San Diego - Pt 1

Awhile back Jonathan mentioned that he was going to be headed to San Diego for work soon and suggested that we make a weekend trip out of it. Then I found out that my good friend Sara was about to move there with her husband from Florida, so I decided to turn it into more like a week trip. :)

We flew down on Tuesday evening and after some delays out of San Francisco and some confusion about which hotel we were actually staying in finally arrived! Jonathan of course had to work so we grabbed bagels and he dropped me back off at the hotel to wait for Sara where I enjoyed some serious Food Network watching (sometimes I really do miss cable, but it's probably a good thing otherwise I would watch a ton more tv!). Sara and I spent the morning wandering about the mall that was nearby - it's probably also a good thing there isn't one of those near me either! After a new pair of jeans, some shoes, a new shirt and a dress I think I'm done with my clothing budget for a little while!

By this time we were ready for some lunch - without any suggestions from me Sara picked Evolution, a place that was high on my "must go to" list for this trip. It is an all-vegan fast food restaurant - think burgers, chicken sandwiches, fries, shakes, etc. What!? Ok, maybe not the most healthy but still, sometimes it is nice to feel like a regular person eating regular person fast food once in awhile! I had the BBQ Chikn Sandwich with Sweet Potato Fries (really I would call these chips, I'm not sure why they decided they should be called fries), and Sara had the Southwest Black Bean Burger, also with the Sweet Potato Fries.

I really liked my sandwich, but then again anything with BBQ sauce is pretty much good. Sara said her black bean burger was a little too dry, as if it was just cooked black beans pressed into a patty. The sweet potato fries were great though... I really love sweet potatoes!

We wanted to wander around the Hillcrest district but weren't exactly sure where it was so we ended up deciding to drive back to her house along the 101. Unfortunately we lost the highway pretty quickly around Mission Bay - I still have no idea where it went, perhaps it merged with I-5 for a bit. Instead we followed random roads as close to the water as we could up along the coast until we ran back into the 101. It was a neat adventure and we saw a lot of the coast. I miss being near the water, the river through my town doesn't quite cut it. We stopped along the way to look at a few shops and to get some coffee. I also miss coffee dates - my friends and I used to meet up for coffee and chat for hours all the time!

That night we met up with some of Sara and Rick's friends for dinner and drinks at a place called Stone Brewery, which I had never heard of before but is apparently a San Diego based brewery. The place was really cool - we sat out on a patio that appeared to be surrounded by a garden (it was dark) and had a big fire pit in the center. Luckily there were heat lamps otherwise I think I would have frozen, it was not a particularly warm week in Southern California!

The next day Sara and I tried to go to a flea market (grossest term ever - I will now refer to it as a swap meet) in Escondido, but the swap meet had apparently been temporarily shut down. Sketchiest looking place ever. It looked like a barred up run down carnival minus the rides. It's probably a good thing it was closed. We decided instead to drive to Carlsbad and go look at antiques. Clearly I know nothing about antiques because the things that look like junk to me are expensive and the things I think are cool seem to be less so.

We got lunch before we left at a place I found (on HappyCow, of course) called the Naked Cafe. It was a little hard to find, but the food was very nice. I had something that consisted of fried potatoes and jalapenos with black beans, salsa, avocado, and cheese. It was served with a tortilla so it might have been intended to be eaten as a burrito or taco, but it was the world's smallest tortilla. Anyway - it was still quite good. They also had delicious iced tea, so bonus points there.

We went to Mission Beach later that afternoon and then met up with Jonathan for dinner in Little Italy. The pizza place that had originally been suggested had a line out the door so we went to the next place up the street which initially looked like it had no ambiance at all, but actually had the nicest patio out back where we ate. It seemed like a fun part of town - lots and lots of restaurants along this one street with a ton of people out. Unfortunately we were tired so we just headed home after dinner.



Speaking of tired - I'm going to have to finish recapping the rest at another time! I have more to show you - farmer's markets, wineries, and the zoo to name a few!


-C

SoCal Burritos

I love burritos. In fact - I love most forms of Mexican food. It's been several years since I've been to Southern California where I think some of the best Mexican food exists, so I was really excited for our trip this week!

Unfortunately, Mexican can be a tricky cuisine for a vegetarian... I have to worry about lard in the toritalls and beans and chicken stock in the rice and who knows what else I might not be thinking of! So I was really excited when I searched for restaurants in La Jolla on Happy Cow and found a vegetarian-friendly taco shop! Don Carlos Taco Shop was amazing. I had the Soyrizo burrito which had a nice spice to it and the owner assured me that the rice and beans were totally vegetarian (his wife is also a vegetarian). Unfortunately it is pretty tough to take an appetizing photo of a half eaten burrito - but that's not going to stop me from sharing with you - also check out their awesome discount cards!

The food was great, but I think the best part was how friendly the owner was. I would seriously seek this place out if I'm ever in San Diego again and I would definitely reccomend it to everyone I know who is in the area!

I'll have more to share on my trip to San Diego when I return, but I was excited about this particular place and wanted to share it right away!

-C

Sunday Dinner: Pineapple Five-Spice Bun with Orange-Sherry Glazed Tofu

For this week's version of Sunday Dinner I had to veer away from the typical Sunday dinner type fare. There's only so much "American" type vegetarian food one can make, you know? Especially when it's not quite grilling season yet and I can't pretend to make burgers by grilling mushrooms.

Can you guess by the name that this was another recipe from that same book? This is actually one of the simpler recipes - I think it only took me about an hour and a half to make and I didn't really need to do any advanced preparation. I wasn't very happy with it when I first put it all together. I'm not sure why. I think I was annoyed by the tofu sticking to the pan, or maybe that I had more tofu than I had pan space. Either way, I wasn't thrilled. But now thinking back on it, the meal was actually pretty good. I love the combination of basil, mint, and cilantro. The tofu that did manage to come out of the pan had a nice texture and flavor. The only thing that actually went wrong was the rice noodles probably needed another 30 second of cooking. I found a few clumps of hard noodles still stuck together. Oops!

The best part about it though is that I have leftover pineapple, plus a can of coconut milk from making coconut rice earlier this week - perfect for making coconut sticky rice with grilled pineapple! And so that's it for today - I'm off to finish dessert and curl up on the couch with a warm bowl of rice.

-C

Saturday Morning Doughnuts

Way back when I first started following The Pioneer Woman's website her recipe for homemade glazed doughnuts caught my eye. I bookmarked it and then moved on since I didn't own a metal slotted spoon and had zero experience making anything that required yeast. Then for the past couple of weeks the recipe has been featured on the front page of her website and it has been taunting me. Seriously. I thought about doughnuts all week long. I haven't had a doughnut in ages, not since Stephanie and I went to that vegan doughnut shop in Las Vegas back in September.

I decided this would be one of my projects for the weekend. I made the dough last night - all looked well. I took it out of the refrigerator this morning and rolled it out and still - all looked well. Even after I cut the doughnuts out using a biscuit cutter and a shot glass (side note: I used a Corona shot glass that my sister got me for my 21st birthday - why does Corona make shot glasses? Anyone?) they still looked like they were supposed to.

Then I went to let them rise using my standard bread trick of heating the oven up to the lowest possible temperature and then turning it off. I have to do this because we keep the house at basically a freezing temperature. Ok maybe it's more like 63 degrees. It's still pretty cold though if you ask me, and too cold to let things rise properly. Unfortunately this is where things went terribly wrong. Here are my doughnuts after an hour of "rising":

Sad, sad flat doughnuts. Luckily I had left a few doughnut holes in a pan on top of the oven that seemed to rise correctly.

 I did try to fry a couple of the sad flat ones just to see if maybe they were salvageable. They weren't really. But the doughnut holes worked out alright! Here are the glazed results:

And here is the difference between the flattened greasy doughnut, and the doughnut hole that actually rose properly:

You want to know the worst part? Doughnuts aren't even as good as I had built them up to be in my head. The only reason I kind of want to make them again is because I'm mad that I messed them up. I'm considering it - I suppose I could bring them in to work on Monday, but I don't know. It's kind of a lot of work to prove to myself I really can make them correctly. Maybe I should just go back to baking.

Hopefully I have better results to share with you from tomorrow's Sunday Dinner!

-C

Leftover Redo

Once upon a time, maybe it was around New Year's, I decided to try to be better about meal planning for each week. That didn't last long. Then a couple of weeks ago I realized how inefficient we were being with our food - going to the grocery store almost every day to grab stuff instead of doing one large trip, eating out for lunch way more than we should, etc.

So we created a new food budget and decided to make Sunday mornings our shopping time. This of course means that we need to know what we're shopping for, so here I am back at meal planning! Long story short - planning out our meals means we usually have leftovers available for lunch the next day!

That steak with avocado sauce from Sunday became these delicious "steak" sandwiches! Grilled onions, spinach, sliced seitan steak, and avocado aji sauce - lunch couldn't be much better in my opinion.

Anyone have any good quick lunch recipes that they use often? I hate running out of leftovers and being forced to eat work cafeteria food.  :)

-C

Sunday Dinner: Ale Suateed Vegan Steak with Aji Avocado Sauce

I tend to make my more impressive meals on the weekend for the obvious reason - I have more time. Since I'm kind of into this Veganize This! cookbook right now which consists of overly complicated recipes requiring multiple days, that usually leaves Sunday night for the big meal. I've decided to continue with a theme - Sunday Dinners - and share with you what I create each week to kick off yet another work week.



Remember the Sea Scallops recipe and the long winded title? Well I tried to pare down the actual recipe title for the post, but what it really was is: Colombian Ale-Sauteed Vegan Steak with Sweet Onions and Garlic-Ginger Aji Avocado Sauce. *deep breath* I will tell you this - I don't really remember what steak tasted like, but I know this was not the texture. Not that I didn't enjoy it though - the flavor was quite good. Jonathan even said a few of them looked like real pieces of meat! I wonder if I might someday learn to fool someone... probably not since apparently we can only ever get texture or flavor correct but not both.

I didn't know what an Aji Sauce was until just now - to me it seemed just like a more complicated guacamole - but apparently it is a spicy South American sauce (Stephanie - are you eating this in Chile!?). Jonathan was eating it by the spoonful, so I think that means it was good. I made some oven roasted potatoes to go along with it because Steak and Potatoes - that's what people eat, right!? Anyway - I wasn't sure what other side dish went with "steak" and this seemed to work.

You know - I think this may be one of the few food photos I have taken that I actually enjoyed without any amount of photoshopping at all. Maybe I am getting better? Nah - just lucky I think. Perhaps that's the next class I should sign up for - photography! I wonder if anyone teaches a food photography class around here, that would be amazing!

-C

Raw Food: Cold but Still Delicious

So registering at the local community college has been a fantastic idea. Dance class is super fun, the Chef for the Chocolate's class ended up letting me register even though the class is full, and yesterday I took a raw foods class!

In case you hadn't noticed based on my previous posts, I've been vegetarian for quite a long time. I've read about raw food, and I've occasionally eaten it at various restaurants. I've never really pursued the raw food diet though because honestly my reasons for being vegetarian have nothing to do with health (not that I don't think it isn't an added bonus!). I thought it would be fun  to learn a bit more about raw foods though and maybe try to incorporate more of them into my culinary adventures so I signed up for this weekend class.

I think a lot of people hear "raw food" and assume that all you can eat is salads and fruits, but I really think it is so much more than that. My favorite thing we made in this class was a stir "fry" with Almond Thai Sauce - insane amounts of flavor! I definitely can see myself making this recipe again and I really can't imagine that anyone wouldn't love it.

We also made a Tropical Salad (ok yes - a salad, but not a boring one!) and a Mango Cobbler and tried a Green Smoothie. My inner picky child was a little wary of the green smoothie, but you seriously couldn't taste the greens at all. I think I might need to invest in a blender that doesn't leak everywhere and actually blends more than just the bottom inch of ingredients.

Vegan Chocolate Cake

Yesterday while browsing The Pioneer Woman's website I saw she had posted a recipe for Red Velvet Cake and with it a link to The Best Frosting Ever. I'd recently had a long conversation with my coworker about frosting and how sometimes it can be a little gritty or overly sugary even with powdered sugar, so I was really intrigued by the fact that this frosting recipe used granulated sugar and claimed to be exceptionally creamy and smooth. How could that be? I kept thinking about this frosting recipe for the rest of the afternoon.

Then, while flipping through my Joy of Vegan Baking cooking, Jonathan pointed to the recipe for chocolate cake and asked if I would make that. Perfect! Now I have a valid excuse for making frosting too! Of course I said yes (who says no to chocolate cake!?) and got started. This chocolate cake recipe really is insanely easy. It didn't require me to do any weird egg substitutes or even to use soy milk! I don't always have soy milk around because I usually eat oatmeal for breakfast and not cereal so this deters me from a lot of recipes. I also didn't need an electric mixer to mix it which I thought was convenient. I'll get to the recipe in a minute though. Now on to the frosting - it truly was smooth and creamy with no hint of the sugar granules! It did require an awful lot of beating (15 minutes?) and I'm still not positive I did it long enough, but the taste was very good! It was almost whip cream like and not overly sweet. I'm not a huge frosting fan, so I really enjoyed that. You can find the recipe on Tasty Kitchen here.

As for the chocolate cake - it was moist, not crumbly (which I find happens with a lot of vegan baking), and delicious. I can't believe I hadn't made this sooner - it will now be my go to chocolate cake recipe!

Vegan Chocolate Cake
From: The Joy of Vegan  Baking
1 1/2 Cups Flour
3/4 Cups Sugar
1/4 Cup Cocoa Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup Cold Water
1/3 Cup Canola Oil
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla
1 Tbs White Distilled Vinegar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (or if your oven likes to burn things, like mine, heat it to ~325 degrees).
2. Grease and flour a 9" cake pan - I used a springform pan to ensure the cake would come out without breaking - set aside. You could skip this step by using muffin liners and making cupcakes too.
3. Whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt until well combined.
4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the water, oil, vanilla, and vinegar in the center. Whisk until just combined.
5. Pour into your prepared cake pan and put it in the oven - bake for 25-30 minutes. (The recipe says 30 minutes, but even with my oven turned down mine was done at 25 - just keep an eye on it).
6. If you have the patience to let it cool and you like frosting, frost it with the best frosting ever recipe linked above! I realize this would no longer make it vegan - but if you eat dairy products and are still terrified at the sight of raw eggs then this whole recipe should work out great for you.  :)
7. If your frosting looks a little suspicious still and you're not sure if you should keep beating it you can sprinkle on chocolate chips like I did to detract from it!

Sunday Dinner: Butternut Squash Risotto

A few weeks ago I had the sudden urge to make a big Sunday dinner. Something that maybe lots of families make all across the country but due to my aversion to things like pot roast and other meat based meals have never experienced.

I like big Sunday dinners because it gives you lots of leftovers to eat throughout the week! This time I decided to go with several dishes - Butternut Squash Risotto, Sauteed Mushrooms, Kale with Garlic and Chili, Rosemary-Garlic Roasted Potatoes, and Field Roast. I'd never tried to make risotto before - in fact I'm pretty sure I'd never even eaten risotto. It did take a bit of time, but it was delicious! Who knew something could be so creamy and delicious without any cream at all? I suppose I did at a *tiny* bit of cheese at the end, but really - hardly any at all.

You should try it - I promise it is worth the little bit of time it takes to make!


Butternut Squash Risotto
Recipe adapted from The Wednesday Chef

1/2 Butternut Squash, diced (12oz if you're buying it pre-cut)
1 Large Onion, diced
8 Cups Vegetable Stock
2 Cups Arborio Rice
1/2 Cup Dry White Wine
3 Tbs Butter, unsalted
1/4 Cup Parmesan, grated
Handful of Sage leaves
Salt and Pepper

1) Combine squash, a few sage leaves, and 1 cup of stock in a pot - bring to a simmer and cook for ~10 minutes until squash is tender. Drain and reserve liquid and set squash aside.
2) In another pot heat the remaining stock and keep warm - you don't want it boiling but you want it to be hot when you add it to the rice later.
3) Chop up 6 sage leaves - saute in 2 Tbs of melted butter over medium heat for 1 minute then add the diced onion - saute for 5 minutes until onions are translucent.
4) Lower the heat on the onions and sage and add the rice and a pinch of salt  - cook for 3 minutes before turning the heat back up to medium and adding the white wine. Cook until the wine has been absorbed and then add enough of the hot vegetable stock to cover the rice.
5) Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to stir occasionally until the stock has been absorbed - continue adding 1/2 cup of stock at a time and stirring until it has been absorbed before adding more.
6) Once all of the stock has been absorbed (about 30 minutes) add the squash, Parmesan, and remaining 1 Tbs of butter and season with salt and pepper. Stir gently to combine and serve with chopped sage as a garnish.

Gardens and Pixel

Jonathan thinks we are really far behind on getting our garden going. I keep trying to tell him that the planting chart says we're fine. I don't think he believes me. He's got the soil test kit out this morning so we can start some of the outdoor plants today.

Last weekend we planted our tomatoes, peppers, and snap peas inside - it's always a bit nerve-wracking for me to start things from seed, until they finally sprout and then I am super excited! We should start seeing something within the next week... I hope! I suppose we do have some planting we can do today - actually we can probably do a lot: fava beans, garlic, kale, broccoli, brussles sprouts, onions, potatoes. First we need to mark out where everything will go though.
I'd also like to put together a drip irrigation system this year, but for some reason that seems really overwhelming to me!

I was looking through some photos of our garden from last year for inspiration and though I'd share a few. For having a pretty cold start to the summer and a short growing season I think we were pretty successful!





But now on to more important matters - yesterday was the 5th birthday of the love of my life. And I forgot it! I think I owe him some new toy mice now. Oh - was that confusing? Yes, he is a cat. Here he is when I first got him:

 He was a gangly awkward looking thing when I first got him. In fact, my friend and I weren't even really interested in him and his sister but the lady who worked at the rescue center insisted that we at least take a look at them. These cats won us over in an instant - they purred and snuggled and let us hold them for at least 20 minutes. Now the only time Pixel lets me hold him is when I've been gone for a long time and he's excited to have me home, and even then he only cooperates for about 2 minutes!

Here he is now - five years old and more handsome than ever (well I think so at least)!