Flashback From 'Nam

You know how some recipes never make it off the to-do list? Well, I was certain the Vietnamese Seitan Baguette with Savory Broth Dip from the Veganomicon would be one of those. However, as you can see in the picture below, it miraculously moved from the wish list to my plate.

Stacked with VCon's Seitan Cutlets, cucumber slices, red onion, and cilantro sprigs, this was sandwich whisked me away to Vietnam ... or well, what I imagine Vietnam is like anyway. Of course, my only knowledge of 'Nam comes from the smelly-fish markets and blighted projects of Memphis' Little Vietnam neighborhood a few blocks away from my house. I'm sure the actual country is much nicer, as was the sandwich.

Each bite was first dipped into this Asian-inspired au jus sauce, made with a base of veggie broth and soy sauce and seasoned with all kinds of spicy goodness.

As an omni kid, my favorite sandwich was the French dip roast beef sub from Rax (a now-defunct roast beef chain, kinda like Arby's). And this really brought back memories of my chubby seven-year-old self sopping flavorful juice into lightly toasted bread and "meat."

Here's the whole plate for full effect:

I served the sandwich with Garden of Eatin' Blue Corn Tortilla Chips and Trader Joe's Corn and Chile Tomato-less Salsa (not pictured). I can say with certainty that this meal has moved from an unlikely dinner contender to heavy rotation.

By the way, I was given the Butterfly Blog award by two awesome fellow bloggers — Agnes of Agnes' World of Vegan Pleasures and Jen of That Pain in the Ass Vegan.

Thanks guys! It means a lot that ya'll thought about me! Now I'm supposed to pass the award on to a few others. There are plenty of folks who deserve it, but some of them have already received the award once or twice. So I'm going to do my best to try not to repeat award winners, but if do, sorry! Okay, drum roll please ... the winners of the Butterfly Blog Award are:

1) Shelby from La Belle Vegan
2) Jessy from Happy Vegan Face
3) Jess of Get Sconed
4) Theresa of The Tropical Vegan
5) Cyn at What the Hell Does Pink-Haired Girl Eat?
6) Chelsea from Ramblings from a Native Vegan Mecca Girl

I'm a Squash Hoarder

On the last day of the Memphis Farmer's Market (the last Saturday in October), I picked up a spaghetti squash from Dodson Farms. In an attempt to pretend like I was stocking up for the winter, I've been hoarding various kinds of winter squash in my pantry. Now that it's finally cold outside, I'm allowing myself to actually use it.

So tonight, I made my favorite spaghetti squash dish — Spaghetti Squash Pomodoro:

Though it's not exactly Southern fare, I'm including this one in my cookbook because I love it that much. It's a buttery spin on traditional pomodoro pasta dishes, which typically include angel hair spaghetti, diced tomato, fresh basil, garlic, and olive oil. And as you can see, I've added garlicky sauteed tofu cubes.

I sopped the squash noodles up with toasty garlic bread made from a multigrain loaf I picked up at Silke's Breads, a German bakery in Clarksville, this weekend.

Speaking of winter squash, can ya'll believe my mom has never tried any kind of winter squash?! So for Thanksgiving, I'm preparing a kabocha squash. I was thinking about simply roasting it with olive oil and salt and pepper. But does anyone have any other winter squash side dish ideas?

Catching Up

I'm back. After my unfortunate burglary incident, my parents loaned me one of their old digital cameras. But I left the next day to visit my boyfriend Paul in Clarksville, Tennessee from Wednesday through Sunday morning.

I was a nervous wreck about my house getting broken into again while I was away, but luckily my super friends Wes and Greg stopped by my place several times a day to hang with my cats (my dog was at a sitter's house). I also had a cop friend patrol the neighborhood while I was gone, and my dad installed security camras. Thankfully, the burglars stayed away. I also need to thank all ya'll for your supportive comments on my last post. You have no idea how much better they made me feel. Vegan bloggers are the BEST!

Though I was worried about burglars the whole time I was gone, I arrived home to a sweet surprise. Lindsay from Cooking for a Vegan Lover sent me a care package! The two of us are package swap partners, and my pack arrived way ahead of schedule (I still have one more thing to buy her before I can send hers ... but it's coming soon, Lindsay!).

The package was full of vegan goodies from Vermont, where Lindsay lives. Here's the list: Road's End Organics Savory Herb Gravy (just in time for Thanksgiving!), Vermont Pepper Works Rancho Ancho Pepper Sauce, a seaweed flax seed vegan organic dark chocolate bar (can't wait to try this!), Roads End Organics Dairy-Free Shells & Chreese (I adore this stuff!), Liz Lovely Gluten-Free Chocolate Fudge Cookies (one of the only flavors I haven't tried), a piece of Vermont maple candy, Vermints CinnaMints (love these!), and small Green Sack canvas bag to put my stuff in!

Thanks so much Lindsay! You have no idea how much this brightened my crappy week! I can't wait to sample all this awesomeness!

On the way home from Paul's this afternoon, I stopped by my friend Vaughan's for a Food Awareness Thanksgiving Feast! Food Awareness is our l0cal veggie society, and we get together before Thanksgiving every year. Sometimes we do potluck, but this year, the food was catered by Bastet, a local vegan chef from DejaVu Creole Soul Food & Vegetarian Restaurant.

Here's my plate:

From left to right: Taboulleh, Falafel (it's hidden under the taboulleh), Barbecue Seitan (so good!), some kind of blueberry coconut raw spread (the purple stuff), raw sweet potatoes, a veggie stew concoction, and in the bowl, there's some tasty vegetable soup.

Hiding on the back of the plate was some non-vegan Baklava. Now, I thought it was vegan when I ate it because I assumed all the food was vegan (it typically is at our gatherings), but I later learned that someone picked it up from a Mediterranean restaurant. So it likely was not vegan. But it was in my belly when I learned, so I sucked it up. Next time I'll ask.

And finally, I made the Jerk Seitan with Coconut Quinoa last Tuesday before I left for vacation:

The jerk seitan recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance and it's so amazing! Lots of ginger and allspice and other Jamaican flavors. My mom tried it and said the seitan tasted like real meat.

VwaV suggests serving the dish with coconut rice, but instead I made the Coconut Quinoa from Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen. It's a simple recipe involving coconut milk and shredded coconut, and the quinoa was a perfect complement to the seitan.

I Got Robbed

Yep ... some jerk wad came in my house today while I was at work and stole all my crap, including my camera. So I can't show you the grilled "chicken" and gravy, baked sweet potato, and home-canned green beans that I had for dinner tonight. In fact, I can't show you anything I eat until I find a camera replacement. I'm hoping my parents will loan me one of theirs.

The bastards also took my camcorder, my film cameras, all my DVDs (though they strangely decided to leave me all my seasons of Will & Grace on DVD ... how considerate of them), and my rings (two of which had a ton of sentimental value). They left my iMac, which is weird .... but good.

When I came home from work, my alarm was going off. Thinking I'd accidentally set it off somehow, I turned it off and put my stuff down. Then I noticed the DVDs were missing. And then the camera. And then everything else. Turns out, they came through my back window. It wasn't locked because the lock was broken, but I didn't know that until it was too late. I'm almost 99% sure it was my skeevy crackhead neighbors. And the cops think so too, but they can't prove anything yet.

Anyway, the worst part are the rings and the memory card on my camera. It had pictures on it dating back to this past April. And I'm bad about downloading them, so most are not backed up.

I'm trying to forget about it. But it's not easy. My memories are gone, and now I feel vulnerable. The window lock is fixed, and my dad is installing surveillance cameras. But nonetheless, I feel violated.

Don't give up on my blog though. I'll likely borrow a camera from my parents and get back to shooting my meals as soon as possible.

Soup and Me

With the chilly weather kicking in, all the vegan bloggers have been making creamy butternut squash soups. And well, if all the vegan bloggers jumped off a bridge, I probably would too. Okay, maybe I wouldn't go that far, but I did go so far as to make this spicy Orange & Chipotle-Kissed Butternut Squash Bisque from Vegan Planet:

With only a few ingredients, this creamy autumn soup manages to tempt quite a few taste buds — namely the one that likes spicy stuff, the one that like citrus, and the one that loves tender winter squash. The squash is pureed with one chipotle pepper and a few tablespoons of frozen orange juice concentrate, as well as veggie broth. Those are pepitas sprinkled on top, by the way. The soup (paired with crusty Teese toast) was a perfect meal today since I'm a little on the sicky side. Stupid cold. My nose fells like it might fall off right now.

But woes aside, I've been tagged by Agnes of Agnes' World of Vegan Pleasures and Jennifer at Vegannifer to participate in a meme. So here goes.

1. Link the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links.
4. Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Weird stuff about me:

1. My comfort food is Ramen noodles. Anytime I'm stressed, sad, or just need a bowl of comfort, I make Ramen. I usually buy it at Asian markets, where they tend to have more vegan flavors (and a lot of artificial meat flavors). Top Ramen Oriental is also vegan.

2. I used to eat sticks of butter. I was a fat kid because I ate lots of bad, bad stuff. I was also a big fan of the fat chunks on steak and bacon. I know this is disgusting. But I was like, 7 or 8 years old.

3. I'm kinda OCD. I plan out all my meals for the week and make little menu sheets. And I plan my grocery shopping trips up to a week in advance. Because I LOVE to make grocery lists! On the OCD thing, I also tend to lock my front door in the morning as I'm leaving for work, only to get in the car and freak out about how I may have left the hair straightener plugged in/the heater on/the back porch light on...then I have to go unlock the door and start all over again. Sometimes I even check twice.

4. My boyfriend Paul lives 3 1/2 hours away from me. We've been dating for four and a half years, but he's only lived far away for two of those years. I visit him twice a month, usually. He is not a vegetarian.

Here's Paul and a stray kitten that was hanging at my parents' house.

5. I LOVE John Waters films. Pink Flamingos is all-time favorite, but Female Trouble comes in a close second. And though it's one of his newer works, I totally *heart* A Dirty Shame.

6. I'm currently obsessed with those reality shows on TLC that feature people who have a million kids. There's Jon and Kate Plus 8 and 17 Kids and Counting. This is mostly due to the fact that I only have 19 channels and not much to choose from. Also, the 17 Kids and Counting family is from Arkansas (my home state) and they're crazy radical Christian fundamentalists, which I find scary and somehow fascinating.

7. I think my next tattoo is going to be the "animal rights, human rights" logo, but I don't know where to put it on my body. Perhaps inside my left wrist? To match the Vegan tattoo on my right? What do ya'll think?

Okay, so I'm tagging the following folks:

Shelby at La Belle Vegan
Lindsay at Cooking for a Vegan Lover
Miss V at Miss V's Vegan Cookbook
Pixiepine Palace
Erin at Vegan Homemade

And yea, yea, I know I'm supposed to tag 7 people but this linking stuff takes forever! So I'm changing the rules! :-P

High Raw Tuesday

Though I usually go totally raw for my monthly day-long raw food cleanse, I called today a "high raw" day since I cheated a little bit at lunch with this delicious Live Burger from Bawala's Vegan Gourmet, a new semi-raw cafe inside the Smooth Moves smoothie shop in Midtown:

I've been hearing about these raw burger patties for a few months now, and I'd been waiting until raw day to give them a try. Balwala (who's name I'm probably spelling wrong) wouldn't tell me what was in his live patty (says he's planning a patent), but he assured me the burger part was indeed raw. He did say it contained lots of dehydrated veggies, as well as walnuts and flax seed.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize the patty was served on bread until Balwala was putting it together. It's sprouted grain Ezekiel bread though, so I figure that's okay. He also added ketchup and mustard, which aren't really raw either ... but I was already cheating with the bread, so... anyway, it was delicious and I can't wait to try the raw barbecue portabella sandwich next!

I did start the day off with a 100% raw meal. I made a "Not Green" Green Smoothie:

I called it "Not Green" because it was supposed to be green since I added spinach. But apparently purple trumps green since the frozen blackberries dominated the look of this creamy breakfast. Also in the smoothie — frozen banana, juice of one orange, a couple dates, 1/4 cup hemp seeds, and 1/4 cup raw oats.

For dinner, I had another Raw Buckwheat Pizza using the dehydrated crackers my friend Judith made me for my birthday:

This time I added mashed avocado, tomato, bell pepper, and olives. Does anyone know if olives are raw?

I served the pizza with this Salad of Baby Greens, Radishes, Carrots, and Black Grapes and drizzled with a Tahini Lemon Dressing from Raw Food Made Easy:

Finally, I made one of the tastiest raw desserts I've ever had — Raw Brownies:

These Raw Brownies (also from Jennifer Cornbleet's Raw Food Made Easy) had a base of walnut, dates, and cocoa powder. They're really rich, and I enjoyed them crumbled in a bowl with sliced bananas.

Don't Skip Breakfast

I'm a huge fan of breakfast. I wake up each morning with a ferocious appetite and I must eat within 30 minutes of waking or I'll get nauseous and really weak. So I tend to prepare breakfasts the night before for a quick week day morning meal. Tofu Scrambles are a common go-to breakfast, but I typically use my own spice combination (onion and garlic powder, turmeric, basil, nooch, and a dash of celery salt). To mix things up a bit, I tried the Vegan with a Vengeance Tofu Scramble this time:

The spices are quite different from the ones I use and the cumin lends the dish an almost Mexican flavor. But it's delicious. Honestly, you can't go wrong with a tofu scramble.

I didn't have any mushrooms on hand, so I subbed diced tomatoes since I had plenty of those. I also added grated carrot, onion, and chopped chives from Granny's herb garden.

I served the scramble with a slice of Ezekial sprouted grain bread, spread with a teensy bit of Earth Balance and some homemade Pumpkin Butter that I picked up at a crafts fair back in September.