So I’ve lagged on sharing new recipes lately. My meals have been quick and easy, and I haven’t had much time to take quality photographs. I am also moving to a new apartment this week, so that has been taking up a great deal of my time as well.
In my new place, I look forward to:
starting an organic vegetable garden in my sizable patio
apply permaculture principles to live more sustainably
cook a TON using my excellent gas stove (I had electric before)
show off my fancy new refrigerator (I’m really excited about it)
So…..updates will be coming soon, once the dust settles and I can get back to what’s important: cooking and growing my own food! And I won’t have internet till July 9, so I’m wishing everyone a happy 4th of July now.
Until then, I’ll share a brief but inspiring speech from the amazing Dennis Kucinich, ethical and vegan member of congress and 2 time presidential candidate.
Back from Washington DC and what a fun time I had! I had front row seats for the keynote speaker of the conference - Colin Powell. He was really inspiring!
Now, on to the food. Washington DC has the most excellent food options of any city I’ve been to. Cuisine from all over the world was only a short walk from my hotel, and I did my best to try as many as possible. Which only amounted to a few, but the conference kept me busy!
Sunday night, after walking to the mall, which is where the Washington Monument and the White House are located, we went to a wonderful Mexican/Tapas restaurant called Oyamel. They had a decent number of vegetarian dishes but only 1 vegan dish, aside from the guacamole. It didn’t matter though….it was the best guacamole I have ever tasted, and we ended up ordering 4 bowls.
Monday night we had dinner at the Decatur House, which was originally the closest residence to the White House. The banquet was exquisite, and they were nice enough to give me, aside from the salad, a heaping plate of steamed asparagus and carrots. The salad was outstanding.
Prior to dinner at the Decatur House, we stopped at the Zambian Embassy for drinks and H’ors D’oeuvres. Pictured in my hand is a flower petal, topped with a slice of grapefruit and sweet mustard. All the other ones had a pine nut nestled in there also, but that particular one didn’t.
On Tuesday (June 16), which was my 30th birthday, I walked to the less tourist section to check out one of the popular Ethiopian restaurants, Etete. I probably looked funny trying to eat with no utensils, but it was lots of fun, very messy and very tasty. I ate my lunch so quick that I forgot to take a picture of my lunch, so the people sitting next to me were nice enough to let me photograph theirs. I don’t know exactly what they got, but it was from the vegetable section of the menu.
Finally, my most favorite photograph…..me standing on the podium of the circulation desk in the reading room of the Library of Congress. What a dream come true!
As usual, it has been a busy past few weeks! Tomorrow very early in the morning I will catch a plane to Washington DC for a conference, and I’ll be there till Wednesday June 17. On my birthday, June 16, I will attend a VIP dinner at the Library of Congress! Its like the Mecca of the U.S. library world. I’ll be attending several Healthy Eating/Nutritional seminars while at the conference, as well as an Ethics session on how to make better humanitarian and environmental decisions at work.
Last Friday I went on a beautiful hike with my cousin to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands near my house. This is a well-known section of land, locally at least. There have been legal battles for years over whether to keep it natural or to put some crappy housing developments on it. I think you can guess where I stand. It is so close to where I live, right on the beach, that I plan to go at least once each week for a long walk.
I also got myself some new shoes. My old converse had holes in them, the soles were coming apart, and they gave me an overall shabby appearance, so I picked up some new ones. My old ones were by No Sweat, which is an awesome company that uses nothing but sustainable vegan products in making their shoes, and they even come with a balance sheet to show the fair wages that their workers receive, along with benefits. But I can’t find that brand anymore, and I’m trying to stop ordering things from far away, so I picked up some traditional Converse shoes. Not quite as comfortable as my trusty No Sweat shoes, but they’re working out nicely.
I’ve been cooking but not photographing I made an AWESOME asparagus dish last night but I was busy talking to my cousin, and focused on finishing the meal so we could make it to the movie theater on time, I forgot to take pictures. At least the movie (Angels & Demons) was good!
Last Saturday, May 23 was my surprise graduation party, held at the Richard Nixon Library. This was the big one that I’ve been anticipating for….well…..a long time. I’m finially finished with my Master’s degree, so a party at a historic library was the perfect way to celebrate!
Pictured above are most of my family. There are actually many more who were not able to attend….mostly due to distance. I have a lot of family still in Germany and also the midwest, but those who attended are my closest family and friends. I must say, the food was phenomenal. My mom, who planned the whole party, had it catered by Veggie Grill. The food was SO good, that even the meat eaters went for the Veggie Grill items over the “omni platter” that the library provided. I’m just glad I grabbed a bunch of food the first time around, because there was little left by the time I made it back for seconds.
So this was a double fun experience for me because it was not only a party to celebrate a big milestone, but also an opportunity to share the great veg options with members of my family who usually scoff at my choice of foods.
Perfect for a warm sunny spring day. Except it is gloomy, cold and overcast this weekend. My favorite weather! So this smoothie turns out to be perfect in any weather and any climate. And any excuse to use my new blender is a welcome opportunity.
Having just returned from the grocery store, this smoothie is also a great refresher.
I am not including proportions because I didn’t really measure anything out. I did use 2 tablespoons of palm sugar, which was not much for how much smoothie this recipe yielded - it pretty much filled up the entire blender container. You could easily substitute agave for palm sugar, but I had some on hand, and I never have sugar, so I figured this one time I could go crazy. But the fruits add the majority of the flavor, and are what make this smoothie such a great mix of chocolate and fruit.
It’s Friday night and things are getting groovy! So I decided to celebrate in typical food blogger fashion by making something special to celebrate 2 glorious days of sleeping in and relaxing.
This is a new recipe for me, so there were a few bumps in the road, but it wasn’t a bad first attempt. I accidentally dumped out all my potatoes down the drain, so I had to start all over, but over all, this was a fun dish to make, and it was a nice chance to get into a “cooking meditation”. Just chopping, preparing, measuring, and making sure everything is coming along. This isn’t a great picture, but the light was failing (took longer than anticipated) and I wanted to snap a shot while there was still a bit of natural daylight left.
Ingredients:
4 large russet potatoes, diced
1/2 - 1 cup soymilk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable stock
2 onions, chopped
1 large bell pepper, diced
2 carrots, sliced
1 head of broccoli
1 head of cauliflower
1 15-ounce can chopped tomatoes or tomato sauce
1 15-ounce can kidney beans, drained
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
Directions:
Dice the potatoes and boil them until mashably tender. Mash ‘em up, adding a bit of soy milk here and there to make them easily spreadable and smooth. Add a bit of salt and your favorite seasonings, to taste. I used sage, rosemary, and some pepper. Set this aside to work on the vegetables.
Heat the vegetable stock in a large pot, adding the onions and cook them for about 3 or 4 minutes. Then add the pepper and carrots and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat. Add the broccoli, cauliflower and beans then cover the pan and cook an additional 7 minutes. Remember to stir occasionally.
Preheat the oven to 350° F.
Put the vegetables into a baking dish and spread the mashed potatoes evenly over the top. Sprinkle with paprika and seasonings. Bake for 25 minutes until hot. Enjoy!
Simple, bursting with flavor, and deeply satisfying. Good words to describe this sandwich. A co-worker brought me fresh daikon sprouts today, so as I was thinking about what I could do with them, my stomach started growling for lunch…….perfect opportunity! So I went home and put this sandwich together with ingredients I had on hand (I’m lucky enough to work across the street from where I live).
A few days ago, inspired by the entry over at Awesomel Vegan Rad, I ordered a wheel of the aged cashew & brazil nut cheese, and it arrived today, along with my veggie cevapcici, which I’ll save for a future entry.
I’ve been very curious about this nut cheese for some time now, so needless to say, I was excited to finally taste it! It is made using a traditional cheese making process, which intrigued me. I can say it is absolutely DELICIOUS. It was much smaller than I expected, which was the only drawback. The photos on the web site make it look about the size of your palm. So it is a bit pricey for the size, but worth trying it out, although I know I’m going to be craving more.
There are only a few places where this cheese is available, and only one place on the west coast……Seattle……another reason I’m glad to be moving there soon
If you are curious about trying the dr cow nut cheese, I’d say it is definitely worth a taste. I would buy it much more often if it were locally available, but I can’t justify shipping it from the other end of the country just for that tiny bit of cheese. I ordered mine from Pangea, but there are a few other sources on the dr cow site as well.
So I finally bought a decent blender. No, it isn’t as cool as the Vitamix blenders I’ve seen floating around on various blogs, but I had tons of giftcards to Lowe’s, so I only ended up paying $4 for a $130 blender. It is definitely doing a good job. So, the first thing I made with my cool new blender was this recipe from The Vegan Mouse blog. (check out her entry….it has a much better picture…..I was working with really bad lighting conditions)
This soup was absolutely delicious. It is almost purley based on vegetable flavors, and they really pop. But next time I am going to eat it as a hot soup because that much rawness gave me a terrible stomach ache. But this is a very easy recipe, nutritious, filling……and fun because you get to make it with a blender =)
I used slightly different portions and ingredients, but it was mostly the same as the original.
Ingredients:
2 large red bell peppers, chopped
2 ribs celery, sliced
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup raw unsalted cashews
2 tsp. red miso paste
1 chopped jalapeno - careful…..this makes it fairly spicy, use less if you don’t want it too spicy
2 TB olive oil
2 cups water
2 TB chopped onion
1 avocado
ground black pepper to taste
So today, my whole family is coming over for an afternoon of fun and frolick. I’m looking forward to veggie Beer Brats, Amy’s veggie Texas Burger, and my first crack at making a German Potato Salad. Or in my family, we call it just plain old Kartoffelsalat.
My Oma (German for grandmother) was on hand to…..lend me a hand. She’s the resident potato salad expert, which was probably why she was so excited about trying the recipe in PETA’s Vegan College Cookbook. She took a more supervisory role, and gave me a few heritage tips to make it a bit more of my family’s version….which means I added a sprinkling of paprika.
I can honestly say that this is the best potato salad I’ve ever had. Normally I’m not a huge potato salad person, becuase to me, it tastes funny, but this one turned out perfect, and it is a hit so far with everyone who has tried it. I think the fakin’ bacon crumbles added a really nice touch.
Coming from a German family, potato salad is a staple of any family gathering. But I have NEVER seen the entire bowl cleared out before. Everyone kept telling me how good it was, and by the end of the afternoon, it had been entirely eaten! I was expecting leftovers!
I made an AWESOME asparagus dish last night but I was busy talking to my cousin, and focused on finishing the meal so we could make it to the movie theater on time, I forgot to take pictures. At least the movie (Angels & Demons) was good!
