Good old days in the neighborhood

It seems like just yesterday when I last took a trip to Chicago, but it has been a whole month.  Jess and I had a lot of fun last time, and we were lucky to get an excuse to go again!  Her hubby had school business to attend to up in Chi-town, so thankfully they let me tag along and we made a little road trip out of it!

Night number one consisted of a dinner at a diner called Pick Me Up Cafe.  They have vegan and omni selections, so it's a good place for a vegan to take a friend that is not too adventurous. 

Jess and I split their tofu scramble and vegan pecan pancakes.  I loved when, as he set our plates down, the server commented that the silver cup on the plate was indeed soy margarine.  Good, less questions for us to ask! 

Sadly, the pancakes were pretty bland, but they were edible.  Vegan with a Vengeance pancakes are where the magic really is.

We paid a visit to Intelligentsia, of course, like last time on the trip. 

Jess, that strong woman, is abstaining from espresso per her Lenten contract, but she was nice enough to be patient while I sipped on a delicious traditional cappuccino with soymilk (and the husband had something too).

For those of you who aren't in-the-know, Intelligentsia is one of the best places in the nation to get exquisite espresso.  For some reason I feel the need to spread the knowledge that Starbucks is not a wise place to invest in unless you want stale, over-roasted, thin espresso.  The only reason people drink it is because Starbucks covers up the taste by dumping a lot of sugar on top.  Okay, end of rant.

I also had the privilege of trying Vosges chocolate while in Chicago.  They usually carry it at Whole Foods Market, but I have seen this brand at other gourmet grocery stores as well.  The price of even a half-ounce bar is steep ($3.49!) but 'twas totally worth it.  This is fine chocolate, my friends.  Fabulous.  (I tried the Creole Bar!)

 

We met up with some peeps later that day and after hanging out for a while, our trip was wrapped up with a dinner at the Chicago Diner, only mine and Jess's favoritest restaurant in the whole entirety of the world.  (It's a vegetarian diner, where everything has the option of being vegan -- or maybe it's close to everything.)

After much deliberation, I decided to stray from the delicious Reuben sandwich and I ordered one of the diner's specials, the Raw Bacon Cheeseburger. 

The burger bun was actually a flax-based bread, and of course there was a burger patty and raw vegan bacon.  The really creative part was the dehydrated raw onion rings.  The side salad had a tasty dressing, but I was not too fond of the seasoning on the jicama fries (though I adore jicama itself) and the side of red cabbage slaw was nothing special enough to finish eating.

I didn't know where to begin when eating this plate, but Jess advised me to put the two halves of the burger together and dig in.

So I did.

All in all, the burger was tasty but it was not exciting enough for me to order again.  I love trying new things -- though I admit I often get myself into food ruts -- and I would like to try Chicago Diner's raw specials in the future.  My tummy just could not decide what it wanted for dinner that night so I made a quick decision!

Earlier in the day, I had resolved that I was not going to have a vegan milkshake at the diner.  But -- did you guess there was a "but" coming?! -- the meal part did not cap off the trip like I had wanted it to, so I was forced to order a Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Milkshake to make up for that. 

Look at that cup of heaven.  Wow!  While I was happily slurping this bad boy, I came to the realization that this milkshake was the best eats of the entire Chicago trip -- the best eats of probably the last 21 years of my life -- so it is not in my best interest to ever, ever, ever abstain from a peanut butter cookie dough milkshake when I go to the diner in the future. 

And then we drove home.  And my belly was very, very happy.  The end.

So recently I had someone tell me I was too "rigid" because I am a vegan.  Just looking back at my old posts, and even at my meals and snacks in Chicago, I just can't see how "rigid" could even begin applying to my diet!  I eat darn good food.  I feed myself very well, and I can hardly begin to see how the way I eat could ever be considered as a diet of deprivation!!!  All right, end of rant number two!  I just needed to get that out there.  And there endeth this post.  Have a happy day!

Spring Break

Spring break was last week for me and I'm trying to enjoy the final hours of freedom. I stayed in town the whole week, which turned out to be really really awesome actually, and then made a little trippie up to Chicago. More on that later! But I got back in the wee hours of this fine Sunday morning... I had some good eats there but discovered some awesome stuff while home cookin' this week, so I thought I'd share.

Tofu can be so annoying to work with sometimes. It never seems to come out right for me, no matter how long I try or how long I press or marinade it. Grrr. Thank goodness for Miss Gliding Calm and her fabulous tofu recipe! I've had problems with the recipe before because I'm a tofu loser, but I finally figured out that it is flawless if you freeze and thaw the block of tofu! Here's my spin on it:

Gliding Calm Tofu
Serves 2

7 or 8 oz. extra-firm water-packed tofu, frozen overnight and thawed
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup (grade B)
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sweet chili sauce (or use an extra teaspoon maple syrup)
lots of ginger (powdered)
a few dashes salt
a few dashes garlic powder

I used half a block of tofu and saved the other half for later. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Take your half tofu block and cut into thin slices. Blot slices with a paper towel to absorb excess moisture out of the tofu. Mix all other ingredients in a shallow, wide container and rub both sides of the tofu in this mixture! Lightly mist a baking sheet with oil, spread tofu on the sheet, and bake tofu for as long as desired. Remove when tofu is still slightly moist and place on a cooling rack (the type you use to cool cookies and baked goods). Turn oven to the broil setting and place cooling rack with tofu under the broiler for 3-4 minutes, monitoring very carefully. The tofu is done when it is browned around the edges and a little drier!

For the perfect meal, serve tofu with Trader Joe's sweet potato fries and curry ketchup (5 teaspoons ketchup + 1 teaspoon curry powder) and raw kale salad (1+ cup raw kale, rinsed, torn into bite sized pieces, and massaged; mix with 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, lots of sea salt, and black pepper; let it get all nice and cold in the fridge before eating!).

I also experienced oat bran nirvana this week. Normally I use quick steel-cut oats or thick old fashioned oats, but Jess advised me to try something new when we were on one of our Whole Foods trips. Now I'm obsessed with oat bran! All right, get ready to travel to oat bran mecca:

Carob Chip Cookie Dough Oat Bran
with peanut butter ribbons and walnuts
Serves 1

1 cup water
pinch salt
40 grams oat bran (about 1/3 cup)
1 small-medium banana
2/3 cup unsweetened soymilk
1/2 medjool date, chopped small
1 tablespoon peanut butter (I used organic freshly ground PB from the Whole Foods bulk section)
1/2 tablespoon walnuts, chopped
1 heaping tablespoon non-dairy carob chips
a few dashes cinnamon

Disclaimer: This is an oats recipe for the stovetop, not the microwave! (And thanks for the oatmeal inspiration, Katie!)

In a stove pot, bring water to a boil with some salt. Add oat bran after the water boils and stir with a spatula. After the oats reduce a little, turn the heat down to medium-high and add your banana, sliced very thinly. Whip the banana into the oat bran and turn the heat to medium after a minute or so.

Add the soymilk to the pot, little by little -- think risotto technique. After the oat bran accepts the soymilk and everything reduces, add a splash more of soymilk. Throw the chopped date into the pot and keep stirrin'. Yay, isn't making oats fun?!

After the oat bran achieves a thicker consistency, turn heat to medium-low and plop some cinnamon into the pot and stir, stir, stir. When the oats reach your desired consistency (I like mine on the thicker, slow-pouring end of the spectrum), cover the pot and turn the heat off. Let sit while you "toast" your walnuts: I heat my chopped ones in the microwave for 40 seconds. You'll have to adjust the time based on your microwave, because 40 seconds in different microwaves may burn your precious nuts. Hahaha.

Pour half the oats into your serving bowl. Add about half your carob chips to the pot and stir so that the chips melt. Plop this melty mixture into your bowl, too. Top the oat bran with a few more carob chips (save some of them!) and the walnuts. Swirl a small chunk of your peanut butter into the top layer of the oats. It's like a peanut butter swirl ribbon!

You can garnish the oats with more carob chips and peanut butter after you finish the top layer. Fun! And the best part is, this totally tastes like a Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Milkshake from the Chicago Diner!

Ohh, and here's a breakfast I made the other day!

This is a fourth of the recipe for some Vegan with a Vengeance muffins, and they were all mine! I like to make small batches of things because it's fun, and it's easier to quality-control for me because I'm used to small batches. And I hate having baked goods laying around idle (as in, not in my tummy), so there you go!

I also made an espresso drink -- I tend to do a hybrid of a soy latte and soy cappuccino. I like to rip off pieces of muffin and dip it in the cappuccino. Anyway, I made carrot ginger almond muffins. I just combined two of the VwaV recipes (the carrot raisin muffins and ginger raisin bran muffins) and added some crystallized ginger in addition to the ginger already present in the recipe. 'Twas yummy, especially with little pats of Earth Balance in the middle of the fresh-outta-the-oven muffins! Yay for leisurely breakfasts!

I'll be back soon with another Chicago post! Yay.

Reuben, what is he dippity doin'?

After a recent visit to the veganworld-famous Chicago Diner a coupla weeks ago, of course I had to bust out Vegan with a Vengeance and make Isa's Tempeh Reuben.

I loved this recipe before I went to the Chicago Diner, and sure, this recipe is great. However, it doesn't even begin to compare to Chicago Diner's Radical Reuben! I took matters into my own hands and made the seitan from the diner's very own recipe, published on the Vegetarian Times website. (Again, scroll down this page for the recipe!) Oh, and the results?

Muuuch better (taste-wise, at least, I mean; Reubens aren't too attractive appearance-wise).

I would say my sandwich was 90% as delicious as the one they actually serve at the diner! I tried to thinly slice my seitan with my chef's knife, but that didn't get the job done as well as a meat slicer would. I still used the VwaV recipe for all aspects of the sandwich except for the tempeh, which obviously I replaced with the diner's seitan recipe. I used avocado to replace the creaminess of cheese for some of the seitan Reubens I made throughout the week, and on the others I used mozzarella Teese. Either way, you have yourself an awesome sandwich -- actually, my very favorite out of all sandwiches!

(By the way, the title of this post references a song by John Reuben, a Christian hip-hop artist I happened to see in concert in high school. Have any of you heard this song before, or am I the only one?!)

On a totally different tangent, Chocolate-Covered Vegan really knows her food! Every time I make one of her recipes, I get awesome results! Her Five-Minute Chocolate Mousse was no exception, and thus this snack was born:

I made Katie's chocolate mousse, which I sweetened with a pinch of stevia. I also added a drop of almond extract and some vanilla. Earlier this week I also made the Buckwheat Crispies, simply dehydrated buckwheat groats that had been soaked overnight, from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen, so I swirled some of those into the mousse, along with coconut flakes and banana slices. It was like a raw granola parfait! Kind of. I actually was a cheater according to Raw Foodist standards when I "dehydrated" the groats (I set my oven to a little below 200F and "baked" the water out for an hour, but it worked like a charm). Thanks for the awesome mousse recipe, Miss Katie!

Of course, I have to give you some latte art updates! Here are a few of my pours from this week:

(Never seen latte art before? This is how it is done, in case you are totally confused about the process.)

I seem to be improving. I have been able to pour a rosetta almost every time I have made an espresso beverage for myself this week (which is once or twice a day), yay! The rosettas aren't too great by professional standards, but I guess I have to start somewhere! ;)

Until next time, my friends...