Bluff City Vegan Eats: Flame Ramen

Memphis has two new ramen restaurants! One of those is Flame Ramen, and I finally got to try their ramen last week on a dinner date with my friend Susan. Ramen is hands-down my favorite food, followed closely by popcorn, donuts, and pizza. But ramen has my heart!

Flame Ramen is located on the busy corner of Union and McLean. Susan wanted to sit outside because she's not super-comfortable with indoor stuff yet, so we sat on the small patio. It wasn't too hot outside, so that was nice. But the traffic on Union was pretty loud, so I'd recommend indoor seating if you go. But the traffic is my only complaint. The food was fantastic!

We started with the Vegetable Gyoza, and they were perfect. Each little pillow was stuffed with savory veggies, and they were topped with a spicy salt and seasoned with soy sauce.

I ordered the Vegan Paradise Ramen, which has soft, fresh noodles, tofu, scallions, vegetable gyoza (there were more in the soup!), corn, and wood ear mushrooms.

I loved everything about this soup. The noodles tasted so fresh, not at all like the fried packaged noodles you'd buy in the store. The gyoza were a lovely surprise. Who doesn't like dumplings in their soup? I'd never had wood ear mushrooms, but these had a nice bite. And corn is a must-add in all my at-home ramen bowls, so I appreciated that this bowl had corn. But we all know the most important part of a ramen bowl is the broth, and this broth was great! It was garlicky and savory without being too salty. 

10/10 would eat again! And again! Flame Ramen is located at 1838 Union Ave. in Memphis, TN.

Cauliflower Gnocchi & More!

Another random meal round-up! I've been eating lots of the same things lately, so I haven't had many exciting meals to blog out. But one very exciting thing that I ate this week was Trader Joe's Cauliflower Gnocchi with Simple Truth Vegan Alfredo Sauce!

I picked up these frozen TJ's gnocchi a couple months ago, and they've just been chilling in my freezer. But after I discovered the awesome Simple Truth alfredo (the best I've ever had!), I knew they needed to be paired with that sauce. These little puffs were so tasty. They had the texture of potato-y gnocchi with the flavor of cauliflower. I'm guessing they're low-carb (no idea!), but they were soooo gooood. 

Here's a very un-sexy meal of a Big Ass Salad and Avocado Toast. This was a "throw in every veggie in the fridge" salad that had a balsamic dressing, some nooch, and chickpeas. Plus, a probiotic pickle (I'm trying to eat something fermented every day!). It was just okay. But the avocado toast was super-yummy. I'm reading The Blue Zones right now and hoping to learn some tips to live to 100!

And finally, here's yet another Vegan Omelet made with Nabati Plant Eggz and Nabati Cheddar Shreds (which I reviewed in this post earlier this week). The omelet was stuffed with bell peppers, onions, and spinach, and I served Roasted Sweet Potatoes on the side.

Taco Bake, Fettuccine Alfredo, & Stir-fry!

I'm making progress in my quest to cook every recipe from The Plant-Based Athlete book! Last week, I made the Taco Bake from bikini athlete Bre Wigley. This was so good! It has layers of brown rice (you use instant!), black beans, spinach & bell peppers, fire-roasted tomatoes, and vegan cheese. And then you serve it with guacamole and chopped onions (plus, I added Tofutti sour cream). It can be eaten with a spoon, with tortillas, or as a dip for corn chips (that was my preference!).

Here it is out of the oven. I used the Nabati vegan cheddar shreds for the cheese.

I recently discovered the Simple Truth Organic vegan alfredo sauce, and it is AMAZING. Best vegan alfredo from a jar I've ever had! I tried to recreate those Marie Callender's chicken fettuccine frozen meals with some whole wheat spaghetti, steamed broccoli, and sliced Gardein scallopini in this Vegan Chicken Fettuccine. It was perfection.

And finally, here was a super-easy Tofu & Veggie Stir-fry made with air-fried tofu, sauteed broccoli, and mushrooms. When I don't have time to make anything fancy for dinner, stir-fry is my go-to! For the sauce, I always just use a little cornstarch to thicken whatever marinade I used for the tofu and add it in at the end of cooking time. 

Product Review: Nabati Plant Eggz & Cheeze Shreds

I subscribe to VegNews' Deal of the Week emails, where they sent out hot deals on new vegan products. And a couple weeks ago, they sent one for Nabati Plant Eggz and Cheeze Shreds. You could get two bottles of vegan eggs and packages of cheddar style and mozzarella style shreds for $15. Considering that you'd pay way more for two bottles of Just Egg and two packs of Daiya, I figured that was, indeed, a hot deal! So I ordered some!

The Plant Eggz and shreds arrived last week, packed in a cooler box with lots of reusable ice bricks (I saved those for our coolers and lunch boxes). I finally got a chance to try the eggz and cheese in a couple of ways. First, I made a Plant Eggz Omelet with bell pepper, onions, spinach, and Nabati cheddar-style cheeze shreds. I had toast with homemade muscadine jam and some Fry's Family Foods breakfast links on the side.

The egg mix is liquid, much like Just Egg, but it's a quite a bit thicker. To make an omelet, I had to thin out the mix with some water before pouring it into the hot skillet. But it cooked up very much like Just Eggs does. It was a little more delicate, so flipping wasn't super-easy (hence my weirdly shaped omelet). The shreds were super melty, so they worked great for this!

As for taste, it honestly tasted very much like Just Egg. Plant Eggz are made with lupin protein concentrate, and Just Egg is made with mung bean concentrate. I'm not sure what the difference is, but they're both legumes. I'd say Just Egg is still my favorite, but this is just about as good. The cheeze shreds are made with coconut oil, tapioca starch, and carragenan, and they are very melty, but flavor-wise, they're just okay. Not bad. But I much prefer Daiya for shreds. I know there are some Daiya haters out there, but Daiya makes my favorite shred. 

A couple days later, I made some Scrambled Cheeze Eggz using the Plant Eggz and Nabati cheddar shreds. The Eggz scrambled up much better than they worked in an omelet, so I'd recommend that. But just like Just Egg, a serving size doesn't make much eggs. Luckily, I had plenty of air-fried red potatoes and toast on the side for a hearty meal.

Nabati is a Canadian company, and I haven't seen their products in stores around Memphis yet. But you can order them from their website. They're good, and I love seeing more options hit the shelves. But Just Egg and Daiya still have my heart!

Mabon Feast!

Mabon (aka the Autumn Equinox) was Wednesday, and for the first time in forever, I'm actually excited about fall! Summer is my favorite season and always will be, but every year, I try really hard to get excited about fall. But every year, I can't help but feel like it's just the prelude to winter. In the South, we have about five months of summer temps and about one month of fall temps before winter hits us. And I really hate the cold! Granted, our "cold" here doesn't often get below 40 degrees, but anything less than 75 is freezing, in my opinion. 

Anyway, enough about the weather! I'm actually excited for fall because it means pumpkin spice everything, my birthday (Oct 16!), Halloween (the best!), and Thanksgiving (the absolute best!). Yesterday, on the first day of fall, the temps here fell down to the mid-70s, and the air had that crisp feeling that means fall has arrived. It was kind of magical! It rarely feels like fall here on the first day!

For breakfast, I made Pumpkin Pancakes with Vegan Butter Syrup and Cranberry Compote from the Llewelyn Sabbats Almanac. Served with vegan Gardein sausage.

The recipe wasn't vegan, but I veganized it! The pancakes were easy to veganize by subbing extra baking powder for the eggs. But the syrup recipe called for evaporated milk with butter and sugar. I googled "vegan evaporated milk" and found instructions for making it from scratch with soymilk. Basically, you just reduce soymilk by half on low heat. Easy enough! After the milk reduces, you stir in vegan butter and sugar. It makes a nice creamy, buttery topping. The cranberry compote was just cranberries cooked down with sugar and maple. 

I also made some Apple Pie Trail Mix from the Llewelyn book. This was a tasty morning treat at my desk. It has dried apples, cranberries (subbed for raisins in the recipe), pecans, walnuts, cinnamon, and vegan white chocolate chips. 

Dinner was a simple and delicious meal of Roasted Delicata Squash & Sweet Potatoes mixed with kale, homemade seitan, toasted pepitas, and an apple cider vinegar-olive oil dressing, served with a side of hearty barley. The squash and sweet potatoes were locally grown and came in my CSA.

Happy fall, y'all!

Mid-Autumn Mooncakes & More!

Tuesday was Mid-Autumn Festival, the traditional festival celebrated in China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and several other Asian countries. According to Wikipedia, "it's the second-most important holiday in Chinese culture after Chinese New Year, with a history dating back over 3,000 years. The festival is held on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar with a full moon at night, corresponding to mid-September to early October of the Gregorian calendar. On this day, the Chinese believe that the moon is at its brightest and fullest size, coinciding with harvest time in the middle of Autumn."

Crosstown Concourse, the building where I work, holds a Mid-Autumn Festival, in partnership with the Vietnamese Association of Memphis, every year. Crosstown is home to a large Vietnamese population, so it makes sense that we have the fest at Concourse! Sadly, I missed the fest this year since it was held on Saturday, when I was running my 50K. 

But the actual Mid-Autumn holiday fell on Tuesday, so I went down to my neighborhood Vietnamese market, Viet Hoa, and bought some Vegan Mooncakes! Mooncakes are traditionally eaten to celebrate Mid-Autumn, but many brands are not vegan. Luckily, Viet Hoa had one brand that was. They had several flavors (mixed nuts, spiced salt, rose), but I opted for a traditional red bean paste cake. I enjoyed it with my green tea at work on Tuesday afternoon.

The outside was made of flaky pastry, and the inside was stuffed with a barely sweet and thick bean paste. I shared some cakes with my co-workers, and we all agreed that we enjoyed how it wasn't super-sweet.

I intended to grab some Vietnamese takeout for dinner from Phuong Long, but they were closed (maybe for the holiday?). Pho Binh was also closed (they're always closed on Tuesdays). And while we have many other Vietnamese restaurants in the neighborhood, I just decided to stay at home and make a healthy Tofu & Veggie Stir-fry with broccoli, bell pepper, and mushrooms over brown rice.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! And happy first day of fall (Mabon)! I'll be back tomorrow with a post on everything I ate today! 

Race Recap: Stanky Creek 50K

On Saturday, I finally finished my first 50K race at the Stanky Creek 50K! This race finish was a very long time coming for me! I first signed up in 2018, but I got a stress fracture while training and ended up volunteering at the race that year (in a boot). In 2019, I signed up again, but I got yet another stress fracture in my foot while training earlier in the year for the Nashville Rock & Roll Marathon. By September 2019, my foot had healed, but I wasn't back to running long distances yet, so I bumped down to the half-marathon. 

In 2020, I'd signed up for the Big Buffalo 50K in March, hoping to make that my first 50K, but it was canceled due to COVID (and rescheduled to next month!!). The cancellation notice came one week before the race, and I ended up running the distance solo on the Big Buffalo course. So I'd run the 50K distance before but never with people! Saturday's race was such a big deal for me because it felt like I'd been training for FOUR YEARS!

But let's back up to the night before. I got home from work on Friday and scarfed down a quick dinner of Spaghetti with Marinara & Vegan Meatballs, plus some sourdough garlic bread. I eat pasta before almost every long run, so I know this is a meal that works for my body.

My friend Peter is the Stanky race director, and he held packet pickup at Wiseacre Brewing Co. Paul and I headed there after dinner. I typically have one beer the night before a race to "calm my nerves" (that's my excuse!), so I had an Oktoberfest (tis the season!).

Then we headed home and got to bed. I had a 4 am alarm set! The next morning, I had my coffee and bagel with peanut butter (my standard pre-race breakfast), and then I drove to Bartlett for the race. I got there around 6 am to make sure I could get a spot in the parking lot since I'd be stashing some of my fuel in my car. I got a great spot next to the aid station! Here I am before the race, looking nervous. It was supposed to rain all day, so I wore a cap to keep the rain out of my eyes, but it never did more than drizzle, thankfully! 

At 7 am, the 50K-ers were off! I made sure to find a nice spot in the very back because I'm slow, and I don't like being in the way of the fast people on single track trails. One mile in, we came to the creek crossing, and due to heavy rain the night before, it was deep enough that there was no way to cross without getting your feet wet. 

For the 50K, we did the 8-mile loop (blue/white trails) four times, and there were two such creek crossings, so there was no way to keep your feet dry. I brought extra shoes and socks, but I didn't see a point in changing my shoes since they'd only get wet again and again. No blisters, but I did lose another toenail after the race.

For fuel, I brought Plant Bites (real food fruit bites from No Meat Athlete), Muir Energy gels (cashew, sunflower, and raspberry), and sesame rice balls that I'd trained with. Every time I passed my car (every 8 miles), my plan was to grab a rice ball since they were too big to carry in my pack. But after two balls, I couldn't stomach them anymore. Luckily, my friend Peter made sure to have vegan options at the aid stations. Here's the main aid station, which was stocked with almond butter sandwiches (I had several of those!), salted potatoes, pickles (these were my jam for the whole race!), bananas, Oreos, coke, Mountain Dew, and Gatorade. Oh, and Fireball! Both aid stations had Fireball shots. I took one at mile 8 and stuffed an airplane bottle in my pocket for emergencies! This is why I love trail running!

My first loop went great (feeling strong), and my second loop was great too! I actually met up with my friend Karla, who was running the 25K right at the end of our second loop as she was finishing. So I grabbed a pic with her. She has her medal, and I had a pickle and sandwich before heading into loop three.

Loop three was the hardest. I had some moments when I felt like that loop would never end. I was tired. My feet were pretty numb. My legs hurt, and I still had 16 miles to go. There were two aid stations (the main one above) and another in the woods at mile 4/12/20/28. That station was womanned by my friend Keshia. I stopped here around mile 20 (on that third loop) to get a photo with her and had no idea I had mascara all over my face. Ha! I had a hard time even working my phone's camera because I was so tired, and my brain felt broken. 

But I made it out of the woods at mile 24 and got a burst of energy. The fourth loop is the best because, every time you pass a landmark (a certain tree, a giant mushroom, a crappy hill), you can tell yourself, "That's the last time I have to look at that stupid tree!" 

I was DFL (trail speak for "dead f-ing last") the whole race, and I was fine with that. I'm slow, and my goal for this race was just to finish before the 9-hour cutoff. But around mile 29, I saw a guy up ahead, and he was walking. I was feeling pretty strong and still running. In fact, I ran the whole way (just slowly!). So I passed him up and shouted some words of encouragement, as trail runners always do as they pass (yet another reason I love trail running). 

About 1/4-mile from the end, Peter (the race director) met me on the trail and said he was proud of me and was planning to run with me to the finish! How many race directors do that?! So cool! He told me there was a group waiting for me at the end. I had assumed everyone would have gone home by that point, but people were there! I ran into the finish line at 8:43:56! More than 15 minutes before cutoff time and not in last place! I had my Fireball shot (it was still in my pocket!) to celebrate.

Check out the cool wooden medals! I was so proud to add this to my medal display at home.

After the race, I was pooped. I had thought I might grab something greasy from Imagine Vegan Cafe. But I really didn't have the energy to go anywhere! Luckily, I'd picked up a Veggie Burrito from The Fiesta Wagon food truck the night before at Wiseacre to have on-hand in case I was too tired to grab food. So I ate that and washed it down with a Crosstown Brewing Earth in Awe dry-hopped IPA.

But I was still hungry after that! So I made a Daiya Cauliflower Crust Italian Herbs & Cheeze Pizza and proceeded to eat 3/4th of that too. 

Later, after Paul got home from work, I made a big bowl of popcorn and we re-watched Tenacious D & The Pick of Destiny. A perfect day! Now I have to do it all over again next month for the rescheduled Big Buffalo 50K!