled out this book and decided to make West Indian Rundown. Instead of using seitan, I substituted beef style TVP. I didn’t even bother to rehydrate it, just chucked it in the stew. We just ate it over brown rice. It made a ton and I ended up eating it all week for lunch. It was as good as I’ve had at a Caribbean restaurant, but it doesn’t photograph that well.

Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?

After voting last Friday, I went off in search of a Goodwill that turned out to no longer be there. That seems to happen all the time with Goodwill around here. It wasn’t a total waste of time though because across the street from where it should have been was this:

What? Why has this been kept from me? I know it’s ITP OTP, but still, a vegan Jamaican restaurant! So of course I went in. The guy said everything is vegan. VEGAN. Woohoo! So I bought a callaloo pie and a tofu pie and went off to meet Kevin. Well, I ate half of each cause I was starving. Then I met Kevin at Cosmo’s and he had pie, and Ken & Leigh had pie. I think everyone agreed they were mighty tasty. So later we grabbed up Matt and went back there for dinner. Kevin got the vegetarian steak:

And I got the vegetarian ground beef. They were out of the chicken which seems pretty popular becvause everyone that walked in asked for it.

The dinners come with rice & peas and then you get a choice of salad or veggies. I know it looks remarkably brown, and blurry, but it was really tasty. The steak and ground beef had distinctively different flavors so it isn’t just the same exact stuff in another shape.

I wish this place was in closer to home but I could make it sort of be on the way to Dekalb Farmer’s Market. They also have a bunch of juices if you’re into that. The guy let us sample one and it was pretty good. While you can eat there, it is really designed more as a take out place. So don’t expect tablecloths and, uh, silverware. 

Vegetarian Paradise
6125 Covington Hwy.
Lithonia, GA 30035
(678) 518-8649