i have a serious brain disease. please bring me a cat.
It’s helpful to have a few meals you like that you can easily make out of non-perishable items that are easy to keep on hand and easy to make. This one is a great example. Whole wheat spaghetti, alfredo sauce, frozen turnip greens with diced turnips, and vegan parmesan on top.
Let’s face it, a pile of spaghetti in red sauce looks pretty naked without some parmesan on top. I’ve never found the prepared versions you can buy to be exactly right. Parma seems to come closest. But there are tons of recipes out there for making your own. Which is always cheaper. After working my way through them, I’ve settled on a favorite: the recipe in Yellow Rose Recipes. Of course, I’m a tease for telling you that because I couldn’t find the recipe posted online. So maybe you should just try to hunt down a copy of the book if you don’t have it already. It’s a good one!
Gomashio can be so simple but adds magic to a variety of dishes. You can buy vegan versions in markets that have Asian goods, just watch the label for bonito (fish). Sometimes they have all kinds of veggies in them in addition to the sesame seed base. But my favorite is this simple recipe from How It All Vegan. If you’re afraid of seaweed, you can leave it out, but the amount in this recipe is not enough to make it fishy tasting. I sprinkle this with a heavy hand on just about any Asian dish I make. It also takes salads to the next level. Try it!
Thursday after work, since I had the car, I headed to Performance Bicycle to pick up some tubes and because I’d never been there before. It’s kind of huge, lots of stuff. After that I popped over to REI to use up my dividend that I’d apparently already used up. For some reason I was feeling super bloated and crappy. This got translated into “go buy a big pile of food for dinner from Chat Patti.”
Chat Patti used to be my go to way back when I was just vegetarian. Then a couple of years ago I found out that vegan friends found plenty of tastiness there as well. So I pop by every once in a while when I’m up that way. Especially since we’ve lost track of our favorite South Indian chef.
This is a very casual place. Cafeteria-style, order at the counter, get to go or eat there. Usually rather than trying to make some kind of decision, I just get a veggie thali, hold the dairy and let them put whatever on it. And for $8.99, the amount of food is ridiculous.
The thali usually comes with a dessert, but they all have dairy, so she put something else in there to replace it, not sure what though. The down side of me not picking things out is that I can’t really tell you what they are. And, of course, it’s going to make it hard for me to order some of these things again. Like this. I’m going to call it Indian nachos. A pile of fried with a variety of sweet chutneys on top. So freakin’ good.
The next box contained 3 chapatti breads, a potato pea samosa and sambar (I think.) The leftover chapatti survived nicely overnight in the fridge and refreshed in 15 seconds in the microwave to go with my lunch the next day.
And, the next box had rice, chana masala and some bean thing. See what I mean?
And here’s what I ended up eating for dinner:
A normal person might’ve gotten three meals out of this but I devoured the leftovers for lunch. It’s probably a good thing this place isn’t convenient. Nothing here was crazy spicy, but I have had food that’ll make you sweat here before. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
One thing nice about Atlanta is that just about every cuisine is represented here. Korean is one I have very little experience with though. So when we found out that there was a Korean restaurant that was vegan friendly, the gang had to go invade. This is from the second visit to So Kong Dong Soon Tofu House. All you have to do is tell them no fish, no meat, no egg, no fish sauce and they will take care of you.
We started with these banchan. Kind of from left to right: salty radish, radish soup, broccoli in sesame oil, salad, noodles also in sesame oil. The salad and noodles were the same as last visit but I think the rest were new. The internet tells me they switch it up regularly so you don’t always end up with the same things.
Kevin got the Tofu Bibimbap which is what I had last time. It was pretty good, but I like the noodles better.
We shared a Tofu Dumpling Soup. This is the best thing ever. It arrives all bubbling in its caldron. Seriously, next time I’m sick, I will want this. Actually, I want this right now. And I’m already full of dinner.
And I got the Acorn Noodles. It’s a cold noodle dish with lots of shredded veggies. Love it!
I should’ve grabbed a menu so I could give the exact names of the dishes. It’s really helpful to have a guide your first time there like we did. Lisa and David helped us navigate the menu and find the veganizable items.
Now here’s a good one for summer. Healthy, light and room temperature or cold. Actually, I’d vote for room temperature on this one. Remember the sources for recipe by email I posted a few days ago? Well, that’s how I found this recipe by Nava Atlas. I browsed the veggie recipes I’d collected for inspiration while making my shopping list. Kevin doesn’t like olives so I didn’t use them. And I substituted almonds for the pumpkin seeds. And the red bell pepper is there, I just chopped it up and tossed it in with the bean salad. This also made great leftovers for lunch the next day. I tossed it with some baby salad greens that needed to be used up. You could make this really pretty to serve like Nava does, or just kind of throw it on a plate like you see here.