From Philly to Memphis

For my latest cookbook project, I'm veganizing trendy foods of the 20th century and organizing the recipes by decade. And that means I've been doing a ton of food research. I've run across some fascinating stuff. For example, did you know the Philly cheesesteak was invented in the 1930s?

Pat and Harry Olivieri first started selling steak sandwiches served on long rolls at their Philly hot dog stand in the 30s. The sandwiches took off, and Pat eventually opened Pat's King of Steaks, which is apparently still around.

For my 1930s chapter, I wanted to create a vegan Philly Cheesesteak. Now there are plenty of great cruelty-free cheesesteak recipes out there already, but can the world really have too many cheesy, meaty vegan sandwiches?

I opted to make my "steak" using a homemade steamed seitan, which I'm also including a recipe for in the book. The seitan is rolled into a log shape, wrapped in foil, and steamed. And that makes for a sliceable seitan that resembles deli meat.

But plain, sliced seitan is a little bland for a cheesesteak. So I chopped some mushrooms and fried 'em up with the sliced seitan. Then I made a small amount of thick beefy gravy to pour over the "meat." I let that cook until all the liquid was absorbed and the seitan and mushrooms were nice and brown.

The bread is toasted and buttered (aka Earth Balanced), and the seitan is topped with shredded Daiya cheddar. I'm sure old Pat and Harry wouldn't consider it a "real" cheesesteak. But that's okay. I'm a Memphis girl, so it'll have to do. It sure was delicious though!

Imagine Vegan Cafe's New Home! And New Menu!

A few weeks ago, I reported here that my favorite home-away-from-home, Imagine Vegan Cafe, was moving to a new location. After a much-deserved family vacation to Asheville, owners Adam and Kristie Jeffrey have re-opened Imagine Vegan Cafe in its new, way cuter location!

OMG! Don't you just want to eat that up? It's so cute it kinda hurts. Before, Imagine was located in a shopfront in a row of identical shops. The dining area was all in one big giant room. But now, Imagine is in a house! There are three small dining areas inside three rooms in the house. Another room serves as the counter area, where you order and pay. And best of all, they have a big dessert cooler at the counter, so they can now sell cold pies and cheesecakes!! Oh, and let's not forget the front porch patio dining areas.

Since I spend at least one night a week here, I'm so pleased that the place is super-adorbs. Ambiance is almost everything! Of course, the food has to be amazing too. And it's stellar as always, but there are some new menu items designed to please a wider audience.

Imagine specializes in vegan comfort food (pizzas, philly cheesesteaks, country fried steak, cheese sticks, milkshakes, etc.). But apparently, there are SOME vegans who actually prefer to eat healthier stuff, like veggies, when they dine out. Ha! I kid, I kid. But for real, they had gotten requests to add more veggie-based options to the menu and some more gluten-free items as well. Thankfully, they've kept all the faux meats that I like while adding the new stuff.

Tonight, I wanted to try one of the new healthier items. I ordered the Southern Staple (collards, brown rice, black beans, and a garlic aioli):

This was so good! That garlic aioli was just pure magic, my friends. Other new dishes include: Roasted Red Pepper Hummus with Fresh Veggies, Tony's Nachos (chips with cheese and jalapenos, named for regular customer and nacho lover, Tony), Spinach Salad (with strawberries and walnuts), Entree Salad (big version of their side garden salad), Wraps (hummus, portabella, or vegan chicken), the Big Smack (vegan Big Mac!), BLT with Avocado, Portabella Sandwich, Fajitas (steak, chicken, or portabella), Veggie Stir-fry (you can add chicken or steak if you want). Also, you can now get nooch as a pizza topping. There are also a few new sides — Grits, Garlic Toast, and Garlic Kale.

My friend Cassi was mega-excited about the kale! She ate most of this dish before I snapped the picture.

Also, since they have the dessert display cooler, Imagine is now selling cheesecakes, cold pies, and other refrigerated desserts, like lemon bars, in addition to the usual cupcakes, layer cakes, cookie sandwiches, and brownies. My friend Stephanie of Swell Baked Goods makes fresh desserts every Wednesday.

I ordered a slice of the Mocha Cheesecake. So good! A chocolate graham-style crust, a layer of rich, smooth mocha cheesecake, and a layer of solid chocolate shell.

Paul ordered a slice of the Key Lime Pie to enjoy on his birthday this coming Friday. He has to keep his hands off this for two days! Yes, it will be next to impossible:

Imagine Vegan Cafe is now located at 2299 Young Avenue. Click here for their full menu.

Happy Herbivore Abroad Giveaway!!!

Remember last week when I blogged about Lindsay Nixon's new Happy Herbivore Abroad cookbook? You know, the one loaded with simple, low-fat, vegan, international cuisine, full-color photos, and stories of Lindsay's world travels?

Well, I was supposed to also host a giveaway, thanks to her generous publisher. But I forgot! So we'll do that today.

If you'd like to read a review (and see pics of her Pasta e fagioli and her Blueberry Bundt Cake) of Happy Herbivore Abroad, check out my post from last Thursday. If you want to win a copy, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post letting me know your favorite international food. And by that, I mean, a dish from a country that you don't live in.

Despite the international theme here, the contest is only open to residents of the U.S. and Canada, per the publisher's rules.

I'll randomly select one winner on Sunday evening! Good luck!

Oh, and as always with these contests, if your comment isn't linked back to a blog with a way to contact you, please leave me your email address in the comment so I can contact you if you win.

Soak Your Nuts

Hahaha! I can't even write that blog post title without snickering like a 12-year-old boy. Raw food guru/restauranteur Karyn Calabrese has successfully come up with the very best vegan cookbook title ever with Soak Your Nuts. Yes, I'm that girl who laughs every time I say "nut cheese" or "nut bag." Those are phrases that, if you're not vegan, might actually warrant a giggle since they're probably not something you say very often — or ever.

But for vegans, soaking your nuts for cashew cheeses, raw ranch dressing, or live pie crust is a fact of life. Yet I still find the whole thing hilarious. What's even better is Karyn's lovely and very sophisticated face graces the book's cover. This woman owns five businesses and sleeps on four hours a night. She doesn't look or seem like a lady who would smirk about soaking nuts. But apparently, she has a great sense of humor, so I was immediately biased in favor of this book before ever cracking it open.

Thankfully, the awesomeness inside lives up to the title. And since the Book Publishing Company has re-released Karyn's book in a double-book format, it's even better! One side is Karyn's Raw Recipes. Then you flip it over, and the other side is Karyn's Conscious Comfort Foods (all cooked deliciousness).

Both sides are filled with mouth-watering dishes and a few color pictures. On the raw side, there's raw Nacho Chips (made with dehydrated flax, corn, bell peppers, onion, and spices), Onion Crisps (raw onion rings!), raw Falafel in raw Pita Bread, raw Bean Burros (like burritos made with cabbage wraps and soaked, food-processed raw adzuki beans), Nutty Pimiento Cheese (made with cashews), and raw Banana Pudding.

On the cooked side, there's Slab o' Tofu Ribs, Veggie-Potato Pot Pies, Curry-Cashew Pasta, Sprouted Black Bean Soup, and No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie (made with a pretzel crust and a coconut-cashew cream topping!).

I wanted to try something from each side for last night's dinner. I chose my entree from the cooked side — Jerk Tofu Wraps:

There really aren't words to describe how amazing this was. The tofu is just pan-fried and plain, which might sound boring. But the sauces on this wrap are so ridiculously flavorful that the plain tofu totally makes sense. The jerk sauce is a combo of BBQ sauce and lots of spicy jerk seasoning. And then there's a garlic sauce that really sets this wrap over the top. It's made with raw garlic, soymilk, parsley, and sugar. And IT IS SO GOOD. I wrapped it all up in an Ezekial sprouted grain tortilla.

On the side, I chose a recipe from the book's raw side — Curried Cauliflower Salad:

This is unlike any other salad I've had before. The veggies are orange cauliflower, sliced red and orange peppers, and red onions. All are generously tossed with a cashew-based curry dressing that could make even the blandest raw veggie taste like magic.

So Soak Your Nuts completely lives up to its awesome name. You should probably pick up a copy and get to soakin' your own nuts.

Wellness Weekend Eats

This past Saturday, my BFF Sheridan and her co-workers at Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts in Little Rock, Arkansas organized a weekend yoga and wellness retreat. There were numerous yoga workshops but also lessons in tai chi, qigong, crystal healing, essential oils, hypnosis, and other new age-y stuff. And Sheridan asked me to come down and do a vegan cooking demo!

I drove to Little Rock — about 2 1/2 hours from Memphis — on Friday just in time for the Wellness Weekend meet-and-greet. Here's Sheridan and me! We sipped on red wine and munched on flatbread crackers with hummus:

But hummus and crackers can only take you so far. By the time the meet-and-greet was over, we were ready for a big meal. Sheridan, her partner Drew, and I went to Seigon for some Vietnamese and Thai food. I can't remember the name of this dish because it was written in Vietnamese, but it was made with sauteed tofu, curry, coconut milk, and lemongrass. So good!

Wellness Weekend workshops started bright and early at 9 a.m. on Saturday, and since Sheridan was working the event, she had to be there at 7 a.m. I slept in at Sher's house, and Drew made me the most delicious Breakfast Sandwich — Simple Truth Organic Meatless Breakfast Patty, Daiya cheese, Vegenaise, and a tofu egg on an English muffin.

Dude, these breakfast patties were the shiz. They're made by Simple Truth Organic, the generic Kroger organic brand. I'd never had them and haven't even seen them in Memphis Kroger stores, but I'm going to have to seek them out. This beats the pants off of Lightlife sausage! It seriously tastes JUST LIKE meat sausage. It was so good that I forgot to snap this picture until the sandwich was almost gone.

After breakfast, I drove to the park for Wellness Weekend and attended a tai chi workshop followed by a lesson in crystal healing and a qigong session before lunch. Lunch was prepared by Little Rock chef Travis Meyer. His selections were pretty meaty though, except for this Cuban Black Bean & Rice Puree Sandwich with Sun Chips:

The warm, spicy black bean and rice puree almost melted into the soft, white bread. It was delicious. But it was very small, like slider size. I could have eaten at least four of these! But it's probably best that I didn't eat four, because I needed to save some room in my belly (more on that in a few).

After lunch, I held my cooking demo. I made the Vegan Pimiento Cheese and the Eggless Tofu Olive Salad from Cookin' Crunk:

After the demo, I sold a few books. Then I snuck away from the event for a very special treat. You see, inside the Green Corner Store (an eco-friendly gift shop in Little Rock), there's an ice cream and soda fountain called Loblolly (named for the Loblolly pines that grow all over Arkansas). Loblolly always has a couple of vegan flavors and several vegan toppings. Plus, they have homemade kombucha on draft!

So I snuck out of Wellness Weekend and made the 20-minute drive to the Green Corner Store. That's where I enjoyed this delicious (and adorable vintage) bowl of Chocolate Sorbet with Waffle Cone Pieces and Toasted Almonds:

I followed that with a glass of iced kombucha flavored with Loblolly's homemade Earl Gray simple syrup! So good!

I arrived back at Wellness Weekend just in time to meet Sheridan and Drew as they were cleaning up. Afterward, we went to the Town Pump for veggie burgers and fries (which I forgot to photograph) before I hit the highway back to Memphis.

Fun weekend!

Happy Herbivore Goes Global

I've long been a fan of Lindsay Nixon's Happy Herbivore empire. We go way back. When I first started Vegan Crunk in 2007, Lindsay was also getting her blog off the ground. We often traded comments, and when I learned that she was publishing her first cookbook, I reached out to her for advice on publishing my own. It's so cool to see what an amazing brand she's built now with three cookbooks, a very active website, and a devoted legion of "herbies" who follow her plant-based, low-fat lifestyle.

Of course, I jumped at the chance to review Lindsay's new cookbook, Happy Herbivore Abroad. Like her last two books, this one is filled with simple, low-fat vegan comfort fare. But this time, the girl's gone global.

You see, Lindsay has done a TON of traveling, so she's using this book to share dishes that she's sampled along the way, and she's also included little short stories and photos from her trips to Paris, Brussels, Croatia, Spain, the list goes on. It's like you're traveling right along with her. For someone like me who has only crossed the border into Mexico once, it's fun to live vicariously through the travels of others.

As for the recipes, most are very easy dishes that can be thrown together on a week night after a busy day at work. Take, for example, this Pasta e fagioli:

It's just pasta, white beans, and marinara sauce from a jar. Sure, once doesn't necessarily need a recipe for that, but you know what? I've never even heard of Pasta e fagioli because I'm not very sophisticated. So I'd never think to add white beans to my pasta. But it's damn delicious. Also, I used gluten-free quinoa elbow noodles in this, because I actually prefer their texture over wheat-based noodles. Is that weird?

Of course, not every recipe is three-ingredient simple. There are plenty of recipes made from fresh veggies, like "Cheater" African Green Beans (an Ethiopian dish made with berbere and peanut butter), Thai Mango Curry (fresh mango and peppers simmered in a chili-coconut sauce and served over rice), and Moroccan Vegetables (yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, raisins, and spices). And the dishes come from all over — Germany, England, Mexico, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Africa, Iraq, France, the list goes on.

The book only includes a handful of dessert recipes, but like all of Lindsay's recipes, even the sweet treats are oil-free. But that doesn't mean they're dry or flavorless. I made this Blueberry Bundt Cake a few nights ago, and I can't stay out of it:

The bundt cake comes from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and this one is just delicious. It's only mildly sweet since the cake only contains a half-cup of raw sugar and a little powdered sugar for the glaze. And although the cake is oil-free, it's still super-moist thanks to applesauce.

Now y'all know I love my good fats and occasional fried foods, but a girl can't eat fatty foods at every meal. So I'll reach for Lindsay's book when I'm looking for a little balance. It's also a great book for anyone looking to shed a few pounds or for those hoping to travel around the world without ever leaving their kitchen.

30-Day Vegan Challenge Online!

A couple of years ago, I reviewed Colleen Patrick Goudreau's 30-Day Vegan Challenge book, which was filled with articles on the baby steps of going plant-based. But sadly, that book is no longer in print.

But you know what? That's okay! Because now the whole thing is online, and there's even more content! I wanted to take a few moments to tell y'all about Colleen's awesome 30-Day Vegan Challenge website, because if you know someone who is veg-curious, this is the perfect gift for them.

For a $20 subscription (and yes, you can buy gift subscriptions), which is about the same price you'd pay for the old book version, the recipient gets daily emails, podcasts, videos, recipes, and more on 30 topics relating to going vegan.

This is what the home-screen looks like once you create an account.

Colleen gifted me a subscription so I could browse around the site and tell y'all all about it. And I have to say, after poking around on the site, I kind of wish I was a new vegan and had this guide at my fingertips. Transitioning was fairly easy for me back in 2004, but it would have been so much easier with a 30-Day Vegan Challenge subscription.

Take, for example, the daily lesson topics. Here's a handful: Stocking a Healthful Vegan Kitchen, Trying New Foods, Making Time to Cook, Eating Out and Speaking Up, Packing Lunches, Discovering There Is Life After Cheese, and Baking Without Eggs.

Through the 30 days, Colleen hits all the concerns in the newbie vegan's typical FAQ. With each lesson are videos by Colleen, audio podcasts, meal plans, and recipes. And the recipes are simple dishes that will help ease new vegans into the lifestyle. No weird (but delicious) vegan ingredients (I'm talkin' to you, nutritional yeast and shirataki noodles). Just easy meals made from common ingredients. There's Tofu Scramble, Simple Bean Burritos, Spicy Red Bell Pepper Soup, Lemon Poppyseed Muffins, and No-Bake Apple Crumble to name a few.

Anyway, I'm sure I've carried on long enough. But this is a really great program. If you're thinking of going vegan or know someone who is, the 30-Day Vegan Challenge is a nice way to start.