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