¡Yo Soy!

News Flash!

2009-09-25T21:10:00.001-07:00

Hi guys! Guess what? I'm moving...to a different domain. From this point on, I will no longer be updating this blogspot site, but instead will be operating over at http://www.yosoyblog.com.

Please update your readers, blog rolls, speed dials, etc.

I'll be kicking off the relaunch with a bang: Vegan MoFo. More details at the new site. Thanks guys!

By the way, I'm trying to figure out how to redirect this blogger homepage to the new site as well as the old permalinks. From what I've read, it seems possible, just far too complicated for my technologically challenged self. Anyone have any tips?

Insane yumminess at the super posh XIV

2009-09-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

Last night, my uber wonderful boyfriend and I had some celebratin' to do so he took me to XIV where we ordered the eight course tasting menu for $64. I am a cash-strapped lass so pretty much the only time I get to eat anywhere fancy is when my dad is in town once every couple years, so going to XIV was a major splurge and I loved every minute of it! Was every single course so Earth-shatteringly good it made me want commit suicide knowing I would never taste anything better ever again? No, definitely not. In fact a couple of courses were pretty ho-hum. But the whole experience was so fun and some of the food we ate I have found myself dreaming about nonstop since we left the restaurant. Let's have a look at the meal, shall we?

DISCLAIMER: These photos BLOW. This is because a) it was really dark in there b) I was far too preoccupied with the food and my cute company to pay much attention to the photography and c) my FRIGGIN viewfinder is broken meaning I just have to aim blindly and hope the frame at least somewhat encompasses the subject.

I wasn't planning on having anything to drink, but the wine and cocktail menus were just far too irresistible. I ordered a glass of Jezebel Pinot Noir more for the cute name and the cheap price ($11) than for any other reason. The menu describes it as "supple with deep berry fruits and a hint of spice." Yeah, sure whatever. I don't know the first thing about wine, nor do I care to. All I know is that it tasted awesome. My boyfriend ordered the Pear Perfection cocktail which was INSANE. It was sooooooo good. You couldn't taste any alcohol, it just tasted like a super refreshing, crisp pear spritzer. I am definitely going to be going back to the bar at XIV for some more of these in the near future. At $13, it was a typical price for a West Hollywood cocktail.

Onto our First Course: Turnip Tartare with Broccolini, Sesame Oil, and Asian Pear.
This was a good first course because it was really light and refreshing. I normally can't stand pears but XIV changed that for me tonight between the pear cocktail and the crispy Asian pears in this dish. Every time I've had a pear before last night they were totally mushy, but these were more akin to fresh apples.

Before our second course came out, we were served little naan points that was the best naan I've ever had. Served hot out of the oven, they were garlicky and lightly salted. My non-vegan boyfriend's came with raita, but I could have eaten an entire batch of these plain and in fact I had already eaten half of them before I thought to take a photo:

Second Course: Heirloom Tomato and Peach Salad with Watercress and Lemon Vinaigrette
When you look at this dish, it looks sorta lame--I mean it really is just two halves of tomatoes and a bite of peach. But holy guacamole these were the best tomatoes I've ever had. The red tomato had the same buttery texture as the peach. I've been thinking about taking a trip to Whole Foods just to see if I can find a similar tomato because this damn dish has been on my mind all day long.

Third Course: Cauliflower Tempura with Passion Fruit and Almonds
This dish was one of my favorites. The fried cauliflower was served on top of a sauce that tasted like apple pie. It may seem like a weird combo, but it was divine. I've never had passion fruit on it's own--does it taste like apples? Because I really swear there were apples somewhere in here, but maybe I'm hallucinating.

Fourth Course: Charred Broccoli Rabe on a Sushi Rice Cake with White Soy Vinaigrette
Not a very exciting dish, but it was tasty. I liked the homemade rice cake (you can't see it, it's under all the greens).

Fifth Course: Padron Peppers, Chantrelle Mushrooms, and Sweet Corn
This course was actually pretty disappointing. It wasn't bad, it just was very "meh." The corn and mushrooms were good, but they pretty much just tasted like corn and mushrooms that I had sauteed myself with some garlic and salt. The peppers had no taste, it seemed like they hadnt been seasoned at all. This was definitely the least interesting part of the meal.

Sixth Course: Falafal Burger with Tahini Sauce and Fries
Best. Falafal. in. the. World. And it's a recipe that chef Michael Mina stole from his mother. The falafal had a nice thin crunchy crust but the inside was extremely creamy. Not counting the dessert courses, this course was my favorite. That falafal is just heavenly. The accompanying fries were also really good. They tasted just how I remembered McDonalds fries tasted, which I'm sure the chef would find insulting, but I mean it as a compliment! I seriously recommend you stop whatever you are doing and get your butt to XIV just to have that falafal.

Seventh Course: Compressed Strawberries with Fruit Sorbet and Violets
After doing some googling, it seems that compressed fruit is a common menu item at upscale restaurants. Apparently, the technique involves sealing up the fruit, then vacuuming the air out and somehow injecting flavoring into the spaces that used to be filled with air. The berries were yummy and the sorbet was great but the best part was this amazing little white chocolate ball out of which gushed a thin berry sauce. It was a delightful little surprise.

Eighth Course: Coconut Sorbet with Peanut Butter Crunch and Basil Syrup
I can't get this dessert out of my head. I just keep reliving every tasty morsel in my brain. Mama pajama it was just absolutely perfect. The peanut butter crunch is hard to describe...it was sort of like if a graham cracker and some peanut brittle had a baby. It was chewy, gooey, and crunchy all at the same time. The coconut sorbet was really rich and there was also some sort of coconut dust on the plate as well. Although the menu calls the sauce basil syrup, I swear that our server called it mint jam and it did indeed taste minty. Mixing the syrup, the crunch, and the sorbet together was the most delightful trifecta.

I had a truly awesome night at XIV and I love patronizing a place that is so accessible to vegans. Maybe someday I will actually have a respectable salary and be able to afford patronizing this place more often. Siiiiigh, a girl can dream. In the meantime, I am off to concoct my own dessert recipe that involves coconut, peanut butter, and mint to tide me over until I can go back!

XIV
8117 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
323.656.1414

Jose Beans: The Ultimate Comfort Food

2009-09-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

The best thing about dating my boyfriend, is getting to spend a lot of quality time with his awesome roommate! I can't believe I spent 24 years of my life sans the wonderful Jose. Rarely do we call him Jose however. Instead we know him as Jose B (pronounced hose bee). The nickname stems from the most hilarious joke: "What did Jose's mother name his brother? hose b! (get it?! you know like jos A and jos B! oh man it tickles me every time.) Jose B is a delightful ball of wit and sarcasm and he just generally brings a little bit of sunshine to my life. On top of all this, he is a really good cook and one of his go-to family recipes has quickly shot to the very top of my comfort food list. It's a soupy bean concoction that has come to be known as Jose Beans (say "hose" beans.) The recipe comes from Jose B's Puerto Rican family. I bug Jose B to make them for me so often that finally he insisted I start making them for myself. He dictated the recipe to me and now I automatically fill up on pinto beans at Nature Mart in preparation for my weekly fix.

This is not a crazy, outrageous new way to make beans. It just happens to be a perfect storm of delicious ingredients. They're kind of like the mac 'n' cheese of Puerto Rico. The cilantro is key. If you don't have fresh cilantro, just don't even bother making these. I usually serve these beans over brown rice but half the time I just end up eating it like a soup.

Jose Beans (hose beans)
4 cloves garlic
1/2 green bell pepper, roughly chopped
1 good handful of fresh cilantro
1/2 yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 eight oz. can of tomato sauce
2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. coriander
2 cans of pinto beans, or about 1 cup dried pinto beans soaked overnight
a couple shakes of garlic powder
sliced jalapeno pepper, for garnish

Put the garlic, bell pepper, cilantro, and onion in a food processor and blend until you've got an even mixture of minced veggies. This is called Puerto Rican sofrito. Add sofrito, tomato sauce, cumin, and coriander to a sauce pan and saute over medium heat for 2-3 minutes. Shake some garlic powder into the pot. Add pinto beans and one or two tomato-sauce-cans-full of water to the pot, depending on how soupy or thick you want your beans. Bring mixture to a boil then reduce heat. Simmer for 25 minutes or so. Plate and garnish with slices of jalapeno pepper.

SunPower Natural Cafe: Worth the Splurge

2009-08-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

I have been dying to try the mostly-raw SunPower Natural Cafe ever since I first read about it on To Live and Eat in L.A. Dying as in, I literally dreamed about it on a daily, if not hourly basis. I'm really trying to incorporate more raw foods into my diet and every dish that Foodeater described sounded totally irresistible. There was just one obstacle standing between me and SunPower: cash flow. That's right. I'm broke.

Well, not broke exactly. You see my t.v. show is on hiatus so I am living off of measly unemployment checks while I look for my next gig and, with rampant runaway production, who knows how long it could be before I find it! Of course I have savings, but I'm hoping those will go towards a big trip to the Yucatan later this year.

It's not that SunPower is particularly expensive, I am just trying to not eat out at all. This past week I realized how relatively easy it is to feed yourself on a strict budget. Last Sunday I spent a combined total of $26 at the farmer's market, Bulk Bin, and Vons and have been eating like a queen all week and I still have enough for at least two more meals for this week! Check out the haul. (I'll have some of the recipes I made this week on the blog soon.)

By the way, I feel like a total sucker for having bought canned beans all these years when you can get dried beans for about a fraction of the price. Never again!!!

Back to SunPower...earlier this week I had to make a stop at Comic Smash in Studio City to pick up Archie #600 (a.k.a. the issue where Archie proposes to that whore Veronica!) so I could mail it to my elementary school friends who used to spend summer mornings with me sitting around reading about the latest drama at Riverdale High. It was 9 bazillion degrees outside and the pup and I were sweating our brains out so I convinced myself that for my own health I needed to stop and pick up one of the SunPower shakes I have heard so much about. Even though I felt guilty knowing the shake would set me back 7 bucks, once I had made the decision to get one, I practically started drooling in anticipation. Imagine the soul crushing defeat I experienced when I tried to open SunPower's door and found it locked. It was 6pm and the place was closed! Quelle horreur!!!

Luckily for me, an employee saw me tearing up at the door and invited me in and said that it would be his pleasure to make me some take-out. How great is that?! This was a full hour after their (crazy) closing time! Soon I was leaving with my Cacao Superfoods shake in tow.

So, was the shake everything it's crack up to be? YES, yes it is. It was so incredibly creamy, chocolate-y, and had a little tang (perhaps that's from the goji berries?) It is everything you could ever want in a dessert. At 7 bucks it costs more than you're average shake, but it's also much better than the average shake, so it all works out. Ever since that le Cacao Superfoods and I met, I have been fantasizing day and night about having it again. I am not exaggerating. Is it weird to lose sleep over a beverage? I should ask Dr. Drew.

The only bummer with my beloved is the calories and fat content. The employee I spoke with estimated the calorie count to be somewhere around 450. I was able to use the shake as a replacement for lunch, however, and it definitely kept me sated until dinner rolled around. I don't even want to think about how many grams of fat that baby has with its half a cup of cashews. Eeeek! But a girl's got to cheat on her diet and budget every now and then!

I absolutely cannot wait until my next unemployment check rolls in and I can splurge some more at the insanely awesome SunPower Natural Cafe where the food is whole and the people are amazing.

P.S. Don't fear, the pup didn't get her sneaky little tongue into my drink. I know all too well the effect chocolate has on dogs thanks to a $650 bill from the animal hospital after Hayley go into a bag of chocolate chips that my roommate had precariously left lying around. Yet another reason why I need to be thrifty with the dollars. Siiiiiiiiigh...

UPDATE: After writing this post I was overcome by the urge to return to SunPower, so I flew over there and got myself a Sweet Kale shake. Holy moly it is blowing my mind!!! It is a lovely pale green and tastes just like pistachio ice cream! How do they do it?!

SunPower Natural Cafe
3711 Cahuenga Blvd.
Studio City, CA 91604
818.308. 7420

Super Simple Mexican Black Bean Soup

2009-08-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

I am soup crazy. At work, I often skip the cereal and smoothies and have soup for breakfast. Black bean soup is one of my all time faves, mostly because you just can't beat the creaminess that results from blending the beans, and it's very healthy to boot! Black beans are a crazy good source of cholesterol-lowering fiber among other nutritious properties.

This recipe is basic but delicious and only has a tiny iota of fat. I used canned beans here (only because I had them after "borrowing" them from work) but you should used dried beans if you can because they are way cheaper and it's far better for the environment due to the lack of processing and packaging. If you do use dried beans, be sure to soak them overnight beforehand. I do always, however, make use of canned enchilada sauce. The enchilada sauce is used as an easy alternative to using all the tomatoes, spices, etc. that makes other recipes for black bean soup more time intensive. Just make sure to get a brand that doesn't use weird chemical coloring or HFCS. I usually use Las Palmas brand which can be found in the Mexican section of any regular grocery store. For extra texture you can add corn kernals but personally I think this is the best recipe for the ultimate velvety mouthfeel.

Super Simple Mexican Black Bean Soup
1 yellow onion, roughly diced
4 cloves garlic, roughly diced
2 tsp. cumin
2 cans organic black beans
1 ten ounce can enchilada sauce
2 cubes vegetable bouillon
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Line a large sauce pan with a thin layer of water. Add onion, garlic, and cumin to pot and saute over medium heat, until onions soften, about 4-6 minutes. Add black beans and one can full of water. Add enchilada sauce, bouillon, and cilantro. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and allow to cool slightly. Use a stick blender to puree soup to the texture you desire. If you don't own a stick blender of course you can pour the soup into your regular blender but that is a major pain in the ass, just invest in a twenty dollar stick blender already! It is a required tool in the arsenal of any avid soup maker.

My new favorite restaurant: Lemonade

2009-08-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I recently happened upon the most amazing lemonade in the world. This is exciting news for people such as myself who, for example, recently had a spike in serotonin levels upon learning of Panera Bread's new frozen version of their famously tasty lemonade. The good news is that this vendor of the aforementioned citrus beverage also serves up really tasty food. The spot is the appropriately named Lemonade. I recently had a wonderful meal at their Venice location with my friend Canada.

The restaurant's concept is an upscale take on cafeteria-style dining. When you enter you are given a tray which you bring as you proceed through the line where people on the other side of the sneeze guard are ready to serve you. The first station is an array of cold salads, similar to the deli sides at M Cafe but there are twice as many options. You can choose from 1, 2, or 3 portions. Each portion is two scoops and you can have a scoop of two different items in that one portion if you so desire. Canada and I both opted for two portions with all different scoops. I was pleased to see that about 80% of the salads were vegan and the servers were all very knowledgeable about which contained animals products and which did not. After the salads, you encounter the sandwiches, the hot portions, the soups, and then the desserts. None of the sandwiches or the desserts are vegan, some of the soups and hot plates may have been but I was too busy staring at my colorful salad plate to notice.

At the cash register is a lemon-lover's wet dream: an array of more than five different lemonades. You can have samples of all of them and I highly suggest you do, although then you will end up like me: completely torn about which one too choose. I ended up going with peach ginger and Canada opted for blueberry mint. Both were completely out of this world. The were perfectly sweetened and the peach ginger had a delightful zing. Even if you ignore all the food, you must get your butt to Lemonade to try their signature drink.

My salad plate was made up of roasted beets with red onions and hazelnut vinaigrette, roasted cauliflower with golden raisins and a curry vinaigrette, sunchoke with fennel and mint vinaigrette, and French lentils. I gobbled all my portions up, enjoying every bite. They chefs did not skimp on the dill in the sunchoke salad which scores major points with me and the lentils were perfect--chewy, not mushy. I absolutely loved my meal.

I also had bites of Canada's quinoa, tomato and avocado, and farro salads. Again, all were wonderful. The tomato salad had big chunks of creamy avocado--it's a simple concept but made for an extremely refreshing dish.

With 3 locations around town (Venice, Downtown, and West Hollywood,) you have no excuse to not try this place out! Even if you don't try the food, the lemonade is worth a special trip.

Lemonade
3 L.A. locations
(Note: the website does not list the Venice location, but I promise, it exists)
1661 Abbot-Kinney Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291

Humphrey Yogart in Sherman Oaks

2009-08-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

Summer may almost be over but that doesn't mean my seasonal hankering for milkshakes has subsided. Like clockwork, when May dwindles down and June is approaching, I start craving milkshakes like a tween craves a romantic evening with a Jonas brother. This yen isn't really a problem when I'm at home and can make a quick trip to Scoops to sate me but it's a different story when I'm at my boyfriend's place in the Valley.

The only options I was aware of for a cold, creamy, dairy-free treat west of La Brea are Ice Pan and Millions of Milkshakes, both of which are too far from the bf's. I contemplated making my own milkshakes with coconut milk ice cream and rice milk from the Studio City Whole Foods, but having an entire carton of ice cream in the freezer is far too dangerous for me--I have been known to tell myself that I should just polish off the whole carton in order to avoid eating it the rest of the week--does that make sense? No, it does not at all, but my ice-cream-obsessed brain is far from logical.

After doing some hardcore research, I came across Humphrey Yogart (sic--get it? because what they do with yogurt is like art?!) in Sherman Oaks and off I went. You will not find a plethora of vegan options at Humphrey like you might at Millions of Milkshakes or Ice Pan, but what you will find is a vegan, soy-based milkshake base and many vegan mix-ins. These mix-ins range from various types of fruits to espresso syrup and carob chips.

So far, I haven't been able to venture far from my usual combo: the soy base with Oreos. Occasionally I have chocolate syrup added as well (I have been assured multiple times by different employees that the syrup is vegan.) The result is a super-creamy, tasty and refreshing vegan milkshake! My only complaint is that I like my milkshakes to have some chunks in them but I am told they can't control this so they just sprinkle some cookie bits on the top for me. I really don't get it--can't they just stop the blender a little sooner to preserve some intact Oreos??? They always insist they can't, so it's smooth milkshakes for me. But no worries, I will still continue to suck these bad babies down.

Humphrey also stocks all sorts of weird health foods including a lot of vegan cookies, cereals, and granola bars. One of my fave finds is Nutlettes cereal. I've never tried them but I dare you to find a cereal with a more hilarious moniker.

Humphrey Yogart is in fact art to those of use whose milkshake habit is impeded by the lack of vegan milkshakeries in L.A. Get your tush over there pronto!

EDIT: Foodeater at To Live and Eat in L.A. told me that when she went to Humphrey a while ago the soy base contained whey, making it not vegan. I went back and read the ingredients and there was no whey or any other dairy product. Nay to Humphrey for originally serving non-vegan food to vegans, but yay for remedying the problem.

Humphrey Yogart
4574 Van Nuys Blvd.
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
818.906.2490

Vegan Cheese Takes Over the Neighborhood!

2009-08-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

Upon learning that I'm vegan, 9 out of 10 people will respond by saying some variation of "Oh my stars, I would just keel over and die right here on this spot if I couldn't have my beloved cheese!" For the 6 years I was a vegetarian, I said the same exact thing. But then eventually I went vegan and, oddly enough, I never miss cheese. Well almost never--since I've gone vegan the only time I crave curds and whey is occasionally when I make spaghetti I think it might be nice to have parmesan to go with it. And I don't mean a fresh, gourmet parmesan. I mean the dry, shitty Kraft kind. It's not like I was never into cheese either (au contraire, I was known to go through a small wheel of gouda in one day and I would eat goat cheese smeared on anything and everything). You would think I'd get cravings occasionally, but for whatever reason I just don't.

So when a wave of vegan pizza options popped up around town I thought it was pretty cool but I wasn't in a huge hurry to try them. But when I realized that there was vegan pizza within walking distance of my house, I figured I should go support any establishment that offers vegan options. Off I went to Lucifer's Pizza.

Lucifer's uses Teese cheese from Chicago Soy Dairy. I ordered a pie that was half Hawaiian (sans the ham) and half mushroom. Let's talk about the non-cheese elements first. The crust was good, the mushrooms were fresh, and my favorite thing about the Hawaiian side was that it had a generous sprinkle of coconut flakes on it which was a totally sweet and yummy addition. I had a major problem with the sauce though. It tasted like they just opened up a can of plain tomato sauce and dumped it on. It was completely devoid of seasoning of any sort. It gave the pizza sort of a bitter taste. I tend to prefer my pizza sauce to be more in the vain of Papa John's which is slightly sweet and smacks of basil and oregano. Lucifer's sauce is just lame-o.

As for the Teese...it was...ok. It didn't have much of a taste. It was pretty melted which is impressive for a vegan cheese. My biggest beef with the Teese was this strange tendency for it to stick to my teeth. Literally every time I took a bite of pizza, I had to use my napkin to scrape the Teese remnants off my incisors. Luckily I was eating this with the boyfriend, so I wasn't mortified to be constantly de-flaking my mouth, but I am here to tell you that this is NOT ideal first date food. Overall, my pizza was enjoyable but I am in no rush to run back to Lucifer's. The next time I'm there I will definitely just get a pizza with no cheese, because the Teese just really didn't do anything for me. Hopefully in the mean time, they will do something with that subpar sauce as well.

A couple days after I had gone to Lucifer's, I heard that ANOTHER pizza place in Los Feliz was now offering vegan pies, this time, with the infamous new Daiya cheese which is so cheese-like it has been known to cause vegans to questions whether it actually contains dairy. The place is Cruzer Pizza and, despite being a frequent customer of Cruzers neighbor Cap 'N' Cork, I never even knew this place existed. Cruzer is literally a hole-in-the-wall with a counter and no seating, so I ordered a half Hawaiian, half vegan pepperoni and mushroom pie to go and brought it to the boyfriend's for lunch.

In general, I am not a fan of meat analogs, but I thought if I was trying the fake cheese, I might as well try it with the other new vegan options offered. Both sides of our pie were insanely delicious. We have to start with the cheese. Cruzer uses a mix of Daiya's mozzarella and cheddar flavors, which seems like an odd choice--I don't remember cheddar as being a typical pizza cheese--but let me tell you, the two cheeses melt together in a delightfully gooey mess. I am struggling to find the words to describe the sheer awesomeness of Daiya, but I feel that any description I could come up with would be inadequate. Let's just say Daiya cheese on a pizza rocks my world. Oddly though, Daiya also has a tendency to stick to one's teeth but it is extremely minimal--nothing like the adhesive bond that Teese seems to posess.

Even more surprising than me loving a fake cheese, is me loving the fake meat Cruzer uses! The ham on our Hawaiian pizza was so delish! The thin squares are sweet and salty bites that thankfully don't taste enough like real ham to gross me out. The fake pepperoni (pictured at top) is not the greasy round slices one finds on regular pizza but instead are little spicy crumbles, more akin to bac 'n' bits in size and shape. As for the mushrooms, they are not dry, limp button mushrooms but are so big and juicy they might actually be portabellas.

Cruzer had me hooked from the first bite, so it wasn't long before I was dialing them up for a delivery, this time going for a pie with fake chicken and mushrooms. Everything was as delcicious as before...except the chicken which was too much like the fake meats that I hate--thick, chewy, and way too close to real chicken for me. But no worries, I just picked it off and crammed an ENTIRE PIE into my big German head (please don't tell anyone this). I had to run an extra 99 miles the next day to make up for it, but it was so worth it!

Until recently, I rarely had any sort of craving for cheese, but now that Daiya has entered my vernacular, I often find myself daydreaming about the gooey, stretchy, tasty pizza served at Cruzer. If Lucifer's has any desire to keep a vegan customer base, they need to ditch the Teese and start piling on the Daiya.

Lucifer's Pizza
1958 Hillhurst Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
323.906.8603

Cruzer Pizza
4449 Prospect Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
323.666.0600

Exciting not-so-new news!

2009-08-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

I dont know how I didn't read about this earlier, but I am very excited about Jonothan Safran Foer's new book Eating Animals. Foer is one of my favorite authors, having written the uber excellent Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and his new book sounds right up my alley. Eating Animals is a non-fiction work about Foer's choice to be vegetarian. From the blurbs I've read it sounds like he visited factory farms as part of his research. One of my favorite authors is writing about my favorite issues! What could be better? I normally get all my books from the library but I already pre-ordered this one because I won't be able to wait for the library processing time. Eating Animals comes out November 2nd. There's a little more information here.

2009-08-01T08:50:00.001-07:00

Hello loyal readers,

I have been completely M.I.A. for a while and I apologize! I basically have no excuse other than being busy at work and having the social calendar of a turn-of-the-century debutante (read: I am just extremely popular, what can I say?) I am typing this hurriedly because I am off to catch a flight to Boston where I will be wreaking havoc for the next week, but I promise that as soon as I come back I will be uber-blogging and even trying to sneak in a little redesign!

Adios for now!!!

Local: Good Eats from Not-So-Far Away

2009-05-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

These days I am really trying to eat as locally as possible. Before this season of our show started I resolved to bring in my lunch at least thrice a week so as to reduce the insane amount of packaging we go through for our daily lunch orders. Unfortunately, I can't say I've lived up to that goal. It seems that the last thing I want to do after getting home from work is pack a lunch for the next day. Le sigh. But fear not, I still manage to do my part by occasionally giving up my paid-for lunch for a thrown together melange of veggies from our kitchen at work and I get 90 percent of all my produce from the farmer's market (I just can't resist the baby brussel sprout bags at Trader Joe's, I just can't! They are so cute and easy to microwave. ok?!?!?!). Luckily, to make up for my slack in the lunch department, I can enjoy lovely local weeknight meals at the appropriately named Local restaurant in Silver Lake.

Local's shtick is that they used locally farmed, organic ingredients whenever possible and they use only recycled or completely biodegradable packaging. Hey, that sounds great! At Local, you order at the counter, get your number, and wait for your meals to be brought to you by the super friendly staff. Most of the seating is outdoors in a comfortable shaded patio. While you're waiting to order you can scope out the pretty awesome salad bar where the selection includes a handful of vegan-friendly prepared salads for 8 bucks per pound. On recent visits there has been a tasty looking wheatberry salad, a raw kale concoction, and a scrumptious edamame mix, among other choices.

Local's menu is definitely more suited to an omnivorous diet but there are more than a few vegan options, one of them being the quinoa burger. When I asked if the burger was vegan, the cashier informed me that arrowroot, not eggs, is used to bind the ingredients. Welllllll it turns out that arrowroot doesn't actually bind all that well. This quinoa creation is really more of a quinoa salad than a burger as the grains barely stick together, but that doesn't bother me too much. The quinoa still tastes great so who cares about semantics!

Most items on the menu come with your choice of french fries, spicy fries, or a side salad. I had the spicy fries on my first visit and found them way too salty to enjoy. Thinking the salt came from the spice mix, I ordered the regular fries on my next go around and found them to be insanely salty as well. It's too bad the seasoning was off because the fries were really good texture-wise.

The Local menu also boasted a Vegan Tempeh Sloppy Joe with Soy Mozzarella. I ordered the soy cheese on the side as I am generally not a fan of fake cheese. The Sloppy Joe was a divine mixture of tempeh, green peppers, onions (and other tasty veggies I am probably overlooking) in a delightfully tangy tomato sauce. While I was thoroughly enjoying my sammy, I noticed that the soy cheese didn't look like any of the brands of vegan cheese I have seen before. After asking the chef for more info on the soy cheese, I informed him that it was a brand that contains casein and is therefore not vegan. He was genuinely surprised and was very apologetic. When I last checked in with Local, they informed me that they were very disappointed to learn about the casein issue and are currently exploring new vegan cheese options. In the meantime, they no longer refer to the Sloppy Joe as vegan but they do instruct customers that the sandwich can be made vegan by asking for the cheese to be left off.

One thing that struck me as odd during my dining experiences at Local, is that you are presented with all these dishes made with awesome local, organic ingredients but yet the condiments provided are anything but. It is a little odd to be eating an organic burger and smothering it in Heinz ketchup which is not only completely mass produced but it contains high fructose corn syrup for pete's sake!

Local is a very bright and pleasant place for a great meal. While the restaurant definitely has a number of great vegan options, it is apparent that the chefs aren't exactly trained in all things vegan (otherwise they probably would have a more burger-y burger). Their mission also seems to be a bit inconsistent--I mean they could at least get the cheap organic ketchup from Trader Joe's or something! Regardless, I will be eating at Local on a regular basis as I want to support their efforts in getting people to eat food grown where they live and I need to satisfy the constant craving I have for that damn good Sloppy Joe.

Local
2943 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
323.662.4740

The on-set life just got a little tastier thanks to C'est La V

2009-04-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

I thought our crafty guy last season was awesome, what with him always making sure there were vegan options out for me, but that was before I met the greatest craft service dude in all the land. At the beginning of the season I mentioned to our brand spanking new crafty guy, Joey, that I was vegan and asked if would he mind setting aside some salad without cheese on it or getting a couple sandwiches sans meat and dairy when he ordered food. Instead of just agreeing, Joey lit up and started asking me to bring in my favorite vegan recipes for his kitchen to make and asking for brand names of my favorite vegan goodies. Not only was he up for the challenge but he was totally pumped about it.

I've mentioned before how the rule in film/t.v. production is that a "snack" must be provided 3 hours after breakfast and how the snack is really less of a snack and more of a full blown smorgasborg. Well, every day, three hours after call time, Joey has been hand delivering a delicious vegan meal to me and my pescatarian boss. One day we'll have an awesome pasta primavera, another day it will be lentils and rice then tomorrow he'll bring us a mexican feast with some KILLER spanish rice and grilled tofu. This alone makes me a very happy lass, but wait, it gets better...

Joey went out and made a deal with C'est La V, one of L.A.'s tastiest vegan bakeries run by the former vegan baker at the now closed Leda's Bakeshop, to get a regular delivery of an amazing array of baked goods every week. Here is Joey this very morning dropping off an awesome C'est La V platter.

This particular tray had the banana tea loaf which I hadn't tried yet, and it did not disappoint. Moist and not overly sweet, the delicate flavor impressed all the non-vegans in the office. Of all the C'est La V goodies I've had though, my favorites are these: (from left to right) snickerdoodles, kourabiedes, and chocolate crackles.

The snickerdoodles are pretty straightforward but it is remarkable how soft and chewy all these little cookie bites are and I am a total sucker for anything cinnamon. The kourabiedes are a Greek version of mexican wedding cookies and they are out of this world. I normally find Mexican wedding cookies to be totally dry and boring and not worth the calories, but these babies are so soft and buttery they just melt in your mouth and are worth every gram of fat. I normally also don't like chocolate cookies but the chocolate crackles have won me over with their insanely fudgy, brownie-like texture.

Somedays, Joey will bring this assortment of scones, biscotti, and chocolate chip cookies:

The chocolate chip cookies are as outstanding as the others. The only problem is that they are so cute and tiny that I convince myself that eating 900 of them at one time is a-okay. If you are on any sort of diet, stay away! I usually have a major aversion to biscotti (it's just like a stale cookie to me) so it really says something when even I thought they were tasty.

The scones are one of C'est La V's standouts. They are so incredibly buttery and flaky, they have quickly become my boss' fave. The two flavors we've had are golden raisin and cranberry orange. The cranberries in the latter add the perfect tanginess to balance the sweetness of the scone. In fact, literally as I was typing this our wardrobe assistant came running in asking who made the scones in the break room. When I told her they were vegan she was in total disbelief.

C'est La V's baked goods really are indistinguishable from non-vegan stuff and I have many omni coworkers who would agree. I can't wait to try their other stuff--they've still got a whole menu of cupcakes, muffins, bars, and rugelach I've got work my way through! Unfortunately the bakery does not have a shop but you can get your orders in 48 hours through the website.

C'est La V Bake Shop

818.326.4443

kimgarr1@gmail.com

Now Tweeting

2009-04-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

I've finally taken the plunge and joined the twitterverse. There's nothing exciting there yet--I still don't exactly get how it works. But be my twitter friend. Is that even what it's called?!

www.twitter.com/yosoyliz

The Biggest Loser loses.

2009-04-15T08:46:00.001-07:00

The Biggest Loser is really getting on my last nerve. The product placement and questionable nutrition advice is getting completely out of control.

The BL has always been one giant commercial for various processed foods and 24 hour fitness but each season the segues from actual content into advertising has become increasingly ridiculous. Last week I was horrified when trainer Bob excited his team with an advanced copy of the Marley and Me DVD. He then used that little mention as an excuse to talk about how to not eat popcorn when you go to the movies. It was just the most nonsensical, blatant product placement in the history of television. At least the other product placement is somewhat related to health. It doesn't help that this season, the show has expanded to a two hour format. When you spend 2 of your 4 precious hours between getting from from work and going to bed watching a show, it would be nice if 40% of it wasn't hidden advertisements.

The show has always been a big fan of totally processed, chemically enhanced food but I am increasingly finding it too much to take when every episode contestants are opting to chew Extra sugar-free (and chemical-full) gum instead of having say, an apple, for a snack. I also cringe at the point in every episode when the contestants are heading to Subway, having challenges in a Subway, or (my personal favorite from last night's episode), gathering up their Subway packaging for the trash as they head to the gym. Hope you enjoyed that 300 calorie sandwich and its antibiotic-filled processed meat!

It's a good thing I watched last night's episode alone because there was one segment that made me want to get up and punch someone in the face. In this particularly irritating bit, trainer Jillian extols the benefits of drinking milk to contestant Helen. She then recommends drinking at least 3 glasses of milk a day. I cannot imagine any educated nutritionist recommending anyone drink three glasses of milk a day--especially someone who is trying to lose wait. Ok wait a minute, I take that back. This is the good ole U.S. of A where we are indoctrinated with milk propaganda from birth, so there are definitely a number of health professionals who choose to ignore the massive amount of scientific evidence pointing to milk's many adverse health effects. But it just seems like such a huge disservice, if not an injustice, to have the dairy lobby buying air time to sneak crazy unproven "factoids" about milk to The Biggest Loser's 10.2 million viewers.

But here's the kicker. Having started my career in reality t.v., I know a number of people that currently work on or have worked on The Biggest Loser and it just so happens that Jillian Michaels is vegan. Now Jillian is a big animal lover so maybe she couldn't care less about the nutritional aspects of veganism and is only in it for anti-cruelty reasons, but it still sent me into a blind rage seeing her sitting there talking about milk like its the Mother Teresa of beverages when she won't go near the stuff herself. As if her carnie based diet books weren't hypocritical enough.

Sigh. I am already completely immersed in the plot twists and turns of Season 7 (I know I wasn't the only one sobbing hysterically when Mikey's brother broke down after seeing his newly fit family!) so I would be lying if I said I was going to start boycotting the show. But I might not start watching the next season. The Biggest Loser might help inspire people to lose weight but that doesn't necessarily mean they are helping them be healthy and it's getting too damn frustrating to watch.

Samosa House! I want to have like 10,000 of your babies!

2009-04-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

If I dreamt up my idea of a perfect Indian restaurant it would be exactly like Samosa House. The prices are reasonable, the food is outstanding, the staff is very friendly and knowledgeable, the atmosphere is warm and sunny, and there is not an ounce of meat in the whole damn place! The concept basically takes the idea behind India Sweets and Spices--a buffet-style spread with an accompanying grocery store--and makes it good. Whereas Sweets and Spices tend to be dingy and extremely unwelcoming, Samosa House is just the opposite. Let's start off by talking about the signature dish, the samosa!

These samosas are completely vegan which is a rare find as most samosas use dairy in the dough. When you dip a corner of the perfectly flaky crust into one of the accompanying sauces (cilantro or tamarind) you get a one heavenly bite. At $1.50 a pop these are a great deal--I know because I recently tried to get a bunch of samosas in the valley for a Slumdog Millionaire themed Academy Award party and it was too pricey for this gal's tight budget!

Onto the main shebang...Samosa House offers ten different entrees that rotate throughout the week. I think the best way to go is to order a combo plate. For $7.99 you get your choice of 3 sides with raita, rice, and two pieces of flat bread (which is really like an Indian tortilla). But wait, you are vegan and you don't eat the yogurt-based raita! No problem, the kind people at Samosa House will let you have a fourth choice of entree instead!

In my experience, out of the ten entree choices usually six to eight of them are completely vegan. All the staff members know exactly what each dish contains so you don't have to worry about accidentally chowing down a plate full of ghee. On a recent visit I got this small feast of (clockwise from upper right corner) cauliflower curry, jackfruit, grilled eggplant, and potato curry. All of it was ab-fab.

Samosa House's jack fruit is the same delectable texture as the jack fruit at Pure Luck. It is delicately seasoned and has quickly become a major favorite at our office. So much so that when we order lunch from there we always get one box filled only with it.

If I'm not very specific about the details of each dish, it's because I don't really pay attention. When I go into Samosa House I just point at the four things that look the most scrumptious and I have yet to find a single dish that doesn't completely hit the spot. On one occasion they had this crazy good soy crumble dish (seen below in the upper right corner.) I couldn't really pin point any specific flavors but whatever was in it made one awesome little dish. Also seen below are a lentil dal and some chana masala. I just drooled on my petty cash envelope thinking about those crumbles.

In addition to all this good food, Samosa House also offers your usual array of lassis and a case full of Indian sweets. They also sell a pretty big variety of imported candy like Bounty bars and my favorite-pre-vegan-candy-in-the-whole world: Kinder Buenos. When you're done stuffing your face you should do some shopping in the market for jars of lime pickle or extremely cheap spices. And look out for me because I can't seem to stay away!

Samosa House
11510 W. Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90066
310.398.6766

A Vegan Night with Jana Kohl and Rory Freedman

2009-03-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Holy cannoli! I have been M.I.A. for quite a while! No, contrary to popular belief, I have not been smuggling coke from Tijuana where I joined forces with the drug lords to bring down the Mexican government. No instead I have left the ranks of the gainfully unemployed and rejoined the work force. Readjusting to the working life has taken some time. Gone are the days of soaking up vitamin D while swinging around in my hammock all day and here are the days of driving east side to west side in rush hour. Oh well, at least I get free lunch again!

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a unique event hosted by First Tuesday Los Angeles. FTLA describes itself as "a women's group dedicated to creating and sustaining a sense of community with like minded women through social connectivity, professional networking, and social service." The theme of the group's February meeting was animal rights and when I heard that Skinny Bitch author Rory Freedman would be there I signed up to attend right away!

The event was staged at a gorgeous home in Pacific Palisades and began with a vegan dinner catered by Great Taste Catering. The food was good, but to be perfectly honest, it was very Vegan Version 1.0. The menu included pesto asparagus, a very basic salad, an under seasoned wheatberry salad, some vegan cookies from Trader Joe's, and a tofu dish that made me chuckle. This casserole was just so obviously made by someone who has no experience with tofu at all. It was whole blocks of tofu covered in tomato sauce, served with roasted potatoes. The tofu hadn't been marinated at all, so you can imagine how plain it tasted.

With that said, everything was tasty and god knows I ate everything on my plate. It's just a tad unfortunate that everyone probably left thinking that veggie food has to be bland. It probably would have been a better choice to have a vegan restaurant like Real Food Daily do the catering but everyone seemed to enjoy the food.

We all packed into the living room--there were probably about 50 ladies there--to hear from the night's speakers. First up was Jana Kohl who wrote A Rare Breed of Love about her adventures with her three-legged pup Baby and their trek across the nation to promote pet adoption. Baby was rescued from a puppy mill and had to have her leg amputated because it deteriorated so much in the mill. As I am already vegan and an advocate of pet rescue, I didn't really learn anything that I didn't already know about the horrors of puppy mills and eating meat. But one thing Jana said that I was not aware of was that rescue groups that are based around one type of breed (like poodle rescues, lab rescues, etc.) sometimes buy dogs from puppy mills--which is good because it gets the dog out of that cruel environment, but it still lines the pockets of the puppy mill owners. The lesson there is to do your homework before adopting a pet. Here is a cute shot we got of Jana and her Baby:

And just for shits and giggles, here is one of Baby with Monsieur Obama!

Mama pajama I would KILL to get a picture of my Hayley (who, by the way, I adopted from an awesome rescue group in my old North Carolina, the BBCRA) with our awesome new prez. In the meantime I'll have to settle for this shot of Hayley with The Food Monster.

Next up was Rory Freedman. I have talked about how much I liked her Skinny Bitch before. I forced my lovely boss Canada to read it at work one day and I suspect it was major factor in her becoming a pescatarian this year. Anywho, Rory was great. She started by admitting that choosing such a sassy title for her book was a total ploy to make people read a book about animal cruelty. Again, I didn't hear anything I didn't already know, but it was obvious that most of the people there were hearing about cruel farming practices for the first time. She ended the night by asking everyone to do a 30 day veg pledge. The April First Tuesday meeting is also going to be vegetarian because hopefully a lot of members will be trying to take meat out of their diets for at least a month! Here's a shot of Rory and I at the end of the night.

I had a great time and met a ton of really cool girls. I definitely recommend checking out both Jana and Rory's books and if you want to hear all about First Tuesday's many events, check out the site!

Saint Valentine's Lemon Bars

2009-02-14T08:48:00.001-08:00

I have been craving a lemony dessert for a while so when I was trying to figure out what kind of tasty treat I could whip up for Valentine's Day that would be good and easy, I set out on the search for the perfect lemon bar recipe. The Veganomicon recipe was a bit involved with its call for both agar agar and arrowroot powder, so I opted to use the version in The Joy of Vegan Baking.

This is a wonderfully simple recipe. The crust is a simple shortbread made with vegan margarine, powdered sugar, and flour. The filling is simply lemon, silken tofu, sugar, flour, and cornstarch. This was my first time using silken tofu and I'm not sure I used it the correct way. After I had blended all the filling ingredients, the mixture was surprisingly runny. Sure enough, I had to add 12 minutes on to the suggested 20 minute baking time to get the filling to set and not be a runny mess. I am assuming this means I was supposed to drain the tofu first? That had occurred to me before I started but I didn't see any mention of draining the tofu in the recipe nor was it explained in any other part of the book, so I thought that you just must not have to drain silken tofu. Can anyone advise me on this? I'd like to try a silken tofu chocolate mousse next but if it will be runny like this filling was before I baked it, I won't even bother. If you are indeed supposed to drain it, how do you do it? It's very fragile so I can't imagine it holding up well being pressed between paper towels.
The only baking dish I had that was an appropriate size was this round one, so I guess these are more like lemon bar pie slices than lemon bars. I added about 1/8 teaspoon of turmeric to give the filling the yellow hue of traditional lemon bars. I used Twizzler's Pull 'N' Peels (yup, they're vegan!) to form little hearts for a garnish. I didn't really believe the recipe when it said that the powdered sugar on top would sink into the filling, but it's true. After about twenty minutes the powdered sugar had disappeared, so make sure you do that step just right before your about to serve these babies up.

Even with the hardened crust that came with the extra baking time I tacked on, these lemon slices were deeeeelish and the recipe was easy enough for me to whip it up quickly after work. Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Flore: Keeping me well fed since 2008

2009-02-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

No one in their right mind would ever tell you that I have the world's best apartment. But there are two reasons why I will be staying here for quite a while. One reason is that I have managed to find the one living space in all of Los Angeles county where my dog can bark her heart out all day long if she chooses and no one cares. The other is that I am oh-so conveniently located to my favorite restaurant: Flore.

You would think that with Flore being my fave and all, I would have blogged about it by now. But for whatever reason I never got around to it, and it's really not right of me to not share Flore's wonderful treats with all of yous. So here is a sampling of some of the meals I have had at the little Silver Lake side walk cafe over the past few months:

Let's start with my favorite item "The Flore Burger."
This picture doesn't exactly demonstrate quite how big this baby is. When you take a bite you really have to wrap your mouth around that sucker. This definitely wins for my favorite vegan burger in town. Some people have said it tastes a lot like Veganomicon's black bean burger--I'll have to test that hypothesis some day. Flore's thousand island dressing, which is similar to Pure Luck's special sauce (although admittedly it's not quite as magical as PL's) comes with the dish but I highly recommend doling out an extra dollar for the cashew cheese. It is utterly creamy and lightly cheese-y. It is the perfect topping for this perfect burger. I've had to stop ordering it recently though because, with the cashew cheese, this meal has to be at least 1300 calories. So I tend to save it for special occasions.

A classic staple at every veg restaurant is the Club Sandwich. Again, Flore does a great job.
From the menu: "Battered baked tofu, tempeh bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado, daikon sprouts, and eggless mayonnaise on toasted organic sourdough bread." They've got the proportion of ingredients here just right. Fresh, light, delish. What more is there to say?

Here is the Burrito Flore:
It's got all the fixin's of your average well-made vegan burrito: rice, beans, tomato, and avocado. But then it is Flore-ified with tempeh bacon, cilantro cream, and the always delectable cashew cheese. With these ingredients, it's pretty much impossible to go wrong. And as always you can see it comes with a vibrant side salad.

Flore doesn't just do wraps and sandwiches well. Their salads are also wonderful. Here is the Mediterranean Salad.
Normally this comes with a heap of hummus but I ordered it without at the time. The salads are huge and super fresh. I consider myself to be a bit of an expert on all types of tabouli and the quinoa version that comes in this dish was perfectly seasoned and not over oily (as many restaurant taboulis tend to be). If you are looking for a healthy but filling meal, you've got to check out one of Flore's salads.

In the back of the picture above you can see the Portabella Panini. Served with a really good soy mozzarella and Flore's creamy dill dressing (which actually may rival Pure Luck's special sauce), this panini is not the thin, greasy stuff of most restaurant paninis but is light and scrumptious.

Now on to what Flore does best: breakfast! Here is a crappy cell phone shot of the Tomato Basil Omelet.
The key to the deliciousness of this wheat and gluten free dish is the abundance of fresh dill. I opted for a side of Flore's roasted potatoes which are fluffy, well seasoned, and not at all greasy.

Here is the Veggie Fritatta (not to be confused with Frittata Flore which is served during weekend brunch).
Slightly nutty and cheesy in flavor, this smallish slice will leave you very full. Here you can see how fresh the fruit is that they serve at Flore. And they are always happy to remove all the melon for me (blech). A big bowl of pineapple is the perfect breakfast dessert after this scrumptious quiche.

Here is another view of the fruit where my friend ordered it with his tofu burrito (another yummy treat).

Flore is basically a dream come true for me. It is a vegan establishment in my neighborhood that embraces my own philosophy of what good vegan food should be. It isn't focused on having meat analogues or knock-offs of traditionally meat-based dishes. Instead it is just good meals made from good ole fashioned whole foods. Sitting at one of the sidewalk tables for brunch at Flore is one of my favorite things to do. And you never know who you might run into, like the other morning when I caught my boss and his son wreaking havoc on their bicycle:

Good ole Flore, what would I do without you???

Flore
3818 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
323.953.0611

How vegans can enjoy Girl Scout cookie season

2009-01-24T18:38:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know it's only January, but I am fairly positive that I have already found my favorite recipe of 2009. Drum roll please. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumclang! It's this homemade version of the Thin Mint a.k.a. the best cookie in the world.

That's right folks, girl scout cookie season is upon us and here are are some reasons why you should make your own instead of shelling out $4.50 per box:

1) Girl scout cookies infamously use a ton of packaging. No need to destroy the Earth anymore than is necessary!

2) Like 99% of mass produced foodstuffs, girl scout cookies contain all sorts of weird ingredients such as TBHQ which has been shown to cause tumors in lab rats (although to be fair, what hasn't been proven to cause cancer in those little furry buggers???). Not to mention milk which may be a problem for you if you are a vegan, which if you are reading this blog, you may very well be.

3) The girl scouts actually only get 50 cents per box sold. So why not just donate 5 bucks to your favorite troop instead. For that matter, why not donate 5 bucks to a worthier cause. Girl scouts don't really need your money to go on fancy vacations--which is what my troop always did with our funds.

Now you may be reading this post and remembering that I am on a detox which means I really have no business making chocolate cookies dipped in even more chocolate. Ahhh yes, it's true. I did take a little break from the detox to make these, but only because I HAD to. You see, Kirby Von Scrumptious and her boy toy Joe were awesome enough to watch my beloved doggie while I hit the slopes in Mammoth earlier this month, and I absolutely had to give her a little token of my appreciation. You see? Making these cookies was an absolute necessity . Of course, half way through the baking process I remembered that Kirby was also doing the detox. Doh! Luckily, as any girl scout knows, thin mints are best enjoyed straight out of the freezer, so these babies will last a long time, as in they will be there for when the detox ends. The Von Scrumpster, knowing my love of toy cameras, also got me this awesome fisheye camera for Christmas which I used to record my Mammoth trip. Don't you wish Kirby was your BFF too???

Back to les cookies: to veganize the recipe I simply used Earth Balance in place of butter and soy milk in place of dairy. When I first tasted the dough I thought the peppermint was too overpowering, however, after baking and then being dipped in chocolate, I think next time I will actually pump the peppermint extract up from 3/4 tsp. to a whole teaspoon. I also tried using less butter in the chocolate dip portion of the recipe as, although the coating is completely delish, it does taste a bit buttery. However, you really need the butter to make the chocolate be the right consistency. These cookies at bottom are ones where I didn't thin the chocolate enough and you can see they are pretty gloppy and unpretty. Next time I will experiment thinning with soy milk instead of Earth Balance for a subtler taste.

101 Cookbooks also has a recipe for thin mints that would be easily veganizable. I might try this recipe next time (although that won't be for many months as these cookies ended up SERIOUSLY comprising my diet) however Heidi has the peppermint oil in the coating and not in the cookie which is just plain inaccurate so I will have to remedy that :)
I highly recommend you making these, unless of course you aren't willing to pack on a few pounds in the name of sheer tasty pleasure.

Naturewell Opens in Silver Lake

2009-01-20T17:53:00.000-08:00

After walking by the "opening soon" sign for Naturewell many a time over the past few months, the juice bar and bulk good shops has finally opened. Craving a smoothie but finding I was out of frozen fruit, the pup and I decided to check the new place out.

I had a berry smoothie which was great but, let's face it, it's pretty much impossible to make a bad smoothie. They use regular or vegan ice cream as the smoothie base, but as I am detoxing, I just asked if they could mix it with apple juice and they happily obliged. At $6.50 for 32 oz (mine pictured here was 16 oz.) I will probably just keep making smoothies at home for a fraction of the cost, but I am excited to have a bulk good shop so close to home.

Aside from the "wellness bar" where one can get smoothies or custom made juices made from a menu of fruits and veggies, the shop has a decent selection of bulk grains, beans, dried fruit, cereal, and snacks. They also sell some prepackaged vegan goodies like vegan ice cream bars and those expensive tortilla chips they sell at M Cafe. Here is their juice menu:

Naturewell also has a cozy little nook with fluffy white pillows as well as tables outside, so you can stop and enjoy your buys in comfort. I for one am pretty excited about this place. You may notice that this menu includes a type which is one of my biggest pet peeves: spelling Silver Lake as one word. Don't ask me why this bugs me so. It just does. It's two words people!!! Ok, I'm starting to sound bananas...

Naturewell is basically a smaller version of Naturemart with a juice bar, so go knock back a wheat grass shot and get some groceries at the same time. It's also a couple doors down from Flore, so maybe you can cap it all of with a tasty vegan dessert!

Naturewell
3824 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
323.638.5894

Another soul crushing "Biggest Loser" and cupcakes galore

2009-01-13T21:54:00.000-08:00

Okay, first order of business. Is anyone out there a Biggest Loser fan? I don't know how you couldn't be. It is by far the most fascinating and emotionally charged social experiment of our time. Kirby Von Scrumptious and I like the show so much that last year I made some phone calls (in which I may or may not have acted like my own personal assistant so as to seem like an important Hollywood player) to get us tickets to the live taping of the Season 5 season finale. I continue to watch the show even though I often suffer from post-show depression from tearing up and/or sob an average of five times per episode (although at least one of those times is because I am so disgusted by the absurd abundance of product placement.)
The episode that aired tonight was particularly killer. I cannot believe those knuckleheads voted off Jerry!!! I know there has only been two episodes this season but I've already fallen in love with that white-haired teddy bear and to see him go so soon was like taking a swift kick to the head. Which is what I will give to those contestants who voted for Jerry to leave should I ever encounter them out there in the real world!

On to some food...

This winter I finally got in on the cupcake craze with the rest of the vegan blogosphere. It all started when I made a batch for a coworker to bring to the set of the new show he works on. They turned out great and then I had all the ingredients in the cupboard so I just kept making more. The most popular turned out to be the Cookies 'N' Cream cupcake from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Maaaaan oh man are they good. If you want to woo a cute boy or girl, I highly recommend making a batch of these babies.

I also made VCTOTW's Mucho Margarita Cupcakes. With real tequila in the mix, what's not to love?

Here is The Food Monster getting ready to cram a Jelly Donut cupcake from Veganomicon into his face. These were also delish although they were almost more breakfast-y than dessert like. Also, the book says that the jelly is supposed to submerge itself while baking, which did not happen with mine. I've seen other bloggers had their jelly sink successfully (like Vegan Dad's) so I don't know what's up with mine.

My favorite cupcake flavor turned out to be a concoction I whipped up myself after being inspired by a lunch at Hugo's: horchata. I am going to save the recipe for a little creative venture I'm working on (no, no, not a cookbook), but I will post the recipe at a later date because everyone should be able to experience the exquisite joy that is an horchata cupcake.

You may notice that the frosting in all of these pictures looks rather thin and flat. These photos were taken in my earliest cupcakes before I figured out that lessening, or in some cases, completely omitting milk from the frosting recipe creates a more normal, thick frosting. Also, I want to point out that I have learned to cut the frosting recipes from VCTOTW by a third because they recipes make an INSANE amount. I was sick of having an entire mixing bowl of frosting left over.

Ok, I need to stop looking at this cupcake porn now--a detoxing lady can only take so much temptation!

Odds and Ends

2009-01-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

Hello friends! Long time no blog. I have been M.I.A. for a while due to general holiday insanity. Before I skipped town to visit various family members in various cities, I was super busy running around like a maniac making Christmas presents, doing things that I had put off all fall because I couldn't bring myself to leave the hammock, and taking my dog to visit Santa.
Here are some odds and ends from the vegan life of late.

Vegan Potluck
Vegyogini and Your Vegan Mom hosted a wonderful vegan potluck for the local vegan blogging community. Everyone brought an hors d'oeuvres which meant that we had one mean spread to feast on. All the food was amazing. Personally, I think I ate about 300 of the little testicular Saku that Foodeater brought along with 99 fried raviolis (I can't remember who brought those ravioli but damn they were good!) in addition to all the other awesome goodies that were there. I had planned on making homemade summer rolls but with the aforementioned insanity that was December, I needed something less labor intensive. So I ended up whipping up a batch of Veganomicon's walnut-mushroom paté. It was pretty tasty and was fairly simple to make so I would definitely recommend it. The group of omni boys who happened to be shooting a web video in my apartment while I was making it (seriously, December was truly bananas) gobbled up the paté that didn't fit into my serving dish.
It was so awesome finally being able to put faces to bloggers! Hopefully there will be more meet ups in the future. Unfortunately I had to peace out a little early because I had to run and catch The Food Monster on his last night in town before he moved out of L.A. I can pretty much guarantee the vegan blogging community will not miss you one bit my offensive friend, but I, for one, have cried myself to sleep every night since you left. At least we didn't have to have a teary goodbye on The Food Monster's last night in town as we met up mere days later at my favorite karaoke spot in North Carolina. Good times, good times.

A Mighty-O Surprise!
Ever since I heard about Mighty-O Donuts in Seattle about a year ago, I have been gushing about wanting to try to them to my friend Leif, a Seattle native. When I got back to L.A. for my one day between trips right before New Year's, Leif dropped by my house with a surprise: TWO DOZEN MIGHTY-O DONUTS and an ADORABLE Mighty-O t-shirt!!! Happy New Year to me! I could barely manage to snap this photo of the donuts before I tore into them. There was a vast assortment of flavors including lemon poppy seed (my personal favorite), chocolate coconut, plain, chocolate glazed, chocolate peanut, cinnamon sugar (my second favorite), and sprinkle.
Holy cannoli these were so friggin' good. Many regular donuts (i.e. not cake-style) are actually inherently vegan but cake donuts are not, so it has been a long while since I've had the joy of stuffing a scrumptious cake donut into my head. This was the perfect treat at the perfect time-- I stuffed these into my car for the second leg of my holiday vacation to Las Vegas and Mammoth and they managed to continue feeding me and my passengers for the next 5 days! I was shocked how long the shelf life of these babies were, especially since they don't have preservatives. I mean they didn't taste 100% fresh after a week (Leif got them to me two days after he bought them) but they still tasted great and not at all stale. Everyone who tried the donuts could not believe they were vegan, which is the ultimate test of how good your vegan product is. It's probably a pretty good thing we don't have a Mighty-O in L.A., elst I might pack on a few hundred more pounds. Thanks Leify!!!!

An Awesome Vegan Cheesecake
My boyfriend and I had our own post-Christmas Christmas dinner since we weren't in the same state for the actual day. He volunteered to make dessert and found a recipe for a vegan cheesecake. I must admit, I was a little skeptical about whether or not he could pull it off. He literally had never baked anything before in his life. He had to call me a couple times for some clarification (what's a water bath? how do you zest a lemon?) but that damn cheesecake came out perfectly! He smashed up some blackberries and picked up a can of Soy Whip whipped cream for toppings. He even made the crust from scratch! I was very, very impressed. If you are looking for a good vegan cheesecake recipe, I totally recommend this one.

Veg food in Mammoth Lakes
The last leg of my holiday tour took me and the bf to Mammoth for a few days of snowboarding. I was fully prepared to be able to eat pretty much nothing both on the slopes and in the town, and had packed an arsenal of Lara Bars and other goodies to keep me fed, but was pleasantly surprised to find that Mammoth is very vegan friendly! I was shocked when we stopped to rest at Mill Cafe on the mountain in between runs and found vegetarian chili. Usually ski lodges are about as veg-friendly as ballparks (although Dodger stadium actually is veg-friendly, you know what I mean--like most other baseball stadiums). We asked if they could pour our chili over an order of fries and that was basically the best idea of all time. I couldn't think of a more perfect snack to warm me up and give me an energy boost than those delicious chili fries. I don't know if they have that chili at all of Mammoth's food spots, so be sure to check before you ski down there.

We also had a super excellent meal at a Mexican joint in town called Gomez's. We both ordered the Grande Veggie Burrito which was filled with super fresh veggies and was surprisingly light for being a pretty ginormous burrito. Their complimentary chips and salsa were pretty much the best I've ever had. The chips were so light and non-greasy somehow. It was one of the best Mexican meals I've had.

Everyone can now Comment :)
It was brought to my attention (thank you, Foodeater!) that my blog was set so that only people with gmail accounts could post comments. I had no idea! Oooooops. I have changed the setting so now everyone should be able to comment away!

It's detox time!
In February of last year, Kirby Von Scrumptious and I did a 28 day detox that was pretty difficult but was really great as it makes you feel really fantabulous. As I am already vegan, the detox just requires that I don't have any white flour, wheat, refined sugar, salt, caffeine, or alcohol. It may not sound too difficult but trust me, after a week with no flour, you start having dreams about eating 45 bags of plain tortillas. I had started the detox but then got derailed two days in to it (woops!) so I am starting again tomorrow. And now I have to. Because it is published. on the web. its official. see? Anyway, look out for a lot of healthy posts from me in the near future!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Not feeling the Doomie's Hype

2008-12-12T13:34:00.000-08:00

I have been having a lot of "last meals" lately with everyone's favorite Food Monster who is leaving our fair city of Los Angeles to return to the fair state of North Carolina. It's sad but true and I have finally stopped trying to twist his nipples until he agrees to stay and have instead focused on having the most fun we can before his inevitable departure. For we two foodies, that means eating a lot of good food. We agonized and debated for a full hour today before finally settling on lunch at Doomie's Home Cookin' the newly opened vegetarian/vegan spot in Chinatown. There's my pup hanging out on the patio at top.

I had high hopes for this place after reading the great reviews on Quarrygirl, To Live and Eat in L.A., and Kirby Von Scrumptious among others. But I was pretty disappointed and The Food Monster was downright horrified. But really, he always has had a flare for the dramatic...

We knew we had to try the vegan mac n cheeze. Everyone else's pictures of it looked so good and Kirby said that it rivaled Taste of Life's version! So we went ahead and ordered an appetizer portion. To my surprise, the mac n cheeze was just like almost every other vegan mac n cheeze I've ever had: absolutely flavorless. The macaroni was covered in a sauce that had absolutely no taste whatsoever. A six dollar bowl of oily noodles is not the best way to start off a meal.
For my entree, I ordered the philly cheese steak sandwich because, again, I just kept remembering how good it looked on everyone else's blogs. But the problem was that the key ingredient in the sandwich was the same flavorless cheese sauce. The sandwich probably could have been pretty decent if it had been sauce-free. Then I could have tasted the peppers, onions, mushrooms, and chewy seitan strips. But instead that cheese sauce masked any taste and also managed to turn the white bread into a soggy mush. The Food Monster got a burger and I'm sure he can't wait to blog all about it himself. One thing that was really damn good at Doomie's were their onion rings. They tasted just like regular non-vegan onion rings you would get anywhere else. Everyone at the table agreed they were great. The fries were pretty good as well.
Our friend JD ordered the B.L.T. I have said many times that the B.L.T. is a staple of any vegan restaurant and it is almost impossible to make a bad one. Doomie's did make a good B.L.T. but it's far from the thick piles of tempeh bacon that you would find on the club at, say, Flore or M Cafe. There was barely any filling, although they did not skimp on the veganaise which some places tend to do.

For dessert, I finally got to try the uber-celebrated vegan twinkie. The Vegan Spot (r.i.p.) was out of them every time I tried to get them there so I was psyched that Doomie's sells them. I haven't had a real twinkie since about 1992 so I might not be the best judge, but that thing really did taste just like a real twinkie! There it is, split in half so you can see the creamy filling.

I think overall I am just less a fan of vegan versions of traditionally meaty dishes and more a fan of cuisine using veggies and other proteins, so Doomie's concept is just not compatible with my taste. Our waitress told us that Doomie started the restaurant because he had dated a lot of vegan gals and hated being dragged to vegan restaurants where he could never find anything to his liking. Other restaurants, namely Taste of Life and The Vegan Spot, have adapted traditional comfort food far more successfully than Doomie's has, so in the future, I shall be heading down the road to Taste of Life instead of trekking to Chinatown.

Doomie's Home Cookin'
686 N. Spring St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(714) 883-7657

Thanksgiving Mania 2008

2008-12-10T10:03:00.001-08:00

Let's finally get around to talking about our wonderful thanksgiving feast! The Food Monster (that's me and him working on our yummy food at top) and his three lovely roommates had me, my mom (who came in from North Carolina), and a couple of our other friends over for lots of delicious food and jolly company. I think I ended up making seven dishes in all but unfortunately I was so busy cooking/serving/drinking that I only remembered to photograph a few of those. So the best dishes will just have to be recreated for Christmas dinner and I shall post them then. In the meantime, let's start us off with three of the easiest things.

First off we have a VERY quick appetizer: dill spread. In my pre-vegan days, if ever I needed some comfort food, I would head to La Brea Bagel on Beverly in West Hollywood for a sesame bagel smothered in their dill cream cheese. Sad were the times when I got drunk on Friday and desperately craved one of those bagels on Saturday morning only to remember that the bagelry owners were honoring the Sabbath! Now I am not a fan of plain fake cream cheese. It tastes okay but it is definitely not the real thing. However, when you jazz it up just a little you'd never know it has no dairy! So I simply chopped up a ton of fresh dill and stirred it into some Tofutti cream cheese and served it with whole wheat crackers. Even my mom, who is really quite horrified by vegan versions of dairy products, was shocked at the great taste. Chop, stir, serve. It doesn't get easier than that.
Next up we have another appetizer inspired by a blurb in the latest Rachael Ray magazine: croissant wrapped asparagus. Again, this couldn't be any easier. Simply unravel a tube of Pillsbury Crescent Dough and sprinkle liberally with a vegetable seasoning spice blend. Slice into 1/2 inch strips and then wrap around raw asparagus spears. Pop in a 350 degree over for 20 minutes or until slightly golden brown. Full disclosure: these particular ones didn't turn out the best because a) I should have used olive oil spray to prevent the spears from sticking and b) I had to put these in an oven that was way hotter than the desired temperature, so the bottoms were burnt and the spears got a tad mushy. But, I am fairly certain that if these were cooked properly they would have been grrrrreat. I ate a ton of them as they were anyway :)
And lastly, for today, we have my simple cranberry sauce. I was pretty perturbed to read the cranberry sauce recipe in Veganomicon--it calls for agar agar and vinegar. To me, the beauty of cranberry sauce is that it is so simple and lets the awesome flavor of cranberries speak for itself. It seems a tad blasphemous to me to call for an obscure ingredient like agar agar. My cranberry sauce is as easy as it gets and the results are pretty damn good if I do say so myself. The Food Monster even told me that he normally really dislikes cranberry sauce but he liked mine. Thanks Monster Man!

Old Fashioned Traditional Cranberry Sauce is Good Enough for Me
8 oz. fresh cranberries
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. lemon zest

Place cranberries and just enough water to cover in a pot. Bring to a boil. Add sugar and reduce heat to medium. Simmer for 20-25 minutes or until cranberries begin to pop and sauce thickens slightly. Remove from heat and stir in lemon zest. Sauce will continue to thicken as it cools. Serve at room temperature.

It was a wonderful thanksgiving dinner with my little L.A. family and we spent the rest of the evening plopped on the couch watching cheesy movies. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Don't have a cow just yet about The Vegan Spot's closing!

2008-12-08T11:15:00.000-08:00

Uh oh! I better get on to posting all my backed up restaurant reviews, recipes, etc. because now it looks like one of the downsides of getting behind on posting is that the restaurant I'm reviewing may close down before I get around to talking about it. Ooooops, this is what has happened with The Vegan Spot over here in Silver Lake. An off-shoot of everyone's favorite Flore which specialized in vegan versions of meaty classics has sadly shuttered its doors. But wipe those tears away my vegan friends! Yesterday, during an amazing breakfast at Flore with Kirby Von Scrumptious and others, I chatted up our waiter about the closing and he said that, despite rave reviews from the food blogging community, the place just didn't do that much business. (I find that very easy to believe because every time I went in there it was totally empty.) However, the owners are working on plans to turn the space into a vegan coffee shop complete with the much celebrated vegan twinkies and a smaller version of The Vegan Spot's sandwich selection. The waiter added that he has seen the plans for the redesign and was excited about how great the new interior will look. So while it is sad that the short-lived Vegan Spot is now gone, we can all look forward to a new vegan coffee joint which, as far as I know, cannot be found anywhere else in LA. proper. It always seemed a little strange to me to open a vegan restaurant a few blocks down from your other vegan restaurant anyway.

So just as Quarrygirl has reminisced about the Vegan Spot on her latest blog post, I would like to take a brief stroll down memory lane and remember a lunch I had there a while back with my dear friend Craig.

Craig ordered the club sandwich. There he is, at top, showing his excitement over this juicy plate. Craig's club came with fake turkey, fake bacon, sprouts, tomato, avocado, and veganaise. The club is a staple of all vegan restaurants and it is pretty much impossible to make it taste anything but delicious. The Vegan Spot's version did not disappoint.

I ordered the Chef salad which came with fake chicken, fake bacon, and fake roast beef as well as some vegan mozzarella.
I am not the biggest fan of faux meats but the Vegan Spot's knock offs of animal goods were pretty outstanding. They were nothing like the spongy chunks you find at many Asian vegan places. Instead the chicken, turkey, and roast beef were very thinly sliced tasty treats! Note my adorable pup hanging out under our table.

The one thing Craig and I really didn't like about our meal was the water. At Flore they infuse the water with refreshing mint, but on our visit to The Vegan Spot the water was infused with rosemary. Our dishes were pretty savory and we would have loved to have been gulping water down but the rosemary flavored water was just gross. It kind of tasted like drinking dirt. Hopefully the new coffee shop will abandon this practice. I will probably be the first in line when it opens!

Hello world!

2008-12-04T23:24:00.000-08:00

Hayyylooooo readers. Longtime no see. It seems that I have managed to accomplish almost nothing on my very long "List of Things to Accomplish During Hiatus" which leaves me scrambling to get everything done before I leave in two weeks to go home for Christmas. This was not a good move on my part as now I've got to do all this stuff plus get all my holiday crafting/cooking/gifting projects done and all of this happens during the most social month of the year. So needless to say, I am a busy gal. In addition, I decided to accept a couple days of work on a commercial this week in order to remind myself what work is, as our hiatus will soon be coming to an end and I'll need to get used to waking up every morning at the crack of ass again.

The moral of this story is that I have a ton of posts to catch up on, including many from the thanksgiving feast that The Food Monster and his housemates hosted. In the meantime, allow me to inform you of an awesome event at everyone's favorite gelateria Scoops:

This Saturday, December 6th, there will be a taste testing at which you can pay $5 to try three mysterious vegan gelato flavors. If you correctly identify the flavors you will be entered to win a prize! Omnivores can pay $10 for a ten flavor tasting! All proceeds go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You can find more information at the event's facebook page.

I'll definitely be there, that is, if I get off work in time. Sigggghhh.

Easy-As-Can-Be Cheese Danish

2008-11-18T17:19:00.000-08:00

I have been a baking lunatic lately! First I went on a cupcake craze, then I got sick of making frostings and went through a muffin phase, and now I am graduating to the world of vegan pastries. My friend Jose has developed an obsession with the cheese danishes from Porto's Bakery in Burbank and so I made it my mission to create a comparably tasty vegan version.

Today I used this recipe from the Compassionate Action for Animals website. I didn't want to go to the trouble of making my own pastry dough unless I knew I'd be able to make a decent tasting cheesy filling first. So this recipe was perfect because it just calls for a couple tubes of Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough (which is vegan). This turned out to be a great recipe, although it could have been written a bit better. For starters, the size of the cream cheese tub isn't listed--you need 8 ounces.

Instead of laying one whole tube of crescent roll dough on top of another, I chose to cut each tube of dough into 4 long rectangles. Then after I put the filling on, I simply folded the rectangle in half and pinched the edges together. Make sure you really pinch the perforations together very well because they will definitely split right open during baking.
Next time I won't bother with the teaspoon of vegan sour cream. It is such a minimal amount and it really adds nothing. Unfortunately now I have a giant tub of sour cream which I never liked, even in my omni days. Does anyone have any good recipes that will use up some of it?

The proportions of the ingredients in the icing part of the recipe are totally wonky. I had to add way more soy milk than the tablespoon that is listed. I just kept pouring in more, little by little, until I had the right runny consistency.
In the end, I was extremely pleased with the cheese filling. I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't think it tasted exactly like the real thing. When I make these again, I will definitely be making my own pastry dough. The Pillsbury stuff tastes fine but it tastes like crescent rolls and not like the delicious puff pastry that makes danishes so damn good! So will these suckers be able to compete with Porto's? I think they are definitely going to give them a run for their money--I'll let you know what Jose's verdict is.

Obama Berry Coconut Crisp

2008-11-07T19:26:00.000-08:00

I spent election day being a jittery mess. I was so anxious all day long--I couldn't sit still and I just wanted to roll around in the streets screaming praise for Barack Obama, in case I might inspire some otherwise Republicans to switch their votes at the last second. Instead I sat at my computer, constantly refreshing CNN.com in the hopes that maybe some state decided to start counting their votes early. But of course, that didn't happen so I just kept seeing the two candidates with zero electoral votes. It became clear that I needed a project to keep me busy. So naturally, I started making a Barack Obama outfit for my lovely daughter/dog.

Hayley was the life of the party as we walked to the nearby fire station to cast my vote. (Sadly. pups are not allowed to vote yet in the state of California, so the pup came just to keep me company. Let's hope there is a prop on the next election granting pups the right to vote!!!) The strong support for Obama was clear on our short walk, but we are in Los Angeles after all. I was still really worried about how the rest of the country would be voting.

When we got home, my nervous energy had only increased. So it was time to get elbow deep in baking. I wanted to do a red-white-and-blue themed dish for our election night festivities to be hosted by Kirby Von Scrumptious. I found some blueberries and strawberries still frozen from the summer and decided to make Veganomicon's Berry Coconut Crisp.
This dish was incredibly easy to make--just throw a few ingredients in a pan and cover with this delicious mix of unsweetened coconut, sugar, and flour and bake for about 40 minutes. In the end, the colors ended up being purple and off-white, buttttttt whatever. My only disappointment was that the flavor of the blueberries was so strong, it really covered how amazing the coconut crisp was. The raw dough was so good I'm planning on experimenting to make a coconut sugar cookie based off of this recipe. In the meantime, this is a great dessert that will get gobbled up quickly.

In the end my anxiety subsided as we watched Barack Obama elected the new president. What a happy, proud moment. Viva Los Estados Unidos!!!!!

Hugo's Tacos: One Reason to Not Hate the Valley

2008-11-02T15:03:00.000-08:00

I recently got some terrible news: A really good friend was moving...to...THE VALLEY. (Insert scary horror movie music here). Now, I'm not some snob that refuses to go to the valley ever or give it its props for certain things. It's just that I have the unique pleasure of having all of my close friends live within walking distance of me, so actually getting in my car and getting on the *gasp!* freeway to get somewhere seems like a big pain in the ass. And it's no exaggeration that it's often 10 degrees hotter in the valley than in the rest of L.A., and in the summer that is no picnic.

Upon my first visit to the new pad, however, I changed my tune. Pulling off the 101 onto Coldwater Canyon, there on the corner was Hugo's Tacos and then I crossed the street and saw Hugo's restaurant and I was reminded that the valley is full of amazing veg-friendly restaurants that I rarely get the chance to go to! Looks like there will be lots of new culinary adventures in my future!

When I first moved to L.A. and lived in West Hollywood, I would go to the Hugo's restaurant on Santa Monica quite a bit. I could not get enough of their veggie-packed sweet potato bowl and other vegan goodies. So I was so incredibly pumped to see that my friend lives mere blocks from Hugo's Studio City locations. Hugo's Tacos is the restaurant's sister stand with a choose-your-own-adventure style menu: you choose the type of meal you want (ranging from tacos to salsa burgers), and then the filling and sauce you want to go with it.

On my first visit I ordered a bowl with the soyrizo, potato, and zuchinni filling, and the honey chipotle salsa (yes, I am a honey-eating vegan). The bowl comes with organic Spanish rice, organic white beans, onion, cilantro, lettuce, guacamole, and cotija cheese (which Hugo's happily offers to sub out with soy cheese). Stir all these lovely ingredients together into a gooey mess and you get one big bowl of delicious!
On my many subsequent visits (eek! How am I supposed to avoid going there when it's right there by the freeway entrance just begging me to turn in???) I have been unable to force myself to order anything different because I just love the bowl so much. I now ask for no cheese--the soy mozzarella has absolutely no flavor and I don't see the point in adding extra calories onto this already heavy dish. Although I do love the pain of being so full you want to die after eating the whole thing. I also LOVE the honey chipotle salsa. It is a perfect combo of spicy and sweet and is the element that pushes this dish into the realm of the super tasty.
Hugo's food is enough to bring me there time after time, but their daily rotation of agua frescas will keep me a fan for life. Their watermelon agua fresca, which is my drink of choice--I would mainline the stuff if I could--is sublime. If their horchata--an excellent balance of cinnamon, sweetness, and rice milk--is any indication of how good their (completely vegan) rice pudding is, I will definitely be hitting up some of that next time so I can have a sugar high on top of my food coma.
Between the icy agua fresca and the misters that are constantly on (and are pictured at top with some awesome skeleton garland), the valley heat doesn't even interfere with the meal. Recently as I was chowing down and being thankful that there isn't a Hugo's closer to my house because I would surely gain a dubrillion pounds, I saw a sign advertising a new location right over the bridge from me in Atwater Village! Le sigh, guess I'll just have to put in a few more hours at the gym every week...

Hugo's Tacos

4749 Coldwater Canyon

Studio City, CA 91607

818.762.7771

Farmer's Market Fun: Taste of Life, krispy kale, and samples galore!

2008-10-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

My weekly routine is to go to the Hollywood Lemon Grove farmer's market on Wednesday and to the Silver Lake farmer's market on Saturday. But this Sunday, Kirby Von Scrumptious, The Food Monster, and I piled into a car and headed out into the warm sunshine to THE Hollywood Farmer's Market. Because of my frequent trips to the two other closer markets, I haven't been to the Hollywood market in a few months but I'm glad my two fellow bloggers brought me back because I had forgotten how absolutely awesome it is.

First of all, the weather was perfect. The weather in L.A. is pretty much perfect all the time, but it was extra perfect on Sunday. Because I had just stocked up on produce at the market the day before, I didn't plan on buying anything. I mostly went to try the free samples and to get some Taste of Life vegan delicacies. The Food Monster and I definitely tried produce samples from every vendor in the whole place (and trust me, there are a lot). After all the avocado samples we ate I'm pretty sure we probably ate the equivalent of two whole avocados each. We also sampled a refreshing corn and basil salad that I will definitely be recreating in the near future. Because I just couldn't control myself, I ended up picking up some pomegranetes, limes, kale, and yellow tomatoes (I was so happy to see these babies aren't totally gone for the season!!!).

Yesterday I was in the mood for something crunchy so I jumped on the baked kale bandwagon and made some kale chips. At the last minute I decided it might be fun to try using my Sesame Ginger dressing from Trader Joe's on the kale instead of the usual oil, vinegar, and salt. To be honest, I wouldn't do that again. The chips weren't inedible but the dressing made them too tangy and a little bitter. But they were still good enough for me to happily stuff it all into my big face! Here's how I made the chips:

Tangy Kale Chips
Spray oil
one bunch kale
sea salt, to taste
2 tbsp sesame ginger salad dressing

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet with the spray oil. Tear the kale off its stems into shreds and put in bowl. Toss with the salad dressing and the sea salt. Spread onto cookie sheet and cookie for 15-20 minutes or more depending on how crisp you like your chips. Remove from heat, cool, and enjoy!

After drooling over pictures of Taste of Life's vegan soul food on many other blogs, Kirby Von Scrump and I finally got to take some drool-worthy pictures of our own. A Taste of Life is a regular stand at the market but they also have a restaurant on Fountain, not far from my casa, but because of my Pure Luck addiction, I haven't made it over there yet. I first sampled their vegan lasagna which was absolutely delicious and I am fairly positive it would totally fool an omnivore. After debating with the insanely friendly and funny server, I opted to go for a side of Mac N Cheez instead. My last taste of vegan mac and cheese was not good at all so I was skeptical, but it looked so good and gooey bubbling on the buffet. I got a slice of cornbread and was ready to go.

Except for wait--what would I wash all those carbs down with? I needed some watermelon agua fresca of course!!! Watermelon agua fresca--let's call it WAF--is my beverage of choice at every given moment. It is basically like heaven juice sent from the gods. So I hopped by a kabob stand that had a big ole vat of it, threw the guy two dollars and was on my way. Lucky for us, we were able to snag some of the few seats that are provided next to where the Thai food stand is.
Taste of Life's Mac N Cheez was absolutely amazing. I think it could maybe possibly even trick an omnivore just like the lasagna. Maybe that is a little extreme, but regardless, the stuff was finger lickin' good. A "side order" of it is also enough to put you into a serious food coma. Kirby got the same thing and we both had to keep taking breaks from eating because we were stuffed, but we are no quitters. We polished that stuff off like champs!!!!! And then we wanted to die. But in a good way. Ya know? The cornbread was also absolutely delicious and was on the sweet side. I absolutely cannot wait to go back to the Taste of Life stand and to try out their restaurant. I think next weekend Kirby and I are going to split the dinner platter which gives you a sample of four different dishes and will surely force us to loosen our belts. Three cheers to the Hollywood Farmer's Market! Just another reason to fall in love with this fabulous city of ours.

A Taste of Life
310.338.0557

Crazy for Caponata

2008-10-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

Every time my dad and step mom come into town, they drag me to Il Fornaio in Beverly Hills for dinner. Ok, so they don't exactly drag me--Il Fornaio is super tasty, pretty fancy, is surprisingly very accommodating to my vegan self, and--best of all--they foot the bill. The menu changes often but we always, always order caponata for the table. Sometimes this amazing eggplant appetizer isn't on the menu, but the restaurant must keep a secret stash of it somewhere for people like us who cannot stand to have an Italian meal without it.

When the farmer's market was teeming with gorge eggplants this week I knew there was a big batch of caponata in my future. Most caponatas usually have a few more ingredients, such as red peppers and capers, but I just used what I had on hand. Try your hardest not to eat the whole batch right away--this stew gets even more delicious after sitting in a fridge overnight. It's usually served cold and tastes great as an alternative to bruschetta, but I like it so much I just throw it on a plate and call it a meal. Enjoy!

CrazyGood Caponata

1 large eggplant
1 medium onion, sliced into short strips
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 can tomatoes
3 tbsp. red wine vinegar
2 tbsp. sugar
salt and pepper, to taste

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Use a fork to pierce the eggplant all over. Create an aluminum foil cradle for the eggplant and roast in oven for 40 minutes. While the eggplant roasts, saute the garlic and onions in the olive oil in a pan over medium-low heat until the onions soften. Add the tomatoes (along with any juice), the red wine vinegar, and the sugar to the pan.

Remove eggplant from the oven and cool until it can be handled. Cut into small chunks (leave the skin on) and add to the pan. Add salt and pepper to taste. Continue to simmer the mixture for another 20 minutes. Remove from heat and chill overnight.

Makes 4 side-dish servings or 2 main course servings.

Animal, Vegetable, Meanie

2008-10-16T01:51:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The book follows Kingsolver's family's year of eating as strict locavores--they farmed a lot of their own food and sought to obtain all other food items from sources less than 100 miles away from their home. I enjoyed the book but was highly perturbed by Kingsolver's attitude towards veganism. She describes vegans by relating a story of she and her daughter reading about a vegan starlet in a gossip magazine. She basically equates all vegans with moronic, superficial, stereotypical Hollywood types. Her argument is that it's crazy for the celebrity (or any vegan) to expound the advantages of a vegan diet and the benefit to animals while buying products such as tofu that are shipped from god knows where and wrapped in loads of packaging, thereby having a big ecological footprint.

She also provides all the scientific evidence that humans are not designed to consume milk after infancy and completely acknowledges the adverse health affects of eating dairy (According to a Cornell study, between 30 and 50 million Americans are lactose intolerant), and then proceeds to describe the great lengths she goes to to make her own dairy products that her lactose-intolerant-self can stomach. Of course it is her prerogative to knowingly consume something that she knows her own body rejects. It's also my perogative to find it irritating when someone is educated about an issue and doesn't have a proportional, sensible response. It's kind of like if you knew John McCain was terrible but voted for him anyway.

I cannot fathom how Kingsolver, who is so conscious of the major environmental and social impacts of what we eat, someone who went to such extremes as to be a complete locavore--which is not an easy task in the slightest--could fail to acknowledge the environmental and social benefits of veganism. This uninformed view of the vegan diet really bothered me and made it very difficult to relate to the book's main message.

A few days after I finished the book, I got to thinking. I realized that, although I'm still annoyed by Kingsolver's vegan stereotyping, she actually has a point. I thought about all the vegan products I buy like tofu, tempeh, canned soups, soy ice cream, et cetera and started thinking about the fuel and packaging they require to be shipped from wherever the product originated (which I'm sure in most cases is nowhere near my L.A) So I have made a conscious decision to, from now on, be as local of an eater as possible. I have stopped buying all the pre-made meals that I have relied on from Trader Joe's and I am ready to start eating seasonally, even if that means I can't have my beloved watermelon year round. Our world is in dire straights and it is simply irresponsible to blindly contribute to our own demise.

Ok this is sounding a little intense for my happy vegan blog. I know I won't be able to stay totally locavore--there are gonna be times when I'm working long hours and just need to nuke some veggie patties for dinner. But I am making a conscious effort to get all my produce from the farmer's market and to never ever buy those fruits and veggies at TJ's that come in tons of totally unnecessary plastic packaging.

On my first trip to the farmer's market after returning from Michigan, I was thrilled to find these yellow bell tomatoes. I really don't like eating regular raw tomatoes, but for whatever reason I can eat these little yellow suckers like candy. I was first turned on to them when our on-set caterer had them one day at the salad bar. They advised me how best to prepare them: slice them in half, splash them with red wine vinegar, some olive oil, salt, and pepper. I could eat a whole carton of these babies for a meal.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen these at the market since, so I guess I'll have to wait until next summer to have another heavenly bowl! I'm ok with that--it's getting to be root vegetable season and potatoes will hold me over until next year. Hopefully the return of the yellow bell tomatoes will coincide with the Dodger's pre-season so I can bring them to the stadium for a snack. Oh my Dodgers...so close, so close. But I sense that 2009 is our year!

Californians: Vote Yes on Prop 2!!!!!

2008-10-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

Hey California voters! The new president isn't the only important vote you'll be making in November. There are some really important propositions on our state ballot and I want to make sure you all know about Prop 2.

Proposition 2 requires that "calves raised for veal, egg-laying hens, and pregnant pigs be confined only in ways that allow these animals to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs, and turn around freely."

Here is how pigs are kept today:

Imagine how you would feel if, for the duration of your life, you were kept in a space where you couldn't fully extend your limbs.

This is an important piece of legislation which, if passed, will help improve the lives of the 40 million animals raised for commercial purposes in California. Hopefully the proposition's passing will also create momentum for similar laws in the rest of the country.

The law is just common sense if you ask me but if you need more reasons to convince you to vote yes here are a few:
* The risk of salmonella poisoning will decrease
* The law favors family farmers who already practice better farming practices and will force giant factory farms to have to compete with the better quality family farm.
* By phasing out the worst animal confinement practices, there will be a reduction on the intense pollution of our waterways and groundwater by contamination from untreated waste.

Are there any negative consequences of Prop 2? Yes--the price of eggs may increase by less than a penny per egg. So you may have to fork over an extra 12 cents per dozen at the store. Something tells me your budget can handle it though.

More information can be found here. Please spread the word to other Californians to VOTE YES ON PROP 2!

These October Days Really Rock my Socks Off!

2008-10-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

Sunday was the perfect day for pumpkin picking: it was sunny but a little cooler than usual and it's early in the season which means the pumpkin selection is at its best. So Kirby Von Scrumptious and I, along with a couple other jokers, trucked down to Orange County to Tanaka Farms. When we got to Irvine, however, we were famished, so before we could play in the hay bales and get lost in the corn maze, off we were to one of the best vegan joints in SoCal: Veggie Grill.

Veggie Grill's concise menu is entirely vegan so there is no need to ask about which dishes contain what products, although I asked anyway because their dressings looked to0 thick and creamy to not be made with eggs. I have been dying to try the Baja Fiesta salad since drooling over a photo of it on another vegan blog (can't remember where exactly). Delightful is the exact word I would use to describe this mix of romaine, papaya, avocado, quinoa, roasted corn salsa, cucumber, cilantro, and tortilla strips. The ginger-papaya vinaigrette was perfectly light and tangy.

We got an order of Sweetheart fries for the table. They were delish but it's pretty difficult to make sweet potato fries that aren't. My sweet-potato-fry-heart will always belong to Pure Luck where they are actually baked, not fried, and are thick and super chewy and come with the world's best special sauce. But Veggie Grill's own special sauce--a tangy, vegan ranch-style dressing--was also very tasty and were great on the fries. I washed everything down with a combo of iced teas (black with sweetened peach for me, please!).

Everyone else also really enjoyed their meals. My meat-eating friend Derek even questioned whether the "chicken" was real or not--and everyone knows an omnivore being tricked by fake meat happens about as often as Sarah Palin kisses a polar bear.

I might not drive all the way down to Orange County just for Veggie Grill, but it is so good that I just might consider driving to the west side to the El Segundo location--which says a lot because y'all know how much I don't like going west of Vermont!

P.S. Look how cute we are in that picture at top. I <3 my fellow pumpkin-picking amigos!

Vegan Comfort Food + Exotic Soy Gelato = One Happy Vegan

2008-10-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

Here I am, back from a wonderful weekend in Detroit. Luckily I got there just in time to make it to the cider mill which is a Michigan tradition. Apple orchards across the state crank out hot batches of their own homemade spiced ciders and I assure you there is no better beverage on the planet. Now I'm back in L.A where it is 92 degrees today. Lame! Oh well, it hasn't been that hot all summer so I guess one little heat wave in October won't kill me.

Right before I took off on my trip, I had a little Pure Luck/Scoops excursion. There has been some discussion lately about Pure Luck's decline, but I think they are as amazing as ever! (Excuse the crappy photos--my camera is broken so I have to resort to my friend's iPhones.)

We started the meal off right with an order of pickle chips. The only way to make a near perfect food like the pickle taste even better, is to fry it. These are self explanitorily delish.

Lately I haven't been able to make myself order anything besides "Kristen's Carnitas Wrap." Juicy jackfruit and Pure Luck's spot-on Caeser dressing knock off is a winning combo in my book. Add chewy sweet potato fries and magical tangy BBQ sauce to that equation and I am over the moon. (My order is the one at top).

My friend ordered rosemary fries, but alas, there was not a trace of rosemary to be found on the fries. They were good fries, it was just kind of a bummer that they didn't come as advertised. Luckily the rest of our food was so good we were willing to overlook this omission.

I find it physically impossible to leave Pure Luck without being sucked into Scoops like Ahab getting sucked into Moby Dick's giant whale mouth. This time around I ordered a scoop of Salty Chocolate and a scoop of Banana Oreo. T'was orgasmic as usual!

I HEART PL/SCOOPS!

Dosa Update

2008-09-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

An employee at Dosa came across my last post about their lovely South Indian restaurant and sent me a very nice e-mail. They wrote:

"I did want to mention that we can make our dosas vegan by holding back on the "ghee", which as you might know is an integral part of vegetarian food. Next time just ask your server and we'll be glad to serve you a delicious vegan dosa."

And I thought that place couldn't get any better!!! It almost makes me want to shoot up to SF sometime next week just go get some more scrumptious curry.

In the meantime, I am off to Detroit to hang out with the fam a bit--ahhh yes, hiatus means I get to take a lot of vacations. I'm thinking about catching a flight to Mexico sometime next month if the ole bank account can handle it. Everyone have a great weekend and I'll see y'all next week!

Jumping for Vegan Joy in San Francisco

2008-09-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

Ahoy Mates!

I'm not sure how it's possible, but I seem to be 100 times busier on hiatus than when I was working. Go figure. Anywho, as I mentioned, I made a quick trip to San Francisco last week when I caught a ride with my friend Neal who was driving back to Norcal from San Diego. Therein lies the beauty of being unemployed--I can just decide at the last minute to drive up state in the middle of the week for no other reason than just wanting to be in weather cold enough to actually merit wearing one of my many scarves.

On to the food...

Basically every restaurant we saw looked incredible. I could spend decades there and probably never make it to all the awesome dining options. So for our one day in the big city, we had to choose wisely. I checked out Quarrygirl and To Live and Eat in L.A. for ideas and they both seemed pretty smitten with Herbivore, so that's exactly where Neal and I went after a wonderful morning at MoMA.

My fellow bloggers raved about the grilled seitan shwarma wrap, so it didn't take me long to order. Soon out came my wrap packed with grilled onions, tomatoes, hot sauce, hummus, tahini, pickles, and the awesome seitan. Would I like to add eggplant and potatoes to that? That would be a yes--I'm on vacation after all! I could easily eat this wrap every day for the rest of my life--it was that good. Neal ordered the falafal wrap which was also delicious. I was also very pleased that the wrap was totally easy to eat--it wasn't constantly in danger of exploding and dripping like wraps are wont to do. (These pictures are much better than mine)

The desserts sounded uber delish, so we couldn't resist ordering a slice of german chocolate cake. The server brought out this huge slab of heaven, which we devoured even though we were already so full we wanted to die. The fudgey icing was the best I've had--vegan or otherwise.

The added bonus of eating at Herbivore, was that while we chowed down in the sunshine, we spotted a very cute looking Indian restaurant. When we were craving Indian later on, we knew right where to go. It was back to the Mission for us!

Dosa serves South Indian cuisine which is different than the stuff one sees on a usual Indian menu. I was pleased to see a note at the top of the menu pointing to the vegan options. I ordered the Tamil Vegetable Curry which was made up of cauliflower, green beans, potatoes, plantains & cherry tomatoes in a "Chettinad-style" curry. Spooning the curry over coconut basmati rice made for one of the best meals I've had, period. The menu described the curry as mild which makes me fear what they find spicy because it was actually quite hot. Neal ordered a dosa which was unfortunately not vegan, because it looked amazing.

Neal and I had an amazing time in SF and I cannot wait to go back--especially because I found it to be even more vegan friendly than L.A. which is very impressive! Thanks to Foodeater and Quarrygirl for the great advice! Also, after eating at Dosa I really want to start cooking obscure Indian dishes more often. Anyone have a good suggestion for a vegan (or easily veganizable) Indian cook book?

2008-09-15T11:25:00.001-07:00

Howdy Pardners,

I'm off on a last minute trip to San Francisco! While I'm gone, you should check out the guest blog I did over at The Food Monster about our night in Little Ethiopia. See ya on the flip side!

"Meh" Cafe: fool me once, shame on you...

2008-09-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

I was never too successful trying to get our little art department to go to M Cafe for lunch--not only does the macrobiotic cafe offer very few meat options (and only seafood at that) but the place is a tad outside of our usual budget and the portions are smallish. During our last week, our crew members slowly started dropping off until the last two working members in the art department were me and my coordinator. We took the opportunity to eat at the places that everyone else always scoffed at. So we found ourselves ordering one last time from M Cafe.

I ordered the Gado Gado salad which is described as "organic mixed greens, napa cabbage, crisp vegetables, golden tempeh triangles marinated with ginger, lemongrass & lime, frizzled onions & spicy peanut dressing." While that is basically an accurate description of the salad I got, I was still disappointed. The lamest thing about M Cafe is that over fifty percent of the items on the menu are prepackaged and sit in their display cases for who knows how long. This salad is no exception and it is just plain outrageous that M Cafe gets away with charging $12 for a teeny tiny salad that has been sitting out. If work hadn't been picking up the tab, I would have felt like a total sucker. I just kinda overlooked this lameness before, but I can't get over the fact that I would have been much better off grabbing a sesame tofu salad from Trader Joe's for three bucks.

We also ordered a couple chocolate truffles which were good but, again, were they worth $1.50 a pop? Not really.

I think the idea of M Cafe has been fooling me into thinking it's pretty good all this time. Maybe it's because I'm on hiatus now and I have to --gasp!!!--pay for my own food, but I won't be going back there anytime soon unless I have a hankering for being ripped off.

M Cafe de Chaya
9343 Culver Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
310.838.4300

The key to a poor doctoral student's heart is chocolate chip cookies

2008-09-05T10:13:00.001-07:00

Jason is the first person I met at college. He was the roommate of my friend from high school. Six years later, he is still one of my best friends in the world. Whenever I'm super upset about something, I call my mom first and then Jase. His birthday is at the end of August which was perfect because we got to have a party every year right when we went back to school. Sadly, we haven't been together for his past couple birthdays and this year he is all the way in State College, PA where he is starting his six year PHD program, eek! I wanted to send him a little something for the big 25th b-day, so I found the recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies in VWAV and got to work.

I did my homework and saw that a lot of bloggers had problems with the dough being too crumbly. So I added the flour 1/2 cup at a time and in the end I obtained the perfect texture with about 1/4 cup less flour than is called for in the recipe. The recipe says that it will prove to any non-vegan that you can make vegan chocolate chip cookies that taste just as good as regular ones and when I tasted them I was shocked at how they tasted exactly like the normal kind! Before I mailed these out I had a couple coworkers try them and they both said that while the look and texture were spot on, the taste bore no resemblance to real chocolate chip cookies, adding that they just tasted like molasses cookies. Siiiigh. Next time I am going to get them to try them without knowing they are vegan first.

I was slightly worried about how the cookies would fare in the mail, as the last time I sent cookies they arrived at my friend's house in Argentina a month later, melted into one giant cookie blob. These suckers arrived in three days however and Jase assured me they hadn't blobified. As for Jason's review, he said "these are really good considering they contain none of the ingredients needed to make chocolate chip cookies." Hmmm, not sure what that means, but he ate them all soooo whatever! Actually, Jase may not be the best judge of any food. In college he would routinely bake up a dozen Jiffy blueberry muffins and eat six of them for dinner and then have the other six for breakfast the next day. So he's not exactly a foodie.

If we aren't dating someone when we're 45, Jase and I are going to get married, so I've got a few years to perfect the recipe. But in the meantime, I still say that these suckers are delish.

Happy 25th Jayyyyseeee!!!!!

P.S. The recipe says it will yield 36 cookies, but unless you like your cookies to be no bigger than quarters, that is definitely not the case. This made about 20 average sized cookies.

The Better Dodger Dog

2008-09-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

Last night the art department went to see the Dodgers defeat the Padres in a good old fashioned baseball showdown. George (pictured above) and I managed to kill off an entire bag of whole peanuts in the first four innings, but insanely, I was still hungry. So I went in search of the one stand in the whole stadium that sells veggie dogs which happened to be quite close to our seats. Truth be told, I wasn't exactly in the mood for a veggie dog--I was eyeing those giant super pretzels--but I wanted to cast my vote, so to say, with my hard earned $6.25 for the veggie community. The thinking being that if items like the veggie dog sell well enough, they will become more prevalent throughout the stadium and maybe there will even be more vegan items added to the usual stadium fare.

The hot dog itself was nothing out of the ordinary by any means--just your average vegan dog on a white bread bun. But it was nice and hot and if you slather anything in enough ketchup and mustard, you are bound to have a delicious treat. The price is outrageous of course, but it also costs 5 bucks for a pop or a regular hot dog, so basically everything is super expensive. It was also blanket night though so we all got some free hideous fleece blankets that I will probably only bring out of the closet when Leif gets drunk and passes out on my couch (which is often).

The moral of this story is that I love the Dodgers, my friends, peanuts in the shell, and I love that I live in a town where vegan options are offered in even the most carnivorous of places.

Look forward to a deluge of posts, as I am finally finding time to catch up on my life in food from the past week!

2008-08-30T18:31:00.000-07:00

Hey there!

I have been M.I.A. because the Yo Soy life has been super crazy as of late. But fear not--I am now on hiatus and so starting this week I'll have all the time in the world to eat and post. Woo! And I have had some good vegan adventures this past week to gab about. See ya soooooooooooon!!!

Liz

Get Wael Soon Mujadarrah

2008-08-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

I always take any chance I get to eat with my friend Wael's family. Even their regular weekday dinners are massive feasts. There's usually smoky baba ghanoush, hummus, tabbouleh, fattoush, lentil dishes, and lots of pita to scoop it all up--all made from scratch of course. Wael makes fun of me for still talking about this dinner we had at his sister's house in New Jersey a few summers ago. It was one of the best meals of my life but for them it was just another Sunday night. Thanksgiving at the Abifaker house is a whole other story--the amount of American and Arabic dishes covering the table is rivaled only by my Oma's Christmas smorgasbord.

Last October, Wael got in a terrible car accident and I quickly learned that the Lebanese answer a crisis with lots and lots of food and chocolate. The hospital room was like a little cafeteria--everyday we visitors were treated to a new middle eastern delicacy. And that was when I became obsessed with Mujadarrah.

Mujadarrah is the best kind of dish: simple and reeeediculously good-tasting. I managed to completely mess it up when I made it today by using precooked lentils. The texture of mujadarrah is supposed to be kind of like guacamole, but today mine came out more like just beans and rice. Because I used precooked lentils instead of boiling dry ones, there was no lentil slime to mix with the rice and onions which creates a delightfully mushy consistency. Today I added some guacamole I had laying around to try to fudge the texture.

So go! Make it! Eat it! Luvvvv it! Here is the recipe, straight from Mrs. Abifaker herself. (There is also a recipe for it in Veganomicon but c'mon now, would you rather have this middle eastern dish from two chicas from Queens or from a true Lebanese cook?)

Get Wael Soon Mujadarrah
1 cup lentils
1 onion
1/2 cup rice
3-4 tbs of oil (your choice)
3 cups water

Heat the lentils in water until they boil. Once they have boiled add the rice and allow to boil. While the other stuff is boiling, chop up the onion and sauté it in a pan with the oil until they brown. Add the onions to the rice and lentils and set the heat to low and simmer. Stir occasionally (the more you stir the creamier it will be). Add more water if you feel the rice and lentils are not soft enough. Once it's at your desired texture,salt to your liking and serve.

And in case you are wondering, Wael is doing much better now. Here he is looking super cute back in the fall when he was still in his wheelchair. I can't wait for that bugger to get his little tush back to California!!!

La Vida Dolce

2008-08-22T09:25:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was our last day of principle shooting! We had Chipotle for lunch, which everyone seemed to agree was bad. You can absolutely tell that the place is owned by McDonalds. Everyone's food was tiny, gross, or both. I ordered a fajita salad which was slimy black beans with a truckload of guacamole and two slices of bell pepper. It was totally unappetizing and I am totally dumbfounded that when this Culver City location of the franchise opened recently people waited in line for over an hour to get lunch there.

After our disappointing lunch, Canada and George went to walk down the street to get some cupcakes from Bluebird. They took forever though and when they returned I found out why--they had actually gone to Dolce Isola and brought back sorbet!!! Literally every time we went to lunch at Dolce Isola over the season, I would ask for a taste of their peach sorbet and come back and tell everyone how mind blowing it is. So those two tricksters brought back peach and coconut. The coconut turned out to be even better than the peach! It wasn't really sweetened which was awesome. You would never guess that either one didn't have dairy. See George and Canada digging in above. What a sweet way to end season five!

Dolce Isola
2869 S. Robertson Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
310.776.7070

Karaoke Coconut Pancakes

2008-08-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

Saturday night we had a crazy karaoke showdown in Koreatown for Kirby Von Scrumptious' 25th bday. We drank lots of Hite, danced on tables, and belted out Ace of Base like it was our job. So needless to say, it was necessary to fuel myself with a good meal beforehand so I could last into the wee hours of the night.

My new favorite recipe is VWAV's Coconut Pancakes. These pancakes are so coconut-y that they are almost chewy--in a good way. Next time I will omit the salt though. Top them with some Grade B maple syrup and you've got yourself enough sugar and deliciousness to power you through at least four to six eighties power ballads. These suckers would DEFINITELY be on my list of Dishes With Which to Seduce Michael Phelps Should He Ever Stop By My House For Breakfast. Speaking of which--holy crap! Michael Phelps! Did you guys see that 1/100th of a second win on Friday??? Oh my godddd.

Just when I was getting to think Michael Phelps is just too good to be true, my friend sent me this link, which argues, quite convincingly, that The World's Fastest Swimmer might also be a bit of a tool. See Exhibit A here:

Oh well--I still wouldn't turn him away if he came knocking on my door!

M Cafe: A good choice if you are a hungover vegan going to work on the westside

2008-08-14T21:57:00.001-07:00

My friend Phil and I had a super excellent time dancing the night away at a party at Custom Hotel on Tuesday. Unfortunately, that meant that Wednesday was a bit of a headache-y nightmare. After getting about three hours of sleep, I spent the whole drive to work trying to keep my eyelids pried open while deciding where to go to get a good old fashioned hangover breakfast. I settled on this tofu scramble from M Cafe.

The scramble itself was actually kinda gross. The only flavor came from onions which is fine but it's bland next to other scrambles which have herbs/spices/sauces to pump them up. No matter though, I was hungover, remember? So of course I totally ate most of them. The sides were the better part of the meal: tempeh bacon, a tasty sweet potato hash with bell peppers, strawberries, and really awesome toast made with a sweet cranberry walnut bread.

Not the best meal, but when you've had one too many mojitos:
alcohol-soaking-up ability > taste

So danke, M Cafe!

M Cafe de Chaya
9343 Culver Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
310.838.4300

Portobello Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette

2008-08-11T18:52:00.000-07:00

Before seeing The Pineapple Express on Saturday, I threw together this lunch, inspired by Veganomicon's Portabello Salad with Spicy Mustard Dressing. I had to adjust the portions in the dressing quite a bit--those PPK gals can be so heavy-handed with oil! The salad was great. Wish I could say the same for the movie, but despite James Franco being a very sexy stoner, The Pineapple Express was exquisitely bad. Can't win 'em all I s'pose.

Roasted Portabello and Artichoke Hearts over Wilted Arugula with Mustard Vinaigrette

For the vinaigrette (modified from Veganomicon):
1/8 cup sweet hot smooth mustard
1 tbsp grapeseed oil
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp maple syrup

Stir ingredients. Done!

For the salad:
2 Portabello caps
3-4 artichoke hearts (I use canned)
2 handfuls arugula
3/4 cup teriyaki sauce (I used Trader Joe's Island Soyaki which has pineapple juice in it. It's so good I could drink it like a cocktail.)

Marinate the portabellos in the teriyaki sauce for at least 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Using tongs, turn caps over and bake ten more minutes. Meanwhile, push the arugula around a pan on medium-high heat for 3-5 minutes until wilted to your liking. Slice the cooled portobellos and assemble the salad with the artichoke hearts, arugula, and dressing.

Olympimania Chewy Chocolate Raspberry Cookies

2008-08-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

I love the Olympics! Especially the summer olympics. Especially diving, gymnastics, and swimming. Especially swimming. Especially Michael Phelps. For the past week I have been showing this picture to anyone who enters my office. Its Hottie McSixPack himself wearing the awesomely revealing Lzr Speedo. You should print it out and display it on your desk like I have. It really helps brighten up a room.

On Friday I headed over to Kirby Von Scrumptious' pad to watch the Opening Ceremonies and I whipped up some of Veganomicon's Chewy Chocolate Raspberry Cookies to bring along. They were easy and delicious, although next time I might add more of the raspberry preserves to make the flavor come out a little more. These were pretty damn tasty--I might even put them on my Seduce-Michael-Phelps menu that I am mentally concocting in case I am ever presented with the opportunity to woo the fastest swimmer in the world with an amazing meal. Until that night comes, I'll just have to settle for devouring these on Kirby's couch. Le sigh.

Another sign that The Devil has infiltrated Culver City

2008-08-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

Bad News: After 11 years in Culver City, Cooks Double Dutch is closing due to skyrocketing rent.

Good News: The business is packing up and moving across town to my hood--Silver Lake!

Bad News: Only the catering side of the business will be operating. The restaurant is no more.

Dammnit!!!! I really love Double Dutch and am very sad to see it get pushed out of Culver City. When I whined to the staff about not bringing the restaurant with the rest of the biz to the east side with them, they said I could just place an order with catering for me and ten of my friends. While that seems slightly crazy, I wouldn't be surprised if I break down someday and place a call for ten orders of their perfect sweet potato fries. But the liklihood of me sharing them with ten friends is slim, I could wipe those puppies off on the walk home.

For our last ever meal from the restaurant, I opted to try the Vegan Mac 'N' Cheeze. I'm not really a fan of fake cheese but I figured that since Double Dutch does other vegan classics so well (like their tofu burger and tempeh club which are both the best on the west side by far) their knock off of macaroni and cheese would be great too. Well, it wasn't the tastiest thing in the world. The cheese flavor was subtle. It really tasted more like noodles with oil than anything else and the few "cheese" chunks were crumbly and generally not too appetizing. With that said, I love the taste of just noodles and oil, I just don't love paying ten dollars for it (so I guess it's a good thing production buys my lunch!).

Even though my last meal at Double Dutch wasn't a total success, I will still miss the place dearly. So adieu, my love, and good luck East of Vermont!

Top photo taken by GreengirlLA on Flickr

Crafty: How crewmembers can be overweight even after running around like maniacs 16 hours a day.

2008-08-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

Here is Mark, the Craft Service Key on our show, prepping a tray of agave-sweetened iced Yerba Mate teas to pass around as we shot at a ranch in the valley where it was hot hot HOT. Ah Crafty. You are simultaneously my worst nightmare and my biggest joy in life.

For those of you unfamiliar with the art that is craft services, allow me to fill you in. Craft services refers to the food and drink that is constantly provided on set for the crew. It differs from catering, which, according to union guidelines, must provide a full sit-down meal every six hours. On most shows, there is usually a crafty truck, which is like headquarters, with big refrigerators and amenities like a popcorn machine, espresso machine, etc. Then there is the crafty set-up which is usually right on the set where your friendly Crafty team sets up a smorgasbord of tasty treats and drinks which you can spend all day perpetually stuffing into your face. In addition to this constant flow of foodstuffs, crafty provides a "snack" three hours after every catering meal.

Now this snack isn't like the celery and peanut butter you might give a kid when he comes home from school, the "snack" is basically a full-on meal just like lunch, the main difference being you eat it while you work, you don't get a break. One day they might have a buffet of thai dishes, another day there might be an array of gourmet sandwiches. Lucky for me, the crafty guys on our show happen to be awesome and they always make sure that every snack has a good vegan option. And I don't just mean that when they order sandwiches they give me a caprese and tell me to remove the cheese. There is always a substantial, delicious vegan option. This is really impressive considering they go out of their way to do that just for moi, the only vegan on the crew.

Today, for our second snack, crafty had these amazing mango summer rolls. Fresh mango, cucumber, carrots, lettuce, cilantro, and mint were all wrapped up in sesame-studded rice paper. They were huge--actually more like a sandwich wrap than a roll--and I totally had more than I should have. And therein lies the problem with crafty--it's a daily struggle to resist stuffing my face full of treats all day long. Click here for a very funny and accurate description of craft services from KCRW's "Martini Shot" series. So if you have a weight problem, you better not work in show biz because it's a dieter's worst fear realized.

In other news, if you are in the L.A. area I highly recommend you try to catch the show at Largo at the Coronet tonight. It's Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen doing one-acts written by Paul Thomas Anderson. Kirby Von Scrumptious and I went last night (tonight is the only other night) and it was delightful! Technically they are sold out but they save some tickets to sell at the door. It was also a starfest--I haven't been in a room with so many famous people since going to the Grammys. We sat right behind Jack Black amongst others. So if celeb sighting is something you're into, Largo is the place to be tonight.

Blueberry Oatmeal Flummery

2008-08-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

I am not the biggest blueberry fan, but lately they have been mighty scrumptious looking at the store and online: VeganYumYum's Blueberry Grunt and Fatfree Vegan's Blueberry-Oat Bars have been floating around my brain, as has this article about flummery in the New York Times. So I decided to succumb to the blueberry pain and this weekend I whipped together a Blueberry Oatmeal Flummery, flummery being a fancy British word for pie filling eaten sans crust. Leave it to the Brits...

I was going to make this the traditional way, but I had some oatmeal hanging out from two roommates ago. Figuring this would be a good way to finally get rid of it, I decided to throw it in the mix. The result was very good fresh out of the oven, especially with some unsweetened vanilla rice milk poured over top. Unlike most flummery, however, which is even better when it's chilled--this turned into a rubbery mess after a night in the fridge. So you should either eat it right away or eliminate the oatmeal part if you want to keep it around for a while. Bon appetit!

Blueberry Oatmeal Flummery
(modified from this recipe at Fat Free Vegan--I basically halved the oatmeal part and folded it into the blueberries instead of layering them)

1 pint blueberries
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup apple juice
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 tbsps cornstarch, mixed with enough water to make a paste

1 1/2 cups regular (not instant) oatmeal
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
4 oz. unsweetened applesauce
3 tbsps. agave nectar
3 tbsps. water
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Oil an 8x8 baking pan.

In a small saucepan, combine the blueberries, agave nectar, and juice. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. When it boils, stir in the vanilla and the cornstarch mixture. Continue to stir as the mixture boils and thickens. Remove from heat and set aside.

Put 1 1/2 cups of the oatmeal into a blender and grind it to a fine powder. Pour it into a medium-sized mixing bowl and add the remaining oatmeal, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Stir in the apple sauce, agave nectar, water, and vanilla, and mix well.

Fold oatmeal mix into the blueberries. Put new mixture into the oiled baking dish. Bake 5-8 minutes or until oatmeal has softened. Serve warm with rice milk or soy creamer.

"The Happy Vegan" Does Its Job

2008-08-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

Truth be told, this week has not been the best. So when we went to Tender Greens this week, I splurged and ordered "The Happy Vegan" which just so happens to be the tastiest salad this side of the equator. Even thought we go to TG at least once a week, I rarely get The Happy Vegan because it's a bit of a calorie-fest, so I tend to opt for something lighter. But today I knew a big bowl of oil and carbs was exactly what I needed.

The salad is really five in one. There is a tangy tabbouleh, a vinegary mix of pasta pearls and corn, a garlic-cilantro hummus, a sweet blend of farro wheat and dried cranberries, and mixed greens with lemon vinaigrette, all served with a slice of crusty grilled French bread. I'd happily take just one of those salads as my lunch, but throw them all together and you get five times the happiness!!! Tender Greens obviously has a very astute and accurate menu-writing department. My Happy Vegan along with my cheer-up trip to Alvaro Street (more on that later) have helped make this week slightly less terrible, so big thanks to TG!!!

Behind the Apron or Who's that Lady?

2008-07-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

28 Cooks is hosting "Behind the Apron" to encourage bloggers to put a face to their URLs. Well here, above, is me. No, no, I am not delusional and think that I'm Kim Kardashian. I am the chick on the right with the clipboard. This photo was taken by a paparazzo when I worked on the set of a project that Kim starred in. This picture appeared on a certain popular gossip blog. Let me tell you, it is weird as hell having ten photographers snapping a billion pictures of you while falling over bushes and running in front of cars when you're just trying to walk from point A to point B.

And here are a few things about me you don't already know:

* If you don't like my dog, I don't like you.

* My day was made today when I realized that Season 3 of Party of Five has finally been released on DVD.

* I still have a ridiculous Midwestern accent that rival's Frances McDormand's in Fargo left over from my childhood in Metro Detroit. I also lived in North Carolina for a long time before I moved to L.A. two years ago.

* My favorite movie of all time is the 1963 animated version of Charlotte's Web.

* I've traveled a lot--Antartica and Africa are the only continents I have yet to visit--but I think L.A. might just be the best place on the planet to live and sometimes I really don't know how anyone can bear to live anywhere but Southern California.

Ok fellow bloggers--now, it's your turn!

Tennis, Tofu, Two Scoops, and Tecate

2008-07-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

I meant to spend my Saturday doing the bajillion errands I neglected to do during the week, such as fixing my tire which has been leaking air for over a month now. But of course that didn't even come close to happening. Instead I started the day with a match of doubles tennis. I chose The Food Monster as my teammate and that turned out to be an excellent decision because not only did I discover he is insanely good at tennis, but he also had a very snazzy outfit that made him look a bit like Andre Agassi but less bald. We totally dominated, no thanks to me.

After that intense game we were all starving so we headed to the new Silver Lake location of Home which turned out to be just as whimsical and delicious as the original in Los Feliz. We ordered the Avocado Mash which is just avocados mashed onto a piece of thin sourdough. T'was slightly lame for three dollars. I got the tofu scramble which is by far the best of its kind in all of L.A., with the yellow curry being the ingredient that pushes it over the edge into crazy-good territory. The most drool-inducing food at the table however was The Food Monster's Frozen Iced Peach which is a blend of peaches, ice, mango, and coconut milk. At five bucks it's a tad more expensive than your average smoothie but its huge and could practically be your whole meal. I plan on making my own at home as soon as I get to the store.

After brunch we all seemed to have the same thought on our dessert-crazy brains: Scoops, of course. I think we all felt embarrassed about suggesting it as we had just stuffed ourselves like August Gloop proteges, but one of us sort of whispered it and that was all it took--we were off to Hel-Mel for the best gelato in the land. Scoops is always amazing, but they were in rare form--I tasted practically all the vegan flavors of the day: Vanilla Jack Daniels and Avocado Alcohol were good but I ended up getting Chocolate Sunflower Seed and Almond Mocha. Annnnnd that is the beauty of Scoops--when you order a One Scoop Cup you actually get two scoops! Oh Scoops, way to do your party in the great American obesity epidemic.

We returned to the The Food Monster's casa where literally all of us proceeded to take three-hour food coma naps before our raucous poker game and subsequent Tecate-filled Wet Hot American Summer theme party that night (I dressed up as The Cure Girl). It wasn't the most productive day, unless you count excessive eating and drinking as productive. Actually that sounds pretty good to me!

Home
2500 Riverside Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90039
323.665.0211

Scoops
712 N. Heliotrope Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
323.906.2649

George and I Take a Walk-Away at Akasha

2008-07-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

Production gigs are not like normal jobs where you might get an hour or so for a lunch break where you can have a Sex in the City style gabfest with your closest friends and then stop by the bank or maybe do a little shopping before heading back to the office. In the production world, lunch is either catered or ordered in and on set you get a 30 minute break and in the office you get no break at all--most people work straight through lunch, taking bites at their desks between sending e-mails. Although our little art department tries to be a little more civilized--we always gather around our ping pong table for a short, communal meal.

Some shows employ a different kind of system: the walk-away lunch. The walk-away lunch is a cruel and inhumane system and is usually seen on shows that shoot on big studio lots. A walk-away means that instead of a 30 minute break for a catered meal, you are given an hour break to go feed yourself. Here is why the practice is so repulsive:

1. A longer break may sound better than half an hour, but when your days are 12-18 hours long, you'd rather have that extra 30 minutes of sleep at the end of the day.

2. An hour is usually not long enough to go anywhere off the lot because it can take 20 minutes just to get to your car which is probably parked at the deck that's on the complete opposite end of the lot from your show's stage. This means you are stuck eating at the commissary (which vary in quality from studio to studio) or the other lame restaurants found on the lot.

3. You have to pay for it yourself!!! The horror, the horror!

Now you may be saying--but Liz, surely you could just pack your own delicious lunch. But no, that's not really an option, because after you've worked 18 hours it's hard enough to force yourself to take a shower, let alone create a satisfying meal for the next day.

Like I said, my show doesn't use the dreaded walk-away, so I don't have to fret. But on Friday, when almost everyone in the art department had to attend a production meeting at location, George and I were left to our own devices for lunch and we decided we'd go out!

Not only were we treating ourselves to a trip away from the office but we decided to go all out and splurge with lunch at Culver City's newest fine dining place: Akasha.

Akasha's shtick is serving all organic, upscale California cuisine with a lot of vegan/vegetarian options. The restaurant is truly green from the biodegradable dishwashing soap to the organic hemp uniforms on the wait staff. I ordered the Punjabi Mung Beans and Rice (hold the raita) and was glad I did as it was the best lunch I've had all season.

The dish came with a bean and rice mixture in a korma-like curry, tomato chutney (which tasted like Indian-style ketchup), local greens, and a crunchy tandoori flatbread topped with caramelized onions. I had never had mung beans before--they never sounded too appetizing--but they were great and I plan on cooking with them sometime in the near future. George also really enjoyed his meal. That is the beauty of this place--usually at fine dining restaurants, vegans are forced to create some bland salad while their friends order feasts. But at Akasha, vegans and omnivores alike can share an outstanding meal.

So today I learned that walk-aways aren't always so bad. I have a feeling George and I will be trying to take one again at least once before our season wraps.

Akasha
9543 Culver Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232
310.845.1700

Thanks to those who make my work day go by a little faster...

2008-07-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

This picture is here for no other reason than the fact there is really no better way to start your Saturday than with a stroll through the Silver Lake farmer's market with a cup of Fresh Iced Mint Tea from Casbah Cafe. Ok, on to business...

The very lovely Lisa at Show Me Vegan has nominated me for the Brillante Weblog award, which is very exciting because I am a huge fan of her blog and read it every day. Thanks, Lisa!

So now I have to nominate seven favorite blogs of mine and then let those bloggers know so they can "pay it forward" as Haley Joel Osment would say. Without further ado, here they are in alphabetical order:

Destiny's Vegan Kitchen: She must be the busiest chica on the planet with the amount of stuff she seems to cram into any given day, including constantly whipping up tasty vegan delicacies.

Hot Knives: Fun videos and great-looking vegan food from a pair of cute L.A. hipsters

Kirby Von Scrumptious: Kirby is my friend in real life, so I have to nominate her, or else she might cancel our friendship. Luckily, I would be a psychotic stalker-fan of her blog even if I didn't know that she is just as hilarious outside of the blogosphere as she is in it.

The Food Monster: also my friend in real life, The Food Monster is so awesome that I can even get over the ire I feel towards him when he eats ice cream five times a day and yet remains so svelte.

To Live and Eat in L.A.: the definitive L.A. vegan blog

Quarry Girl: She eats at all the same restaurants I do! What's not to love?

Vegan Visitor: Absolutely gorgeous, drool-inducing photos

Indian restaurant's are a jolly good place for vegheads!

2008-07-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to get my mom to be vegetarian for years. It makes no sense that she isn't one already--she is the one who got me into animal rights in the first place as a kid and she gives money to four different animal charities every month. I finally got through to her and she recently gave up meat (although she is still a pescatarian).

She is still getting used to having to order meatless meals in restaurants so while she was in town visiting I wanted her to see how limitless the vegetarian diet is. I had to take her to the best Indian place on my side of town: Electric Lotus. We created our own feast of Veggie Korma, Chana Masala, rice, and nan. The nan actually isn't vegan, which I'm glad our waitress warned me about, so I stuck to the rice. Everything was perfectly spiced and we left with plenty left over for lunch the next day. We also ordered some samosas which were the best I've ever had. Sometimes they can leave a bitter aftertaste, but these were a little sweeter than usual.

There aren't as many Indian options East of Vermont as there are, say, in West Hollywood, and I haven't even been able to try the other ones yet because I like EL so much I can't bear to pass it up!

Electric Lotus
1870 Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 953-0040

Meltdown is the Soup Nazi of the West and Kevin Arnold Comes to Visit

2008-07-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

This picture is not really appetizing, but I assure you, this Spicy Black Bean soup of the day from Meltdown Etc. was outstanding. I was expecting your typical pureed fare, but what I got was a peppery mix of veggies and beans which makes this the twentieth or so amazingly tasty soup I've had from Meltdown. I am dying for them to publish a soup cookbook. I would buy it in an instant and open up my own little stand in my kitchen where friends could come over and try everything from chowders to bisques. Meltdown really is like the Soup Nazi outpost of the west coast, although they are insanely nice there so they are more like the Soup Teddy Bear.

Perhaps the more interesting part of my day, however, was when this dude totally trespassed on stage. I was the only one down there as almost everyone was on set when I saw this guy and girl walk up to the stage. I assumed they were just passing by, but then they turned and walked right through the elephant door. They proceeded to walk right past me and into a dressing room. I just kinda sat there stupefied for a second and then followed them and asked what the hell they were doing busting on to our stage without asking! Wellllllll truth be told I just said, "hello?"

The guy then proceeds to remove his sunglasses, revealing himself to be the one and only Fred Savage a.k.a. Kevin Arnold.

It turns out, The Wonder Years was filmed on our stages and Fred was showing his girlfriend his old dressing room. Later, Stage Manager Dave showed me where the powerbox still has Fred's name on it:

Fred/Kevin was very nice--apparently he is a director on the show that shoots at the stage across from us--and said he is a big fan of our show.

So basically, Kevin Arnold gave me a compliment. Between that and my awesome lunch, Friday was a pretty sweet little day! Also, when I was looking for that pic of Kevbo, I came across this fun blog by a chick who "stalks" movie locations, and she has a picture of her in front of the Wonder Years house which is just over the hill in Burbank!

One question remains: What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Meltdown Etc.
9739 Culver Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 838-MELT

2008-07-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lack of posts lately--My mom is visiting from out of town so we've been busy--but there have been many good meals to report on. Until then, have a jolly day!!!

Dear Green Truck, We like you. Do you like us? Check one: Yes No

2008-07-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

When our show shoots on stage, we art department folks don't bother to keep our kitchen stocked because we just graze the craft service table. So on Wednesday morning, after we had been shooting at the stage for a couple of days, the cupboards were barren. People poked around the kitchen looking for a Larabar, some cereal, or maybe even some fruit leftover from the previous week to scrounge up for breakfast. But alas, there was nothing, and would be nothing until TJs opened up at nine. Luckily, we didn't have to mope for long before Green Truck pulled up to save the day!

Since our affair with Green Truck started a couple weeks ago, the crew has always been happy to see that little eco-friendly vehicle show up, but this particular morning people were ecstatic. We had all been so hungry just moments before and now we would be satiated! See how happy our lovely Production Designer looks as he devours his breakfast, at top.

I ordered a Soyrizo Burrito which turned out to be amazing! Here it is:

The spelt tortilla was great this time--I think maybe last time it was stale--and they didn't skimp on the special sauce which made me happy. It's not even on the menu so I can't tell you for sure what was in it--but there were a lot of tasty black beans, that is for sure. Our stage manager, Dave, ordered "The Mother Trucker" which is Green Truck's veggie burger and it tasted so much like a real hamburger that I spit it out thinking that they had made a mistake, but no, it was purely vegan! For the record, Dave said it tasted nothing like real meat, so maybe I just don't remember what a real hamburger is like, not having had one for six plus years. Regardless, both Dave and I agree that it's scrumptious. Here is Dave chowing down:

And here is Greg, our Foreman and avid ¡Yo Soy! reader, getting the stare down from everybody's favorite Jack Russell, who really wants a bite of his burrito.

We were sad to see you roll up your stairs and move on to the next company with good taste, but we trust we'll see you again tomorrow, Green Truck. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Tofu Salad from Metro Cafe: Really good but would be better in a compostable container

2008-07-16T15:17:00.001-07:00

Behold this lovely salad that I devoured for lunch today. It comes to us from Metro Cafe which is yet another Culver City lunch spot with tasty sweet potato fries. When we ordered from Metro a few weeks ago, they accidentally forgot our SP fries and the owner drove them over to our stage. Yay, three cheers for Metro! But Metro uses all styrofoam take-out ware, so deduct those three cheers immediately.

This salad is tasty and super simple--just grilled tofu, orange segments, and walnuts with mixed greens and a homemade sesame-orange vinaigrette. It was the perfect light lunch--especially after having a soyrizo burrito for breakfast. But more on that later...

Metro Cafe
11188 Washington Pl.
Culver City, CA 90232

What would I do without Hangover Hash???

2008-07-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Friday night we went to Akbar to dance the night away in honor of my friend Craig's 23rd b-day. Our group slowly thinned out over the course of the night as people got tired/too intoxicated and went home, but Craig and I were troopers and shook it until last call and then managed to somehow not even leave the place a full hour until after it closed.

So you can guess that Saturday was not my most pleasant as I was quite hungover. To make it worse, Craig and I realized that in our drunken stupor, we managed to somehow leave Kirby VonScrumptious' purse, which she had left at my house before we went out, in a complete stranger's car (it's a long story of which I'll spare you the details.) So we two knuckleheads spent the whole day on a wild goose chase trying to track down the missing bag. All the while, I guiltily ignored Kirby's many phone calls and avoided leaving my house so as to not run into her or anyone else who might inform her of my wherabouts. Luckily, after an agonizing eight hour search, we tracked the purse down and got it back to its lovely owner. It was a Saturday full of stress and stomach-ache, so I made my go-to post-partying meal:

Hangover Hash
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 yellow onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 block teriyaki tofu (I use one pack of Trader Joe's terikayi tofu), cubed
2 tbsp. teriyaki sauce (I use TJ's Soyaki--it has pineapple juice in it for some sweetness)
2 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and pepper, to taste
Organic maple flakes (optional)

Cook sweet potato cubes in boiling water until tender (about 8 minutes). Drain and set aside. Heat olive oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add onions, garlic, bell pepper, and tofu. Sautee until onions are tender, then mix in sweet potatoes and teriyaki sauce and heat through. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with a sprinkling of organic maple flakes.

Makes 2 hearty portions.

Anyone else have any good hangover meals? I seem to be in need of them more often than I'd like to admit :)

Overland Cafe's vegan pizza helps heal the pain

2008-07-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

I can't do a proper post for my delish lunch from Overland Cafe because my typing fingers were involved in a traumatic injury today. I was pouring water for my daily Gypsy Chai tea when I got distracted by the construction department's convo about Curb Your Enthusiasm (they were impersonating Crazy Eyez Killah which is one of my fave episodes!) and I poured the boiling water all over my hand. So here I type, in utter agony, a brief description of my vegan pie: Overland Cafe's "Cheese-less Grilled Veggie Pizza." Chewy crust. Zesty tomato sauce. Super flavorful grilled eggplant, zucchini, and spinach. Three cheers to Overland for having unique vegan options!!!

Overland Cafe
3601 Overland Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90034

The Courtship of Green Truck and the Art Department

2008-07-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

I think Green Truck has a crush on us. I started to suspect it last week when the restaurant-on-wheels started courting us like one teenager asking another to prom. Every day they would park their big green vehicle right outside the elephant door at our stage and a staff member would appear upstairs in our little art department to suggest we order lunch from them. Finally, on Monday of this week, we decided to give in, but when we called to place our order, we were informed that they aren't open on Mondays. Why then, did a Green Truck guy come tell us that very morning that they were? Oh Green Truck, I thought we were past all the game-playing days of our youth!

Now we were intrigued. Seems hard-to-catch is actually an effective ploy. We had better luck today when I ordered the breakfast burrito which was filled with a scramble of tofu, broccoli, onion, and spinach. (Breakfast for lunch!--I know, I'm so scandalous). According to the menu, there were supposed to be black beans as well but alas, they were missing. The meal really could have used them too, but it was still tasty without. The tortilla was a flour-less one, which is sort of boggling to think about. It tasted just like a regular tortilla but it broke apart very easily. When it was all said and done, the burrito was more of a tofu scramble with tortilla bits in it, than something you could eat out of your hands. The wrap also had a light slather of a very good bbq-esque sauce which was almost tangy enough to rival Pure Luck's. We also ordered hummus which had a weird gritty texture which would have been okay had it not also been completely devoid of any flavor.

This post makes it sound like I didn't like my food, but I did, I did! There were just some flaws. But we can overlook a few things. Especially when the setbacks are made up for with other good character traits such as Green Truck's commitment to sustainability. After all, we don't need a Mr. Right, just a Mr. Right Now. So Green Truck, I'll give you another chance. Let's go out on a second date, and this time I promise not to get so drunk.

Green Truck
(the address is sort of pointless, just click on the website to see where the truck goes or call to place your delivery order at (310)204-0477.)

Rockets in the Sky: Fourth of July Strawberry Pie

2008-07-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

My friend Leif threw a ridiculously fun pool party for the Fourth and I wanted to bring a dish that was simultaneously summery and good at soaking up massive amounts of alcohol. So I flipped through my recipe book and came across my own recipe for Strawberry Pie which I had last made six summers ago. I remember that time so well because I had made the pie for my two friends who proceeded to scarf the whole pie down and then accuse me of buying it from a bakery and pawning it off as my own. This little tiff escalated into a full blown argument that is now studied in civics classes as the Strawberry Pie Scandal of 2002. Needless to say, I wasn't in a hurry to make my ole pie again.

But it has been six years, so I thought maybe enough time had passed for those old strawberry glazed wounds to heal. I whipped up the pie and then proceeded to forget to put it in the fridge upon arrival at the party, so it melted in the sun all day, and by the time I served it, it was more of a pudding. But when I was getting my pie tin on the way out, all the pie/pudding was gone, so someone must have liked it! Maybe this pie is cursed. I can't be sure until I revisit the recipe again in another six years. But you shouldn't wait that long! Whip it up!:

Fourth of July Strawberry Pie
For the crust:
2 cups graham crackers (12 whole graham crackers, crushed with a rolling pin)
8 tbsp. Earth Balance

For the filling:
2 lbs strawberries (rinsed, hulled, sliced)
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 tbsp. corn starch
1 tbsp. water

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Combine the graham cracker crumbs and the Earth Balance. Press against a 9 in. pie crust. Bake 8-10 minutes or until golden and crisp. Set aside to cool.

In a saucepan, mix strawberries, sugar, and vanilla. Stir over medium heat until the berries sweat out a decent amount of liquid (about five minutes). Mix the cornstarch with the water and pour mixture into strawberries. Cook and stir occasionally until the mixture thickens into a glaze (about another five minutes). Remove from heat and pour into pie crust. Cover and refrigerate for at least six hours.

Despite the dumb title, Skinny Bitch is awesome!

2008-07-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

My friend recommended I read Skinny Bitch a while ago but I never got around to it. From what I understood from reading the occasional publicity blurb, I thought it was a diet book written by a couple snarky fashionistas who bully the reader into not eating. But my friend insisted that I'd like it, so I cracked it open last night and read the whole thing in a couple hours.

It turns out the book is basically a sassy, but well-researched, case for being vegan. While the authors were basically preaching to the choir, it reinvigorated my choice to not ingest animal products. It also inspired me to kick my aspartame addiction, so I'll be having a big Coke Light giveaway this weekend.

I highly, highly recommend the book to everyone. Most of us already know how our government agencies consistently fail us, but the detailed examples of how the FDA and EPA follow the scent of money will make you cringe. I am making our Art Dept. Coordinator read it right this second, actually. The one thing we both agree is a little too extreme is that the authors say that we women should just "suck it up" and not take painkillers for cramps. I'm a pretty tough chica, but seriously, that is just not happening.

Please make your meat and dairy eating friends read this book. One of the best points the authors make is that every vegan has, at some point, said they could never ever be a vegan. You don't realize how insanely easy it is to be one until you try! Look for some recipes from the Skinny Bitch cook book in future posts...

Tomato Pesto Delight

2008-07-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

Work is pretty slow today, as our shooting crew is on a week long hiatus for the 4th, so by 10 o'clock we already had our lunch plans in order. Off to Cooks Double Dutch we would go! They hit a total home run yet again with their soup of the day which was this tomato pesto delight. They said it was technically less of a soup and more just a bunch of tomatoes blended up but whatever it was, I licked the bowl clean. My guess is that they also threw some onions, garlic, and vegan stock into the mix. I liked it even more than Meltdown Etc's vegan tomato soup, which is saying a lot because that stuff is damn good.

Cooks Double Dutch
9806 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232

A Summery Santa Monica Saturday

2008-06-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful Saturday last weekend! I took the bus (boo to gas prices and traffic) out to Santa Monica to have lunch with my dear friend Phil and then we saw a movie at the L.A. film fest before heading back to the east side where we had a rousing game night that culminated in our drunken gang of kooks going to dance the night away at Akbar.

(The movie we saw was "Must Read After My Death." I liked it, Phil did not.)

We lunched at Real Food Daily and while I've been to the WeHo location many times, I've never been to this one by the sea. Phil had the Ciao Bella sandwich which is portabello mushrooms, red peppers, and pesto on hemp bread and I had the Mexicali chop salad which is your basic Mexican salad but it's set apart by RFD's own lime-cilantro dressing. It usually comes with tortilla strips but I had them taken off in an attempt to cut the calories a tad. We also both had the roseberry ice tea which our server recommended, but that was a total bust: paying 3 bucks for watered down apple juice with a pink hue is not my idea of a good time.

I loved the chop so much the last time I had it that I ran to ye olde local public library branch and copied the recipe for the dressing from the RFD cookbook. And here it is, a gift from me to you:

Real Food Daily's Lime-Cilantro Vinaigrette
1/3 cup coarsely chopped red onion
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tbsp brown rice syrup
2 tbsp brown rice vinegar
1 tbsp ground coriander
2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup lightly packed fresh cilantro

Process the onion, lime and lemon juices, rice syrup, vinegar, coriander, salt, cumin, and cayenne peppers in a food processor or blender until smooth. With the machine running, gradually add the oils. Add the cilantro and process just until is is finely chopped. Season the vinaigrette to taste with more salt and cayenne pepper, if desired.

Real Food Daily
514 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Gary's Breakfast Bowl of Champions

2008-06-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

I've had set catering ranging from cold takeout from The Olive Garden (AFI film) to gourmet cuisine from a three star Michelin chef (a commercial for Hummer). While the caterers on our show don't have any stars to their name, they serve up an amazing array of delicious food.

Breakfast is where our caterer really shines. Unlike at lunch and dinner, there is no menu, you just ask for whatever your little heart desires and they whip it up for you on the spot. Whenever I roll up to the order window in the morning I always say the same thing: "One Gary's Breakfast Bowl please."

Gary's Breakfast Bowl, or GBB, is your typical tofu scramble with tofu, spinach, various veggies, and a sesame/soy sauce. Its name comes from our first AD who insists the tofu scramble be served in a bowl so he can easily carry it while bossing everyone around on set.

I always mix in some of our caterer's homemade pico de gallo to make a perfect little breakfast!

And just for kicks, here is the infamous George Maya chowing down on his breakfast sandwich:

The Simplest Dish on the Planet: Summery Avocado Salad

2008-06-18T15:57:00.000-07:00

Well, it didn't take us long to go back to Beacon after our fabu meal there last week. This time I got the avocado salad and miso soup. I had the avocado salad there before and make the same thing at home a lot--it's the kind of dish you feel a little dumb ordering because it's so simple you could whip it up yourself in 2 minutes, but whatever, it's free for me! Thanks, work!

The Beacon version uses Tokyo Negi (a kind of Japanese leek) and while it's good, the dish is just as good without it and really who wants to go to the trouble of tracking down Tokyo negi? Here is the way I make this simple salad at home:

Knock-off of Beacon's Avocado Salad
Ingredients:
1/2 avocado (pit removed)
1 bunch microgreens, washed and dried
1 tsp. sesame seeds
1 tsp. cilantro, chopped
1 tbsp. sesame oil
3 tbsp. rice wine vinegar

Directions:
Slice the avocado and arrange in a fan on the plate. Top with microgreens. Sprinkle plate with sesame seeds and cilantro.

Whisk rice wine vinegar and sesame oil together; drizzle over avocado.

I <3 Dashi

2008-06-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

The episode we're shooting right now takes place in the desert, so our shooting crew is on location in Joshua Tree for the week. With the company being so far away, work was a little slow, which meant we got to venture out of our little Culver City bubble for lunch. Friday we ordered in from Mishima where I got this big bowl of Steamed Japanese Mountain Veggies and Soba Noodles in Dashi broth.

I am totally baffled by how few restaurants use Dashi. It's this soup made with kelp and shitake mushrooms that rocks my face off everytime. Fred 62 makes a killer noodle bowl with it, but does anyone know where else they serve it? It's completely vegan and very flavorful so you'd think it would be on more menus. Whatevs, I'll just keep going back to Mishima!

Mishima
8474 W. 3rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90048

We should all be so lucky to work on shows that are 20 seasons old .

2008-06-12T15:50:00.001-07:00

My dear friend Joe works down the road from us on a certain animated t.v. show about a quirky, yellow family. Every day around 11 o'clock we have the same gchat about where our respective productions are going for lunch that day. And everyday I have to hear about how Joe and his coworkers are being treated to L.A.'s finest cuisine while we have to adhere to our strict $10 per person lunch budget.

Beacon, the asian fusion joint in Culver City, is a favorite of Joe's show and he has always made me insanely jealous when he got to go there. We had always assumed Beacon was way out of our price range, but the other day I was flipping through the menu and realized we could totally swing a lunch there and come in under budget! So we did and it was a huge hit. I had this Thai Tofu and Vegetable Wrap with cellophane noodles, cilantro, and a super good peanut sauce. Our show still has 15 more seasons before we can get the kind of food budget Joe has, but at least we know we aren't eating like a brand new mid-season replacement in the meantime.

Beacon
3280 Helms Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90034

Word to the Wise: If it looks like real bacon, smells like real bacon, and tastes like real bacon, it probably is real bacon

2008-06-10T16:38:00.000-07:00

I cannot write a proper post about the delicious food we had from Cooks Double Dutch today because I accidentally ate some real bacon and it's still bumming me out. But here is a picture of their version of the classic vegan club, complete with tempeh bacon and Veganaise. I normally try to stay away from chemically things like fake mayo (except, of course, when it comes to lethally enhanced cola--then all bets are off!) but I needed something bready to soak up the alcohol still lingering from last night's cocktails. Throw in some of Double Dutch's all-killer-no-filler sweet potato fries and you get one tasty hangover cure!

Cook's Double Dutch
9806 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232

George Maya: My Own Personal Coke Mule

2008-06-08T00:38:00.001-07:00

Our little art department was really bummed when we found out our beloved set designer Shu Shu would not be returning for our new season. He opted to stay on the feature he started during the hiatus which was probably a terrible idea since it's just some low budget indie that probably no one will see. Idiot.

When meeting the new candidates, we figured this guy George would fit in pretty well with this work-hard-but-party-harder art department when he had to schedule his interview around the Dodger's pre-season. Turns out we were right. George Maya is a true man about town and is an actual Los Angeles native to boot!

This morning George came into my office and the following conversation occurred:

George: Hey, Liz, come look at what I have in my trunk.
Liz: Stranger danger! You sound like a child abductor!
George: But it's me, George!

So I reluctantly accompanied him, making sure to tell everyone I passed, "I'm going to the PARKING LOT with GEORGE." That way, if he did abduct me, people could tell the police who dunnit.

Down in the lot, George opened his trunk and the sight I saw can only be described as SHOCKING. There was not one, but two flats of COKE LIGHT.

You see, George happens to be Yo Soy's most avid reader and he took note of my entry asking where to obtain this uber illegal pop and then promptly arranged to have some smuggled from Mexico.

Because that is just the kind of guy George Maya is.

The picture at top was taken on George's first day of work here. Please do not pass it along to the feds as I am thirsty and want to continue reaping the benefits of the underground coke railroad.

Summer brings Stone Fruit Salad to Tender Greens

2008-06-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

Another favorite restaurant on our daily lunch rotation at the office is Tender Greens. We go there at least once a week. You can't go wrong with anything on the menu: all the food is completely organic and fresh. They offer up some fun salad specials every day, which is how I ended up with this awesome Stone Fruit Salad. It was composed of grilled peaches, hazelnuts, baby spinach, and balsamic vinaigrette. (There was supposed to be goat cheese too but I just had them leave that off.) T'was so summery and good!!!

Tender Greens
9523 Culver Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232

My Beef with Top Chef: All the Beef

2008-06-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Did anyone catch Top Chef this week? I love the show but this week was a tad annoying. They kicked off Antonia which is totally whack. TC needs to take a cue from Project Runway and keep in the likable contestants regardless of their work. Lisa is staying and she is unbearable--mostly because of her eyebrow ring. I mean, can you think of a bigger crime against humanity than an eyebrow ring?! It is so painfully white trash circa 1996.

But perhaps the bigger problem I had with Wednesday's show was the pig situation. The elimination challenge was to butcher a whole pig and make a meal out of it. As if it's not bad enough that in its four seasons, TC has NEVER had a vegan/vegetarian challenge of any sort, they had to show the chefs whacking away at a pig that was basically Wilbur without eyeballs. As it is, I have to watch the show with a willing suspension of disbelief to ignore that every dish is a major violation of animal rights, but it was pretty much impossible to do that when Babe was lying lifeless on a counter.

Meanwhile, my lovely Art Department Coordinator, Canada, attended Taste of the Nation this past weekend and had the chance to sample Antonia's food and meet her and her daughter. Here is the two of them:

Canada said her food was outstanding (she mad a linguine with clam sauce and a spicy chocolate shot with cream and saffron.) If you are in the L.A. area you can check her food out for yourself at Foxtail, that is, if you are sexy enough to get in. Word on the street is that this latest addition to the SBE empire is particularly hard to get into. Bonne chance!

Pho du Fafa

2008-06-04T11:47:00.001-07:00

Working on A Popular Television Show has its perks. Sometimes a little namedropping is all you need to do to gain access to exclusive events; which is exactly how our little art department got to see the completely sold out Flight of the Conchords show at the Orpheum on Friday.
Before we headed downtown for the show, we grabbed dinner at my new favorite neighborhood joint: Pho Cafe.

Now I've never been to Vietnam, but I have been to Thailand and my tailor is from Hanoi, so that pretty much makes me an expert in all things Asian. So trust me when I tell you that the food at Pho Cafe tastes exactly like Vietnamese food should taste. I had the tofu spring rolls and tofu bun (rice noodles), both of which were wunderbar. It's nothing new, per se--just classic Vietnamese--but its served fresh, cheap, and in a fun place.

One thing that does stand out at Pho Cafe is their vegan pho!!! This is very good news for we vegans who love Vietnamese food but usually can't go near the meat fest that is pho.

As for the show: our seats were great, the cocktails were insanely strong, and the duo was delightful. I have developed a huge crush on Jemaine who is now sporting a sexy hipster haircut. I know Bret lives in Silver Lake but does anyone know where Jemaine lives? Please advise so I may promptly begin stalking. Thanks!

Pho Cafe
2841 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Pure Luck and Scoops is the new Brangelina!

2008-06-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

Went to Pure Luck with a sweet little gang of amigos including a couple fellow foodie friends: Kirby Von Scrumptious and Andrew. We looked like a sweet little gang of idiots though with the three of us snapping away when our orders arrived...

The food was tres bon! I had the tofu pesto sandwich with killer sweet potato fries. Both the pesto (awesomely chunky) and the bbq sauce were divine.

The only thing that was lacking was the tea. I am an iced tea connoisseur and the totally weak brew at Pure Luck was basically just brown water. But luckily I was too thrilled with my dinner to pay much attention to it anyway...

We finished the meal off with some gelato at Scoops. I had a mindblowing soy coconut flavor. Pure Luck and Scoops is shaping up to be my favorite summer combo!

Pure Luck
707 N. Heliotrope Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90029

Scoops
712 N. Heliotrope Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90029

La Dolce Isola: Just like The Ivy but without all the jerks

2008-05-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

La Dolce Isola is The Ivy's little sister cafe where all the baked goods for the main restaurant are made and we can practically smell the fresh bread all the way over here on the other side of the 10. This is definitely not the most vegan-friendly place on the planet, but they are very accommodating: When we went a few weeks ago they whipped me up an excellent roasted veggie dish.

Today I had some left over Indian food to get rid of, so I went light and just ordered the Carrot Salad. It doesn't look like much, but this little salad is killer. It's loaded with cilantro and something with kick (pepper?).

My coworkers drool over the baked goods here, especially the chocolate chip cookies and the homemade gelato. If I were you, I would skip The Ivy and head straight to La Dolce Isola where both the prices and the staff are nice and you won't risk getting smacked in the brain with a paparazzo's 3 foot lens.

La Dolce Isola
2869 S. Robertson Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90039

What does a vegan eat at a grilled cheese restaurant and where can I find some smuggled soda?

2008-05-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

Meltdown Etc. is another staple in our art department's diet. Luckily for me, those melty chefs offer up some of the best soup and slaw in town. I always order the same thing: Fennel-Red Onion Slaw and a bowl of soup. I couldn't tell you what is in the slaw besides the obvious fennel and red onion, but it's awesome.

As far as I'm concerned, Meltdown is the soup nazi of L.A.--in terms of quality, not service! In fact, the service is quite the opposite of that meanie soup nazi, but I digress. The tomato soup is super tangy and creamy yet is somehow vegan. How do they do it?! They also always have a soup of the day which is vegan 99% of the time and is always sooooo good.

When I went to pick up our order this past time, I was bummed to see that they stopped selling Coke Light! (For those of you who don't closely follow the cola business: Coke Light is the version of Diet Coke that is sold in every country except the U.S. of A. It is illegal in the states because it has some chemical that the FDA thinks is toxic or something which is too bad because unlike Diet Coke, which tastes like toilet paper, Coke Light is t-a-s-t-y.) Anyway, apparently the inspectors were not too fond of Meltdown smuggling in Coke Light from Mexico so they made them take it off the shelves. Blast!

Anyone know where I can find some Coke Light in this town now???

Meltdown Etc.
9739 Culver Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232

"Home" again, Home again, Jiggity Jig

2008-05-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

Rare is the restaurant that makes it's own veggie burger instead of serving up a gray, reheated, chemically-enhanced patty. Rarer still is the restaurant that makes a vegan veggie burger that tastes good. Three cheers to Home in Los Feliz for their Homemade Tofu Burger that is amazingly good tasting and totally natural! I always order it with a side of their vegetable soup which is basic but full o' flava.

Home is my neighborhood joint--the ole standard for me and my hungry friends--so I wasn't too surprised when we ran into my dear pal Kirby Von Scrumptious! Gotta love that small town feel!

Home
1760 Hillhurst Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027

Has Bloom finally gotten their shit together?!

2008-05-22T14:49:00.001-07:00

Bloom was once a staple on our daily lunch rotation at the office. But at some point we got sick of the terrible service. They would always give us the wrong food or charge us the wrong amount and on a couple occasions they completely lost our order and I had to sit and wait for up to an hour for them to remake everything.

But I missed ole Bloom so I thought we should give them another shot and to my utter surprise, when I went to pick up the food today, it was complete and ready to go!

My Berry Good smoothie was made with berries, mango, and coconut water and it was rockin'. The bee pollen garnish is a fun touch.

I am a mondo fan of quinoa so, of course, I had to order the Indian Delight Quinoa Salad. Sunflower seeds, chili, and mint were mixed with the quinoa and served over spinach leaves. T'was super healthy and super deelish.

So the moral of the story is that it seems Bloom has learned how to act like a restaurant and that is good news for me because now I'll be able to convince the rest of the office that we should eat there more often.

Bloom Cafe
5544 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019