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

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???

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

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

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

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!

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

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