vegetarian Archives - Page 8 of 80

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.

Big, big changes

So, I haven’t been really public about this, but since it’s about to open, maybe I should out myself. Kevin and I have been working on opening Dough Bakery for a few years now and it’s finally about to happen. Like quit my corporate job kind of happen.

While we’ve been really good and dumping money into it, bringing on Simon of Gutenfleischer’s fame on as a partner is what is making this possible. Simon has been dealing with all the agencies like a pro. Not to mention getting things organized inside and out. And Star is always there to lend a hand. Like that weekend we all spent painting the outside of the building. Or, remember when it was 105F and we striped our parking lot? Good times.

Anyway, places to watch for grand opening info: doughbakery.com | Twitter: @doughbakery | Facebook

Basil rolls with tofu & peanut sauce

So that peanut sauce we put on the pizza was so good we had to eat it again pretty much immediately. I cut a bunch of basil off one of my bushes and star used it in these basil rolls she whipped up.

Perfect summer food! Of course we slathered them with peanut sauce.

Vegan Pizza Day 2012

Vegan Pizza Day arrived June 30th and we had no plan. Sure, we actually have a few places in Atlanta where you can get vegan pizza, with vegan cheese and all. But none of them does it 100% right. We’re spoiled by all the pizza parties we’ve had. Simon & Star had the makings for peanut sauce, so we picked up a couple of dough balls from Savage Pizza (psst, you can buy dough balls from Savage Pizza), grabbed more ingredients from Sevananda, and headed over to their place to build up some pizzas.

Delicious! What’s for dessert? Pizza! Cinnamon apple pizza with tofutti cheese slices on top.

Not a shabby Vegan Pizza Day representation.

Smoothie boost

So all at once I got a bunch of products to try, and I’m slowly trying to get caught up. I like smoothies for breakfast, especially if I’m riding my bike. It just doesn’t seem as lumpy in my tummy as cereal. My standard is a banana, some blueberries, non-dairy milk, chia seeds and a little of whatever Vega product we had lying around. If I want it a little heftier, I’ll toss in a little nut butter. So to test my first batch of the Vega energizing smoothie, I didn’t really deviate much from that. This is the Bodacious Berry with a small banana, some frozen blueberries and flax milk.

Tasty! A nice way to cover your nutritional bases. The next one I tried was the Choc-o-lot. Again, I whirred it up with a banana and some flax milk. It was actually more chocolaty tasting than I was expecting. Very nice.

The next packet I tried got me through a preview day at the bakery. So after about a 15-hour-day of baking and prepping on a Saturday, I was up by 6am to bake and prep more so we could be open 9-4pm. Whew! I grabbed the natural packet and took it with me. So instead of getting into some baked goods when I started feeling hungry, I whirred up a smoothie with the natural packet, a banana, frozen strawberries and soy milk. It really seemed to be able to keep me going until lunch.

Now, I’m an asshole and didn’t try the product just mixed with water. Kevin likes the Vega products that way. I like to add them to some other things. Hey, it works both ways! The vanilla and mango packets were given to others to try so I don’t have any thoughts on those.