I cooked!

Holy shit! It's been a while, but over the past few weeks, I've managed a few meals at home - or at least throwing things together to dish out at work for lunch. And hit up the farmer's markets, of course.

Grilled BBQ tempeh, steamed kale, grilled zucchini and short grain brown rice.


I made this for a 4th of July vegan potluck: Gluten free Pesto & Roasted Garlic Mac & Cheeze with Green Beans. It was based on the Lower Fat New Farm recipe and I used rice noodles.


Berry Picking! Some friends I went berry picking a couple weeks ago on Sauvie Island, don't mind my crazy messy kitchen table! We picked strawberries, raspberries and blueberries (early). Berry picking is so therapeutic and I look forward to it every summer. Gets me through the warm madness!



Lunch at work: Leftover Rice & Beans from the Whole Bowl, Baked Tofu Bacon and steamed kale


More lunch at work: Some sort of noochy chickpea mix, lettuce, sugar snap peas and the last of the baked tofu bacon.


Someone is going to recognize this plate! I made dinner at Webly's house last week while I was dogsitting. Roasted potatoes, baked Italian pesto tofu and broccoli and corn with nutritional yeast and garlic. One of the best meals I've had lately (credit the lack of cooking).



Quick dinner from Papa G's - Mac & Cheeze with peas and a salad with ranch dressing.
The whole living-right-by-a-vegan-deli thing is sweet.



Recent farmer's market haul - zucchini, broccoli, garlic scapes (also known as tops and other names), apricots, baby new potatoes and corn.



A couple weeks ago I met Hannah from Bittersweet Blog and My Sweet Vegan. She was in town for a book signing (and treat sampling) at Herbivore and to record this segment of Whoopie Pie making on Everyday Dish. We also had the chance to chat at a mini PPK meet up at Townsend Tea's for bubble tea and knitting talk (of which I'm a total newbie). I tried one of her whoopie pies and oh, my.

Whoopie pies and mini muffins

Dear Meal, You're Boring!

Sometimes I'm really in the mood for straight up, wholesome food. Like steamed kale with a sprinkle of sea salt or baked yams, plain and simple. There are even restaurant dishes I can think of that are on the plainer side of things that I crave - like the Incan bowl at Blossoming Lotus and the similar design-your-own quinoa bowl with sesame ginger sauce from Chaos Cafe (how I adore thee). However, one of my formerly favorite places in Portland is officially on my boring list due to a second bland meal. Bland when it seriously shouldn't be.
That's you, Vege Thai.

Sigh. New management took over in the past year: we lost the short, short lived food cart before that , prices went up (what else is freaking new) and the menu was updated, for better to a degree. It's almost hard for me to write this, and I don't think I could if it was the old management. Vege Thai, while not quite authentic, served vegan and vegetarian Thai food - and guarantees no fish sauce or shrimp paste. Vegan! Thai!
I've had 3 traumatic this-Thai-food-isn't actual-vegetarian/vegan experiences in town in the past year alone!

The restaurant still offers both vegan and vegetarian meat substitutes (....), the chicken being my protein of choice there. I adored Vege Thai because the food was fairly naughtily greasy, well priced and tended to send me home with leftovers. The Pad Sei-iew, Pineapple Curry, Chicken Nuggets and sinfully delicious Peanut Sauce were, and are still my favorites on the menu - but since the ownership change, things just haven't been as flavorful, and frustratingly - at all as saucy!

Anywhoo, here's the recent meal I 'treated' myself to on a day of playing hooky from work.
Well, really I took a sick day and hobbled since I recently fractured my foot during a business trip and have a giant boot on. I get sad when my weekdays off don't involve a lunch special on the east side of Portland.

Lunch special soup. This used to at least have tofu in it.

Noodles in the Jungle with tofu (with rice noodles instead of yakisoba - to blame?)
Tofu=tasted old.
Vegetables=overcooked and watery
Spices sprinkled on the sauce=not working for me.
Peanut sauce=the only actual flavor.

Time for a break, old favorite. I'll see you again one day.

Lucky Vegans

While I'm a a fan of homemade cheezy sauces any day, I picked up Playfood's Nacheezmo dip from Food Fight! last weekend. It was a new product I couldn't resist, and I already knew I liked it.
It's actually the nacho cheeze sauce that you can pump at Food Fight! onto nachos.
It's tangy, slightly spicy and even somewhat cheezy. Very 7-11 cheeze sauce. Worth the near $5 a small tub, yes, but as a rare fake-cheeze purchase. I've been just as happy with sauces I've made at home, but I do like knowing this level of tastiness is available on store shelves, at least on vegan store shelves in Portland, OR. The website is under construction but I've read about it being available in California and elsewhere. I was sad that it wasn't in a squeeze bottle like I've seen before...

Upping its novelty-appeal is the fact that it was co-started by Taran Noah Smith, of Home Improvement fame. Don't you wonder what JTT thinks.

I had fun making more of Isa's round two testing omelets and smothering them with this fakeness.

This one has black olives, kale, Mexican Field Roast black beans, garlic, spices and zucchini.

Dinner by Mike, and more from NYC.

My sister's boyfriend Mike is a great cook. He's previously veganized meals for me, like an herby white bean soup, as well as cooked straight from vegan cookbooks (last winter).

We accidentally left our May Wah fake chicken and ham in their freezer in NYC last month, and Mike turned it into a recent dinner with grains for him and my sister. Oh my, flexitarians! They raved it about it so much they wanted me to share it here.


Since it has been a month, and my life is coming back to some degree of normality lately, here's a dose of NYC food porn:

First up, just one of the fake meat freezers at May Wah in Chinatown. It was my first time going there, and it was more vegan-friendly than I expected. As opposed to the hunt for vegan-friendliness at the Fubonn freezer.

We were actually at May Wah on a very full stomach, after having lunch at Buddha Bodai.
We had eaten dim sum at Vegetarian Dim Sum House earlier in the week, and the full lunch experience at Buddha kicked that experience's ass. I really do miss good vegan Chinese food!

Spring rolls

General Tso's Veg. Chicken (and Jenny's skinny elbow) - excellent.

Sweet & Sour (or Orange? hmm) Veg. Chicken

Gluten & Vegetables Pan Fried Noodle
I got sick of the gooey gluten pretty quickly,
but this dish was just what I had been craving all day.

Wonton Soup

Babycakes cupcakes
Jenny had a carrot, I had vanilla. Hard to eat cupcakes in serious heat, I never miss East Coast humidity, but we made do.

And here's Chef Mike, eating his Babycakes cream filled cookie later on.

Contrary to the look on his face and commentary on the wheat free, vegan bakery, he really likes that cookie.