So this is one of my favorite things to eat but I usually only get to eat it at work. I work at a place that makes wraps and only on one day a week do they have the Moroccan which has greens, roasted red pepper hummus, couscous (with green onions, almonds and raisins) and then there’s usually chicken in it but I sub tofu. But yayyy, yesterday they had some leftover couscous so I set about recreating this salad today. Oh yeah, I dont’ usually eat it in a wrap, I just put the ingredients in a salad.
First I fried up some tofu.
Result.
Then I took some of my job’s hummus (well, I bought it at the grocery store).
…and the couscous from work…
add greens and voila! I also like to add soy sauce which sounds weird but it tastes soo good. Easy lunch for today! And now I have a bunch of pre-cooked tofu at home. And hummus.
Okay, so I know this blog has been DEAD for several months now. But I’m really going to try to update again since I just got this awesome social media internship with I Eat Grass (check it out: http://ieatgrass.com/). For anyone in the San Francisco area over Cinco de Mayo Chef Ayinde’s fantastic food baby pop-up, Wildflower, will be making its way to San Francisco’s mission district to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. We are calling this foodfest Wildflower Weekend Part II–I know you all remember Wildflower Weekend Part I, the Kickstarter funded event held in Downtown Manhattan’s exclusive Limited Time Only last year. Ayinde’s complete foodie experience also made an appearance during fashion week at Henri Bendel‘s, and put on a mouth-watering multi course Super Bowl 2012 party in Brooklyn.
sorry it’s been a while. I’ve been kind of depressed lately and my food has as well. But today I finally went out and did something and ate some cool food. First of all, I went to Vivace on Capitol Hill and got the Stephanie which is earl grey tea with steamed (soy) milk and vanilla. So good! I should have taken a picture cuz it looked so awesome with the foamed milk and the cinnamon on top and everything. Then I walked down to Homegrown, a sustainable sandwich shop inside of what can best be described as a sustainable foodie mini-mall.
The menu has about 8 sandwiches, 2 of which are vegan. I ordered one with squash, corn, green beans, tamari onions and snap pea pesto. They were out of the squash so I got avocado instead. The other vegan sandwich is with hummus, cucumber, that kind of stuff. I got a small sandwich instead of the large which comes on a little sandwich roll (your choice of wheat or potato). You can get sides which include soup, pickles, chips or cookies (I went with pickles). They also have salads and a few breakfast items. The kind of mini mall it’s in is really cool. There’s a little wine bar/ restaurant in back that has you walking by a huge island cutting board place where they are just literally making the food in front of you. The restaurant has glass walls so you can see it from the rest of the shops. There’s a little flower/beauty products/knick knacks stand, a wine store, a meat counter and upstairs a little shop with wood and wool items. Overall very cute and in this great little industrial building.
Here’s the inside of it. I just learned it’s actually called the Melrose Market.
This is what the sandwich shop part of it looks like. Overall, I highly recommend it and the whole market is definitely worth a visit.
So I didn’t get to have Thanksgiving on the actual day as I said a few posts back so my parents came for the weekend so we could do our own thanksgiving. When they arrived Friday night we went out to Wild Ginger which I’m usually very enthusiastic about but this time their food left me feeling kinda disappointed. The cocktails, however, were not disappointing at all! I got this cracked coconut drink that had bacardi coco, coconut milk, pineapple juice and lime. It was sooo good. I had 2 and my mom finally ordered one because she kept stealing sips of mine. Her first drink was a caipirihna, on my recommendation, which is a brazillian drink made using cachacha (liquor distilled from sugar cane) which she liked well enough. We got some satay appetiers including a vegetable one for me to eat. The veggies were 2 mushroms, 2 pieces of eggplant and 2 pieces of zucchini. They were literally just grilled, had no flavor and came with a tiny bit of sauce that didnt really make eating vegetables worth it. Overall, thumbs down. Then we got some spicy green beans which were pretty good but too spicy for my mom to eat. My parenst had some oysters and meat things and then I got this tomato-tofu dish because when I was in Vietnam my host mom would cook the same dish and it was SO good. Well, this was obviously based off that dish but was not done very well at all. Basically there was no correlation between the tomatoes and tofu. No sauce blending them together or anything. Just baked tofu on a dish with some chopped tomatoes. Meh. So overall, kinda disappointing.
The next morning when we woke up I threw together this bread recipe that I was going to make for dinner.
I soaked some sun dried tomatoes cuz the only ones in the store i could find were dehydrated.
Here’s a picture of what the bread is supposed to look like. It’s called Mediterranean Bread and has walnuts, black olives and sun dried tomatoes. I used kalamata’s which still tasted good but ultimately I think would have been better with black.
Portage Bay is a breakfast-only restaurant in the South Lake Union part of Seattle. My parents and I woke up Saturday morning hankering for some breakfast and after looking at the menu online we picked this place knowing nothing else about it. WELL. This place must be the most popular freakin breakfast place in Seattle cuz when we rolled up at about 10 there was a crowd of about 30 people waiting inside the door and a crowd outside the door as well all waiting to be seated at one of the 50 or so tables inside. We put our names on the list and were told it would be 20-30 minutes so we all just played Words with friends while we waited. ONE HOUR AND 10 MINUTES LATER we were FINALLY seated. But it’s all really good food, all organic, local, sustainable. So it was pretty worth it.
I got fresh squeezed orange juice (all their juices are fresh squeezed and can have champagne added). I got the vegan mushroom and tofu winter/fall hash which is a hash of butternut squash and root vegetables. It was pretty good. It also came with a slice of bread that was kind of hearty like squaw bread. Since I got a vegan plate my toast didn’t come with any butter but it was pretty dry so I would have liked some jam, margarine, olive oil or something to put on it. Overall though, very good. My dad got a hash similar to mine except it had some cured italian ham and brussels sprouts in it. He really liked his.
This is my moms. She got fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and buckwheat pancakes. All of the pancakes and waffles and whatnot on the menu come plain and then you take them to the toppings bar to dress them which has bowls of fresh berries, whipped cream, nuts and other toppings. She ultimately couldn’t finish this monstrous stack of pancakes but did say they were good.
So I have today off but unfortunately my parents and bro are visiting all my other relatives on the oregon coast like we always do at thanksgiving. But I couldn’t go since I have work tomorrow. But my parents and brother are going to come tomorrow night and stay the weekend with me where we’ll have thanksgiving part 2. So in preparation of that I spent my day off doing some prep work.
This is the recipe we’re using for the Tofurky (rather than Field Roast as the recipe specifies). So today in advance I made the balsamic ale-cranberry reduction and the sauce that the vegetables get marinated in.
On the left is the cranberry reduction and on the right is the sauce. This recipe comes from Veganize This! by the way which I made copies out of before I returned it to the library.
Cranberries cooking!
Here’s the reduction after. I also made some salad dressing but that’s not pictured cuz it was pretty simple.
Lunch is the same that I’ve been eating the last few days. Steamed broccoli mixed with refried beans, carrots and avocado.
After lunch I made this loaf that Hungry Hungry Hippie made. Here’s the recipe:
Soy Nog Raisin Bread
Dry ingredients:
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
Wet ingredients:
• 3 cups vegan eggnog (either Silk’s soynog or So Delicious’ coconut milk nog)
• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 1/2 banana
Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients together separately and then add them together. Let the batter sit a bit to give the chia seeds time to gel.
I made two batches because I couldn’t decide if I wanted it in loaf form or as muffins. I figured why not try both, since I had enough nog.
The batter is thick thick thick, so don’t worry if you make this and freak out that it’s too dense. I mean, they are dense, but they are also perfect.
The only difference between the muffins and bread worth noting is the cooking time – 22 minutes for the muffins (which are actually much more like cupcakes) and 35 minutes for the bread (both at 350 degrees).
As they bake, they poof up a bit and smell ahhhh-maaaa-zing.
The poof goes down some as they cool (because the recipe is vegan, the chia seeds replace eggs as a binding agent, but they can’t act as a leavening agent, so that’s why they aren’t as fluffy as traditional baked goods).
I did not use 3 cups of soy nog in the recipe. Instead I used 2 and for the 3rd cup I used half soy milk and half chai mix. This bread is okay, it tasted pretty good out of the oven with a little butter on it. But honestly, it’s a little bland in my taste. It’s not that sweet like I thought it would be. I would recommend more sugar, more nog, or maybe using vanilla soy yogurt instead of chia seeds as a binding agent. But eh, at least my parents will have something to eat for breakfast! I also made a blueberry pie today in preperation (and put it in the freezer) but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures. Dinner was boring kale again so I didn’t even bother taking a picture.
sorry i haven’t been posting. i just haven’t really felt like it and honestly my food’s been pretty boring. i’ll post some thanksgiving stuff though, i swear.
Forgot to post yesterday (or maybe was too busy watching Liar Liar….)
This is lunch. Breakfast was boring oatmeal again so I didn’t take a picture. For lunch I sauteed some garlic and onion, added in some tofu and then threw some steamed broccoli on top. I cooked all that with some soy sauce, fresh grated ginger and Trader Joes peanut flour.
This is my gigantic cup which I loved and filled with soy chai while I was working yesterday. Yum!
This is my pitcher of Earl Grey tea with soy milk I made. I work from home so having a lot of liquids on hand is key!
I had a picture of some guac I made with an avocado that was gonna go bad but it seems to have disappeared. And I guess I forgot to take a picture of my dinner but guess what it was? Kale, beans, sweet potato!
Hello lovely blog-readers. So for breakfast I was seriously CRAVING toast (which I usually only allow myself to have on weekends) and I caved. Probably because I was just so friggin tired. So I had some tofu/onion/tomato scramble with two small pieces of multigrain toast and avocado. I took a picture but somehow it didn’t make it on here…hmmm….
For lunch I had zucchini spaghetti again but I was tired of marinara sauce. Instead I did nooch, annie’s lite goddess dressing, and curry powder. It was just what the doctor ordered. Sometimes I just get in the habit of making the same thing but changing up the sauce can do wonders. Speaking of the Wonders, I was at the grocery store tonight and they were playing “That Thing You Do”. I thought that was only made for that movie? Or maybe they were playing the soundtrack? If anyone has seen the movie I’m talking about or know the song, please give me some insight.
Went to the grocery store tonight to prepare for the weekend since a friend of mine is coming to visit. I didn’t have enough time to go to the co-op on Madison I usually go to (which also requires taking my car) so unfortunately I had to go to QFC. I picked up some vegan (and not vegan, for her) cream cheese, bagels, kale (of course!), popcorn, baking ingredients (not pictured), rice cakes, unsweetened chai, and sugar free jelly. This may not seem like optimal “fun weekend” food, but I have plans and it will be made into fun weekend food. You’ll see.
Dinner. The same thing I’ve had the last few nights: kale, black beans, sweet potatoes, mushrooms. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it right? I made a few adjustments tonight. The guy at QFC asked me if I ever put tahini on my kale which I don’t because I don’t really like plain tahini but I thought i’d give it another try and work it into this dish. I still sauteed the mushrooms in soy sauce cuz I really like their salty flavor in this but then for everything else I added some goddess dressing, nooch, curry, cumin and tahini. I also threw in some red onion (like I said I would!) into this because I finally bought a red onion today and wanted to use it. It was awesome. Seriously. I will probably just make this meal the next few nights too.
So my boyfriend (who is living in a different state than me right now) is feeling kinda depressed so I decided to make him a care package. What care package is complete without vegan cookies? So I used this recipe from Vegan Planet which I highly recommend as a cookbook for new and old vegans. It’s got some good stuff.
Baking ingredients….
Cookie dough! I saved about half of this in the freezer because a) I knew he couldn’t eat all those cookies or give em away and they’d probably go to waste and b) there’s a good chance he won’t get these in the mail for a bit and they might go bad so I didn’t want to waste more than 12 cookies
It made 12. But I had to taste test one for good measure out of the oven. Good stuff. So my bf will get 11 cookies after I send out his care package tomorrow. Yay!
