El Borracho- Vegan Tacos! May 19, 2013

Two weeks ago, I went shopping and had drinks with my friend, Liz. Afterwards we were walking towards the bus and I suddenly announced my desire to eat a lot of tacos (as you do once you have had enough champagne). I remembered that a new Mexican restaurant, El Borracho had opened a few months ago near Pike Place Market, and decided that the moment had arrived to check it out.

It was a nice day that day, so the outdoor patio was jammed, as was most of the inside, but we found a table in the back. After a short wait, a waitress arrived with the requisite chips and salsa, which I do have to note was $2 and not free like most Mexican restaurants but it was a nice mild salsa, many times the salsa is too spicy for me in Mexican restaurants, so I didn’t mind too much. We ordered guacamole to add to the chips and settled in to peruse the menu. The menu has an entire vegan section, and my friend and I both picked a burrito with soy chorizo and potatoes (and several veggies, rice and beans).

The waitress that took our orders was excited to see us order vegan food, and asked if we were vegan, and told us that she has been vegan for 21 years. She created the vegan section on the menu, and I felt a lot safer ordering vegan food from her, as sometimes in non-vegan restaurants you never know if they quite understand why you care if they put chicken stock in the rice, or lard in the beans.

The burrito was the size of my head, with nice flavor and texture, and I had plenty of leftovers for dinner the next day as well. My one tiny complaint would be that it needed some sort of sauce, possibly a salsa to give it a little kick.

Soy chorizo and potato burrito.

The food was tasty, reasonably priced, the service was great, and there are many more vegan options on the menu still to try, including nachos that look fantastic, which means I will be returning for sure.

Now, the question is, did Liz like El Borracho too?

Liz about to dig in to her burrito.

I think it safe to say, yes.

El Borracho is located at 1521 1st Ave (between Pike and Pine) in Seattle, WA.

Plum Cookbook Launch Cooking Class May 13, 2013

On May 2nd, 2013 I attended a small cooking class taught by Makini Howell at the book store, Book Larder to celebrate the launch of her new cookbook, Plum: Gratifying Vegan Dishes from Seattle’s Plum Bistro. It was a small class, just ten people, and Makini cooked up quite a feast for us. It was a great evening, full of great conversation and food, and many conversations about food, even beyond the food we were partaking in.

The first course was the famous Plum mac and yease (recipe not in the cookbook, although a smokey mac and cheese recipe is on page 101), which was to “entice us to come to the restaurant” as Makini said. This is my favorite dish at Plum, and it was as great as ever.

The next course was the cauliflower bisque with fresh fennel (pg 44 in the book). This soup was  creamy and flavorful, and definitely a soup that I will be re-creating on my own. The topping is smoked tofu, made crispy like bacon in a frying pan with a little bit of olive oil.

Cauliflower Bisque with Fresh Fennel

The next course was a salad made of miner’s lettuce, grilled fennel, grilled plums, edible flowers, and a dressing made of plum sake (and something else, bad blogger didn’t take detailed notes). There were children present at this meal as well, so she also made a simple vinaigrette  which I am sure would make a lovely pairing, since the plum and fennel are so flavorful on their own, they don’t really need a lot of dressing. This recipe isn’t in the book, but is a good example of taking your inspiration from local, seasonally available produce, as Makini does with all the dishes at Plum.

Miner’s lettuce salad with plum and fennel.

The next course was another one that isn’t in the book, but is on Plum’s current brunch menu. Vegan “crab cakes” made of mushrooms, bread crumbs, onions and I am sure something else I am forgetting. She usually makes this with an egg replacer to serve as a binding agent, but she forgot to bring them. The cakes still held together pretty well, and had a similar texture to the crab cakes I remember from my pre-vegan days. The cakes were topped with the “Savory Soy Cream” (pg 6 in the book). These went over so well that when one of the children in attendance didn’t want his there was quite the bargaining going on to get that crab cake.

Vegan crab cake topped with savory soy cream.

Next up was the pizza with soy ricotta cheese, fennel, plums, miners lettuce on a sauce of pesto and olive oil. This version was made on a crust she bought at Trader Joe’s but there is a recipe in the book for a pizza crust (pg 105). This was really good but I was so stuffed at this point, I didn’t eat the whole thing, had to save room for the dessert!

Pear and fennel soy ricotta cheese pizza.

Dessert was a rhubarb crisp in tiny crusts, with homemade soy ice cream and blood orange compote. This was the perfect amount of sweet, and a great capper to an impressive meal of so much great food.

Rhubarb crisp and soy ice cream.

Plum: Gratifying Vegan Dishes from Seattle’s Plum Bistro is full of wonderful recipes that give you a piece of Plum Bistro if you are unable to enjoy a meal there. If you live in Seattle or are visiting, I highly recommend eating a meal at Plum Bistro as well as getting this cookbook.

January 2013 Vegan Food Swap Reveal February 4, 2013

After a brief holiday hiatus, the Vegan Food Swap is back! I am a few days late in posting this, but here we are, better late than never at all, I say.

I sent a package to Sydney over at Alternative Vegan, you can read her post on the goodies I sent her here. I received a package from the blog-less Sarah, with a blueberry theme. She is from Michigan which is a state of blueberry bounty (a fun fact that I didn’t know before).

Soap, jam, vinaigrette and syrup.

I haven’t tried any of it yet, but I love all things blueberry, so I am looking forward to using them all. The soap smells really good.

Do you want to join the swapping fun for February? Head on over to The Verdant Life and sign on up!

Vegan Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Caffe Ladro October 17, 2012

The first fall after I went vegan I was so disappointed to find out that Starbucks put dairy in their pumpkin spice syrup, and thus pumpkin spice lattes were off my list of fall food options. Flash forward to this past weekend when I was standing in line at  Caffe Ladro (the Lower Queen Anne location) ready to order my usual spicy soy chai latte when this sign caught my eye:

Seasonal drink offerings at Cafe Ladro

Pumpkin sauce! This means that the fine folks at the Caffe Ladro bakery make pumpkin sauce from scratch, without all of the extra sugars and other junk that is found in typical pumpkin syrups. I ordered my first decaf pumpkin spice latte in years and it was delightful. I will be back many times during this cold, and sometimes rainy Seattle fall.

Anti headache diet: bringing back the avocado October 7, 2012

Today I am bringing back possibly my favorite food in the world to my diet. Avocado. I picked up this avocado salad roll at Metropolitan Market and had it for dinner. If I get a headache tonight I will try eating avocado again in a couple days and if it happens again I will cry and cry and cry because that means avocados are a trigger and I can’t eat them anymore without experiencing pain.

Anti-Headache Diet Days 4 and 5 October 5, 2012

I think I am starting to get the hang of this and have spent the past couple days almost completely headache free, and what little headache I did get was very minor in comparison with the migraines I have been getting. Which happened just in time for my insurance to finally approve my having “just twelve pills a month” of the new migraine meds my doctor wants me to take if I feel a migraine coming on. I really hope to not have anywhere near twelve migraines a month with all the diet changes I am working on.

Speaking of diet, what fun things did I eat the last couple days? Not much, really, but here are a couple photos of my lunches from yesterday and today.

Brown rice pasta with tomato sauce and veggies.

That dish is brown rice pasta with tomato sauce, red peppers, mushrooms and carrots. It was OK, the brown rice pasta got mushy when I reheated it and I didn’t cook the peppers long enough, but it had substance at least.

Garden vegetable soup

This is a bowl of the garden vegetable soup I picked up at Whole Foods. It was packed with veggies, and the ingredient label said it had soy in it, but I think it was a very little bit, and it was from soybeans, not soy protein isolate.

So, even if my meals aren’t exciting, at least this diet seems to be working.

Anti-Headache Diet Days 2 and 3 October 3, 2012

The anti-headache diet sucks. There is no other way to put it. It sucks to end up in enough pain that it is necessary to do a detox/elimination diet, and it sucks to not be able to eat any of my favorite foods. The second day was rough, I wasn’t eating enough because I didn’t feel good through most of the day, and didn’t feel like eating. By the end of the day I was starving, and needed to eat, and decided I wanted Indian food.

I made the decision that I would fudge the rules a bit on the list of foods I can and can’t have, and ordered a dish with chickpeas (I am not supposed to have legumes) and ate the white rice that came with my order, instead of making the brown rice that is allowed. The rest of the ingredients are on the allowed list, so over all I didn’t do too terrible with the cheating. I ended up with aloo chole, aloo gobi, okra masala, and rice. The aloo chole quickly disappeared, so the picture below is part of the leftovers that I had tonight.

Lessons so far from being on this diet include the fact that I must eat more, and that following the list of allowed foods to the letter may not be the best idea for me. It is still a work in progress, but I do know that my diet is in much better shape today than it was a week ago.