i have a serious brain disease. please bring me a cat.
One of my lunches this weekend was a burrito bowl from Willy’s Mexicana Grill. There are a bunch of these all over metro Atlanta. We don’t go here often, but it’s cheap, filling, and fairly healthy food. Plus they have a nice tofu. I skip the salsa they have behind the counter and use the ones they have on the salsa bar. They have more flavor.
Early into VeganMoFo, I saw this recipe on Mo’s blog and it totally appealed to me. Especially since I think we were in the middle of the great flood of 2009. What’s more appealing on a gloomy day than an lovely bowl of soup. Especially one with such bright flavors.
I did make a couple of small changes. There were only a few sad looking jalapenos at the farmer’s market so I grabbed a serrano instead. And I chucked in a sliced clove of garlic with the ginger because I just couldn’t help myself. Oh, and I almost forgot, I also chopped up a couple of romaine lettuce leaves and chucked them in the bowl. This was really easy and totally satisfied the pho craving I’ve had lately. Well, for now. But it’s easy enough to bust this out another time pretty quickly.
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!
No fancy cookbook recipes for this meal. Nope. This was a wing it sort of night. And it worked. So I’ll tell you what I remember about what I did.
I cut the tofu into thick slices. In a large pan that would hold them all without overlapping, I mixed a little soy sauce, black chinese vinegar, chili oil and a minced clove of garlic. The tofu hung out in there while I prepped sweet potatoes and asparagus. It got flipped at some point. Then I fried it up on a cast iron grill pan heavily coated with spray oil.
The sweet potatoes were diced small, so they’d cook faster, tossed with olive oil, rosemary and salt and baked at about 400 F for around 10 minutes. Then I added a little minced garlic, stirred them up and baked another 10 minutes give or take.
The asparagus were sauteed in olive oil with, yes, minced garlic. Part way through cooking, I squeezed a half a lemon over them. Oh, and salt happened. Salt always happens.
Tada! Quickie meal!
Yes, indeed, there has been a lot of eating out going on. I’m still working on pre-farmer’s market run photos though, so eventually you’ll see I cook stuff sometimes.
This past Friday, we had dinner at Cafe Sunflower with some friends. It’s an Atlanta vegetarian institution.
We started off with some fried okra and fried tofu. I’m not a big okra fan, but these were pretty good. Low on the slime factor. The tofu was excellent.
Then as my entree I had the Kung Pao Soy Chicken. Here it ends up being somewhere between Chinese and Thai in flavor. I think there’s Thai Basil in it or something. And it comes with brown rice so I can pretend it’s all perfectly healthy. Kevin had the stuffed acorn squash but it was extra blurry so no pic of that.
The best part about going to Cafe Sunflower is the vegan CAKE. Say hello to peanut butter mousse cake:
Not everything is vegan, but just ask. The servers with be straight up with you.