Vegan Cheese Takes Over the Neighborhood!

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.