Veggie Goes Vegan

Day 603 (Y2/D237): Rice pasta...sounds weird, but it works

Lately I've been buying rice pasta to cook with at home. I'm pretty sure I have a wheat sensitivity, but it's just oneo f the many things I ignore most of the time, especially when eating out. But I recently started buying alternate pastas for cooking, figure that when at home there was no reason not to be more mindful. The pastas hold together pretty well, and let's face it: Pasta isn't a flavor-packed dish all on its own...it's the sauce that matters.

So rice pasta: definitely workable.

Breakfast:
Organic Banana
Organic Orange

Lunch:
Leftover pasta from Maggiano's
Fritos

Dinner:
Rice Pasta Spirals with Sauce made from: Oilve Oil, Garlic, Basil, Organic Onion, Organic Asparagus, Organic Tomato, Organic Canned Roasted Tomatoes, Organic Canned Tomato Sauce, Organic Cannellini Beans, Trader Joe's Meatless Meatballs

Day 602 (Y2/D23): Why mess with success?

You may notice that sometimes I get into patterns.

Like all of a sudden requiring a soy latte in the morning a lot more often since discovering Starbucks carries a vegan scone.

Like going to lunch or dinner in the same place...a lot.

Like coming home after a long day of work, ignoring the great variety of things I could eat, and whipping up the same thing I ate just a night or two before. (Potatoes with Nutritional Yeast, anyone?)

Yesterday was kinda like that:

Breakfast:
Organic Banana
Soy Latte
Vegan Scone

Lunch (Milagros):
Diet Coke
Chips and Guacamole
Grilled Portabella Salad

Dinner:
Fritos
Veggie Rice Bowl from Taco Bell

Inspiring, no? But I do have to say that Milagros is a good downtown Redwood City choice for vegans, because they put a bit more focus on their salad selection than most Mexican restaurants, and it's a piece of cake to 86 the meat or cheese and have something healthy and not-boring. Sometimes the best we can hope for at restaurants is to be able to eat something not-boring.

On the list of boring:
Steamed Vegetable platters
Pasta Marinara
Mixed Green Salads

I tend to avoid those...wouldn't you?

Day 601 (Y2/D235): Yup, still my favorite

Garden Fresh in Mountain View, that is. I've flirted with Merit Vegetarian, but I still prefer Garden Fresh. Even when it's 100 degrees out, and they don't have air conditioning.

Brekfast:

Organic Banana

Odwalla Chocolate Soy Protein Drink

Organic Cashews

Lunch

Safeway 'O' brand Black Bean & Tofu Enchiladas

Organic Cashews

Dinner (Garden Fresh):

Drumsticks

Scallion Pancake

Sweet and Sour Pork

Orange Vegetarian Beef

Day 600 (Y2/D234): I'm an eating-out fiend

Somehow on Wednesday I ended up meeting a friend for both lunch and dinner. It went reasonably well, from the vegan point of view, except for what I would have to admit is my biggest bugaboo: I usually don't think about asking if a restaurant's pasta has egg in it until I'm writing these daily food diaries.

You might ask how that can still be the case after over a year and a half of being vegan, and I would say that it is clearly a sub-conscious desire not to know the answer because I'm afraid I will really be left with nothing to eat if I ask.

I will say that at dinner I did specifically say I was a vegan (and explained what that was) and ask what I could eat, and the waiter did go check with the kitchen and come back with options, so I feel fairly good about that.

But at lunch I just ordered the vegetarian pasta salad, no cheese, and left it at that.

Must. work. on. that.

The dinner was at Maggiano's in Santana Row. I had only been there once before for dinner, back when it first opened, and we were really unimpressed with the service, and found the food pretty mediocre, so much so we never went back. BlogHer did a cocktail reception there in 2006 which went OK, but I never ate a meal there again until Wednesday night.

And I'm sorry to say that the second chance didn't help. I thought my meal was not very tasty...sure, you get HUGE portions, but that's just a doggie bag in my fridge that I may never open...until it starts smelling up the place. I don't get why people dig Maggiano's...do you?

Lunch (Tomatinos, after skipping breakfast):

Garlic Rolls, no parmesan

Strawberry Lemonade

Vegetarian Pasta Salad, no Cheese

Dinner (Maggiano's):

Diet Coke

Sourdough Bread with Oil and Vinegar

Green Salad

Whole Wheat Penne Diablo

Day 599 (Y2/D233): What the hell did I just eat?

yesterday I took a new colleague to lunch at a new Mexican restaurant I've never been to before. They ahd something different on their menu...something outside my usual options. A potato and bean taquito...sounds yummy right?

I ordered it without cheese or sour cream, and I said "that comes with black beans, right?" "Yes."

The dish came while we were deep in conversation, and it wasn't until about halfway through the second taquito that I stopped to wonder what the hell I was eating. It was a taquito stuffed with some brownish mash. Was it brown because that's what you get when you mash potatoes with black beans? Was it brown because it was really refried beans in there, not black beans, even though black beans were on the side?

I don't know. I fear that was a non-vegan dish...which did slow me right down.

Breakfast:
Organic Banana
Organic Oatmeal

Lunch:
Diet Coke
Chips and Salsa
Potato-Bean Taquitos with Guacamole

Dinner:
Sauteed Seitan and "Chikn" Strips with Olive Oil, Garlic, Peas, Tofutti Sour Cream and Organic Avocado
Sourdough Bread
Tortilla Chips

Day 598 (Y2/D232): From wasabi to avocado...I like it green

The other day I mashed up my organic fingerling potatoes with wasabi. Yum. Monday night I mixed up some leftover spaghetti with avocado. Also yum.

Breakfast:
Coffee
Sourdough Roll
Organic Banana

Lunch:
Beans/Rice/Guacamole Burrito
Chips and Salsa
Organic Orange
Organic Apricot-Applesauce

Snack:
Vegan Donut Holes

Dinner:
Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Soy Margarine, Organic Avocado and Nutritional Yeast
Soy Pudding

Day 597 (Y2/D231): A restaurant does it right

Sunday was Mother's Day, and my family had its annual brunch at a restaurant called 231 Ellsworth. Which is at, you guessed it, 231 Ellsworth Street in San Mateo.

My brother had called again to find out if thy could accommodate both young children and vegans :)

Yes and yes.

And they did a great job. Seriously, if you're ever looking for a fairly upscale place to have a meal in San Mateo, check them out. (They also kept their wits about them and their sense of humor when dealing with our large party, including 5 rambunctious children.

Breakfast:
Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Soy Margarine and Vegan Parmesan

Lunch (231 Ellsworth):
Coffee
Orange Juice
Mixed Greens
Soba Noodles with Mushrooms
White Bean Cassoulet

Snack:
Walnuts

Dinner:
Organic Fingerling Potatoes mashed with Soy Margarine, Garlic and Wasabi.

Day 596 (Y2/D231): Tried a recipe from La Dolce Vegan

La Dolce Vegan!: Vegan Livin' Made Easy

Sarah Kramer

  Saturday I tried a recipe from La Dolce Vegan: Spaghetti and Tofu Balls. It's a quite quick and easy recipe, despite the fact that you're making your own tofu balls and sauce. I will admit I cut one corner, in that my jar of tomato sauce wasn't big enough for the recipe, so I instead used a jar of spaghetti sauce that I had (but I chopped up some actual fresh, organic tomatoes into the sauce to make up for it.)

I also didn't have a couple of spices on hand, but i didn't feel the lack of them.

Anyway, the Tofu Balls came out quite well. I made one mistake, in that after I fried them up in the olive oil as directed, I left them sitting in the pan for a while before throwing them into the sauce. I think that allowed them to continue soaking up oil and perhaps get too moist, so they didn't hang together quite as well as I would have liked once in the sauce. They didn't fall completely apart, but they were crumbling off at the edges.

The S.O. stated that he liked these Tofu Balls more than the meatless meatballs I buy at Trader Joes. I think he actually preferred the softer texture to the chewy texture of the meatballs. Bottom line: The recipe is quick, easy, tasty and definitely something to prepare, for example, for a family dinner when you want to serve hearty comfort food that non-veg folks can appreciate and relate to.

Breakfast:
2 Flax Frozen Waffles
1 with Soy Margarine and Lite Syrup
1 with Peanut Butter and Organic Jam
 Organic Banana

Lunch:
Organic Grapefruit
Organic Fingerling Potatoes, mashed with Soy Margarine, Tofutti Sour Cream and Nutritional Yeast

Dinner:
Spaghetti and Tofu Balls, made with Whole Wheat Organic Spaghetti and Organic Roasted Garlic Spaghetti Sauce. (Lots of good veggies added per the recipe.)
Vegan Cookie

Day 595 (Y2/D230): Any day with a vegan chocolate muffin is a good one

I may never want to go to Left Bank again, but I like to schedule meetings in Redwood City to happen at Pamplemousse, a little bakery on Broadway. Why? Because they have this awesome vegan chocolate muffin. I like my cakes, brownies and muffins quite dry, not moist and pudding-like, so this muffin is perfect for me. Consider it highly recommended.

I also had a lunch meeting, which was at Milagros, also in downtown RWC. Milagros doesn't have much on its entree menu for me, but I have had great success with their salads...they are big, hearty and come with lots of variety of vegan ingredients...no lettuce and tomato salads here. This one had portabella and avocado and beans. That's a fine substantial vegan meal there.

Breakfast:
Organic Oatmeal

Lunch (Milagros)
Diet Coke
Chips and Gucamole
Grilled Portabella Salad

Snack:
Vegan Chocolate Muffin

Dinner:
Riblets
Green Peas with Soy Margarine

Day 594 (Y2/D229): Cubes, Crayons, Blogging and Lemonade

Thursday night I moderated a panel of blogging experts for a small group at a new co-working space targeting parents in Menlo Park. I thought 90 minutes was going to be a looong time to keep the conversation going with such a small group, but actually those folks would have kept us there much longer if we had let them :)

Lots of passionate curiosity about how to leverage blogging!

It did mean I never ate dinner, which wasn't really a problem, because I had a late lunch.

Breakfast:
Soy Latte
Vegan Scone

Lunch:
Diet Coke
Chips & Salsa
Bean, Rice, Guacamole Burrito

Snack:
Vegan Holes
Lemonade