Northern Hospitality

I went to Alaska a couple of weeks ago to spend time with my amazing sister, and went off to Wisconsin again the day after for business. I have been meaning to post this trip recap for a few days, but of course, life got in the way again. Anyway...

Anchorage is a very vegan-friendly city. Like everything else in Alaska, dining out can be very expensive. There are a couple of places I have to stop at each time I am visiting. Like Middle Way Cafe (I don't think they have a website). Middle Way is a fairly standard hippie-infested coffee shop/cafe. My dad took me there for lunch one day, and I was slightly bummed to miss their breakfast menu by about 20 minutes. I asked what a popular vegan lunch item was, and the cashier recommended the vegan version of the avocado melt.

This was literally the best sandwich I have ever had. I might have said that about some other sandwich before, but this one overruled all. I mean, it was stuffed with veggies and warm, gooey avocado slices, smothered in melted Daiya and Vegenaise. Sinful, but delicious. Speaking of sinful, I also had a vegan chocolate cupcake with cardamom coffee buttercream frosting.

Holy crap this was good. I don't think I have had such an indulgent vegan dessert since I lived by Vegan Treats a few years ago. I am not usually a cake/cupcake person, but I had to try one since it was vegan and looked so good. The frosting was very saturated with cardamom. Not in a bad way, it's just a spice you don't come across a lot.

A couple of days later, my sister and I drove to Girdwood and took the tram up the mointain at Aleyeska resort. Awesome pictures were taken.

We were going to go into Girdwood for lunch but the place we had in mind was closed until dinner. Lame! She took me to another amazing hippie restaurant instead, the Organic Oasis. We decided that we wanted to try a wheat grass shot, so we got a couple of them freshly prepared with ginger.

These were okay to sip very lightly. Gingery, grassy, not too strong. Then we took the rest as a shot. GROSS. The shots were super sludgy in the bottom, and I mean that in the most unpleasant way possible. If you want to simulate our experience, mow your lawn, scrape a bunch of crap off of your mower blades, and eat a big blob of it while stuffing fresh ginger root up your nose.

With my entree, I was offered a selection of soups. They were all vegan too! I was leaning towards the coconut potato soup, but our waitress informed me that it was slightly sweet. Not really my thing. I followed her recommendation and ordered the jewel yam stew.

This soup was a little underwhelming. It was pretty plain. Just some yams, zucchini, herbs, and not much else. What did it for me was the homemade bread slathered in tahini that it was served with. Why did I not think of this?? Probably because I don't usually eat bread. For my entree I had the "Vegan High Protein" wrap.

Like the avocado melt I had a few days prior, this blew my mind. I love love love tempeh, and this wrap included a big slab saturated in hummus and vegenaise, with some fresh veggies tossed in and some spirulina to give it that creepy blue-green hue. My sister opted for the tofu salad which was also accompanied with amazing tahini bread.

We actually learned a lot about tahini on this trip. Mostly that it is amazing on everything. We experimented with some salad dressings at her condo and made our own tasty blend of tahini, lemon juice, tamari, garlic, and ginger. Yum! We even brought a batch of this to my dad's house for a family dinner. My family and even my closest friends still crack me up when it comes to my diet. I am lucky that both of my parents and my sister all love vegetables almost as much as I do, but they still freak out when it comes to feeding me. My dad went all-out to make certain that I was included in the rare family meal. The dish that amazed me the most was his braised tofu.

This dish was quickly gobbled up by the entire gang. I can't tell you how it was made, because it seemed complicated and I didn't pay attention. It was full of tasty tofu slabs and green veggies. I did witness my dad slicing up some seasoned seaweed to toss in at the end. I took note to add seaweed to my stir-fries because it kicked ass.

After returning from my sub-arctic vacation and yet another business trip, I realized that I forgot my camera charger in Anchorage. Oh well! I guess it's more craptacular iPhone pictures for a while, but better that than nothing. Someday I swear I will get a nicer camera and learn how to take decent pictures. There are a lot of vegan blogs out there that make me jealous!

Nearly-Instant Mexican Style Soup

I returned to my house after a week-long business trip two days ago. Tomorrow, I am flying to Alaska to visit my sister. The day after I get back, I am off on another business trip. I am fighting the urge to scream. Especially when a prolonged absence from my job means I come back to my desk looking like this:

Thanks guys! You shouldn't have!

Traveling this much is stressing me out, and causing me to miss out on one of my favorite things in the world: grocery shopping for produce. For the past couple of days, I have been surviving on things in my freezer. This is actually a good thing, because my freezer is hella full at the moment, but I miss cooking! Tonight I decided that I had to do something. I needed to eat dinner and a lunch before leaving tomorrow anyway. So here is what I came up with:

Not pictured: garlic. But you already know I add that to everything anyway.

Once again, it definitely pays to have a well-stocked pantry! These humble ingredients came together to make one satisfying, nutritious, tasty meal! Here is a breakdown of the magic that went on in my kitchen. You could easily dump just about anything into this meal.

Ingredients:

• One jar of salsa. Whatever you have on hand/already open in your fridge. I happened to have some Newman's Own black bean and corn salsa. I recently bought a few jars of this brand because it was on sale for $2.50. Normally it is almost twice as much
• One can of refried beans. I got the idea to add this from this recipe. The Casa Mamita brand from Aldi are the best in the world. I'm not kidding. And unlike most refried beans, they are fat free.
• One can of diced tomatoes. I chose to add it with the juice because my salsa was not very tomato-heavy. I buy cans of these at Sam's Club for around $6 an 8 pack. They are great to have on hand to dump in pretty much anything.
• Jarred jalepenos. I buy these at the dollar store.
• One small white onion. Brought to you by Aldi.

Method:

Basically, I just dumped everything in a pot, then added diced onion, jalpenos, and crushed garlic. It was a little thick, so I dumped in about a cup of water. No additional salt or spices were needed. Stir everything up and bring to a boil. How long depends on how cooked you want your onions. I didn't boil mine very long because I love to stir raw onions into my soup anyway.

Even before it was done, I was lamenting over the fact that I was out of vegan sour cream, but this soup honestly didn't need it. The refried beans made it super creamy without it. I did have some tortilla strips on hand to jazz things up a bit.

Not the sexiest looking soup, but holy guacamole it was delicious! It made made 3 large servings and was entirely fat free! (If you don't add any tortilla strips). It cost around $5 to make, and the entire batch came in at under 700 calories. I am glad that I do not have any long business meetings tomorrow though, tee hee hee.

Speaking of business meetings, being a vegan stuck in Wisconsin for a week is not fun! I made sure to book a hotel room with a refrigerator and microwave, and I packed plenty of Clif bars. I did manage pretty well with catered lunches after my dietary needs came up. My company's corporate office building actually had a great catering service and an on-site cafe with a huge salad bar, so I fared pretty well. Too well maybe. I ate heaps of blueberries, raspberries, and pineapple off of our daily breakfast fruit tray, and they even started bringing in custom meals for me. Like this pizza:


There was also salad every day. And one afternoon they brought in a giant bowl of freshly made salsa and a trough of fresh tortilla chips. I was totally expecting to starve all week, but quite the opposite occurred.

Taco Tuesday

I was driving home from the gym today, thinking about what to make for dinner. I was toying with the idea of making a batch of lentil salad to eat the rest of the week, but I was also feeling kind of lazy. Even too lazy to boil lentils and chop up onions! Suddenly, the idea of TACOS popped into my head. They would require slightly more work than lentil salad, but I could not stop thinking about them now. Taco Tuesday it was!

Now I try not to buy/eat a lot of processed or pre-made vegan products. But sometimes they are on a really good sale, and I do enjoy trying out new products. Also, these items aided me in whipping up some badass tacos in record time.

On the top left corner is Daiya vegan cheese. I've been a vegan for going on 3 years, and I honestly do not even care about cheese anymore. But there is something about the melty goodness of Daiya that keeps me buying a bag every couple of months. Only when it is on sale, because it can run upwards of $5 a bag. If it hits $3 or less, I buy a bag and toss it in the freezer, where it keeps indefinitely.

On the top right corner is some Westsoy chicken-style seitan. I usually avoid gluten-heavy items like this, but it was also on a good sale and I was very curious to try it. My mom buys Westsoy's tofu almost exclusively and I must admit that it is very good. So I figured I would give this seitan product a try. It wasn't what I expected.

I guess the last fake chicken type product I bought was Gardein, which is pretty creepy close to the real thing. This was pretty much just plain seitan. I prepared it by sauteing it with some minced garlic and a buttload of my homemade taco seasoning. Then it wasn't bad. It was going to be covered in other forms of taco-themed goodness anyway.

The other products that helped make my tacos possible where Toffuti's Sour Supreme and Food For Life's Sprouted Corn Tortillas. Sour Supreme is a staple in my fridge. It lasts forever and I love it stirred into soups, chilis, and stroganofs. Obviously, it's also great Mexican food. I had never tried Food For Life's corn tortillas, but I have never had a product of theirs that I was not absolutely crazy about.

To assemble my tacos, I first melted some Daiya on a couple of tortillas, then added the seitan.

I then proceeded to go crazy and top these suckers with sour cream, chopped onions and tomatoes, green olives, pumpkin seeds, salsa verde (Pace brand), and a squeeze of lime.

I dried not to dwell on the fact that I really wish I had some cilantro for these, and genuinely enjoyed the hell out of them! I have been going through a "put green olives on everything" phase, and they added a nice tang along with the salsa verde and lime juice. The pumpkin seeds added a nice textural contrast as well. Now that I am typing this up, I just remembered that I totally forgot to add hot sauce!! Good thing I have enough leftovers for at least 2 more meals.