Tag: vegetarian

BBQ Tofu Taco

It’s easy to find the full-on vegetarian or vegan restaurants, but it’s not always as easy to find out the ones with awesome veg-friendly options. Just because I’ve been stuffing my face with Elmyr‘s veggie options for a dozen plus years doesn’t mean it’s necessarily common knowledge. So, here it is.

My default order is the tofu taco with no cheese. You can get the tofu regular or BBQ. I’ll do either depending on my mood but most people go for BBQ. Now, it’s a big taco. Two tortillas, burrito length, just not burrito full. Perfect if you destroy some guacamole before hand. And you’ll want to. Because theirs is awesome. Not full of a bunch of crap to dilute the avocado goodness.

You want the full on food log? Get a burrito. They have some interesting add ins like potatoes. There’s also a vegan quesadilla called a hazeadilla. It’s packed full of veggies. In the last year or so they’ve also introduced daily specials. Usually there’s a vegan option. If you’re lucky enough to be there when they do the arepas, get them.

Downside? No vegan cheese or sour cream. The sour cream isn’t the biggest deal. But it would definitely be next level if they carried a vegan cheese. Oh, and smoking happens there. But so does alcohol so you can drink away the annoyance.

Citrus spare ribs

This time, I followed directions. The second product I picked up with the coupons VegeUSA sent me was the Citrus Sparerib Cutlets. And I just followed the easy microwave directions. Combine with rice and steamed broccoli and Boom! dinner! Oh, and I sprinkled mine with gomashio because I do that.

The sweet, chewy nuggets are mostly soy based which is nice if you have issues with eating a ton of wheat gluten. The texture was fine microwaved, but I’ve also had these pan fried in the past and you can get a little crispy edge to them when you do that, but you also sacrifice some of the sauce.

The package ambitiously says there are 2.5 servings inside, but not in this house. It was a solid two servings for us though. The main downside to these is the price. At around $7, it’s more than I would normally pay for a fake meat for 2, but it’s still cheaper than ordering out. And I know there are a ton of people out there that don’t cook like I do and rely on prepared foods or eating out. So you might find this handy. In Atlanta, I found these and the pepper steak at Whole Foods on Ponce.

Broccoli Pesto Pasta

In May, we picked up a few herbs and planted them outside the kitchen door: cinnamon basil, regular basil, lavender and stevia. And we already had mint plants going. The basil has really taken off and they were little bushes when we got back from vacation. They have already paid for themselves and are still going strong. Gee, it’s so much easier to take care of plants when it actually rains every once in a while.

So, time to use up some basil. How about Broccoli Pesto Pasta from The Happy Herbivore? I used whole wheat pasta and a mix between the regular and cinnamon basil. I might’ve added a little bit of olive oil because pesto doesn’t seem quite right without it. But only like a tablespoon for the whole batch. So it’s not like I totally fatted it up. The silken tofu seemed to make it really filling. This is easy and pretty quick to make. Would be a great recipe to recommend to new cooks and new veg*ns.

Cornbread-topped Southwestern Pot Pie

Slow cookers are awesome in the summer time because they don’t heat up the house like the oven. And, I know it freaks some people out to leave the house with an appliance on, but they are made for that purpose so I don’t worry about it.

This is the Cornbread-topped Southwestern Pot Pie from Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. Yeah, the title says “vegetarian” but I think all the recipes are actually vegan. Oh wait, she does say “milk or soy milk” in the ingredient list for this recipe, but just forget she said milk, okay?

The pintos I used here were previously dry ones I slow cooked and then squirreled away in the freezer. Cook them off a pound at a time, then you’ll have several recipe’s worth. And it’s way cheaper than buying canned ones.

This was good. The cornbread topping was a little simpler than the ones I make baked alone. There was no sweetness added and it didn’t have any added all purpose flour, just the cornmeal. And I was wondering if it was really going to set up in the crock pot, but it did. It was almost more like a polenta crust than cornbread. No complaints though. Just for fun, I tossed in a fresh jalapeño along with the canned for a little more heat.