swingers diner

awesome food!!! i have barely started dinging out, since dinging out as a vegan means spending a little more, BUT this diner is friggin' awesome and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg! they have a very well rounded menu, vegetarian and vegan friendly. from boca burgers to pancakes and nachos, vegan chocolate chip cookies, etc etc etc. absolutely delicious.

they have two locations in the LA area, one in santa monica and one in LA by the beverly center. check out their website here for more info.

soyrizo!

growing up in a mexican house, when i went vegan, chorizo was one of the first things i thought of when i decided to no longer eat meat. BUT! i've found soyrizo! i think i always knew it existed but for some reason it glossed over my subconscious, but i had some soyrizo on nachos @ veg restaurant i went to, and immediately (Well, the next day) went out to buy some @ whole foods. the brand i bought was "el burrito" but there are a few others, like the "melissa" brand, as well! :)

i like to make the soyrizo with scrambled tofu, and/or hash browns. YUM. and a whole wheat tortilla.

Daiya Vegan Cheese

Absolutely delicious. The best vegan cheese I've found!!


click here to visit the website for more information and to find where to buy! :)

Spread the word about Food, Inc.

Follow the link below to spread the word about the message presented in the film "Food, Inc" - haven't seen "Food, Inc" ?? see it!!

Watch the trailer here.

From the website:

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Food, Inc. "Spread The Word"

amazing vegan pizza

Whole Foods once again has come to my rescue. I was craving pizza last night, and instead of buying pre-made pizza from the Whole Foods deli I came across vegan dough and vegan Daiyan cheese, shredded! I went home and found a recipe for pesto, which I kind of turned into my own.

Pesto recipe:
In a food processor, combine

-Fresh leaves of basil
-Walnuts or pine nuts
-Soy milk
-Olive oil
-Salt
-Garlic cloves
-Pepper

and blend until creamy! Add all the ingredients to proportions that you like, and until the thickness and creaminess is to your liking as well.

So after I made the pesto and rolled out the dough, I lathered the pesto on and threw on these ingredients:

-Sliced tomatoes
-Fresh spinach
-Walnut bits
-Vegan shredded mozzarella (or any other vegan cheeses)
-Meatless and Dairy-free meatballs, ground up

Popped it in the oven set to 450* for 18 minutes. and YUMMM!!!!

omg chocolate chip cookies

I found some recipes online for chocolate chip cookies and ended up creating my own by mixing some recipes together. Yum!!

The proportions and layout of the recipe, I'm borrowing from The Post Punk Kitchen's recipe, which makes about 30 regular sized cookies.

You will need two bowls, measuring cups/spoons, and a baking sheet.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup Silk's Very Vanilla Soy Milk
2 cups all purpose unbleached flour
3/4 cocoa powder (I used Hershey's)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips*

*I used Ghiradelli, read ingredients carefully for any milk
I also added flaxseeds and walnuts. Yum.

Preheat oven to 350*

In bowl #1 mix together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.

In bowl #2 (should be a pretty big bowl) mix together oil and sugar until creamy. Then add the walnuts, flax seeds, vanilla, almond and soy milk.

Slowly add the dry mix into bowl #2, until eventually you'll have to mix with your hands. Add chocolate chips and continue to hand mix. Take mini scoops and lay on ungreased cooking sheet, flattening out to 1 1/2 inch discs and about an inch apart. Bake for 10 minutes, let cool for 5 minutes, and enjoy!

Not so simple, but you'll get the hang of it. :)

the best sandwich ever

The picture should speak for itself!! I'm totally a sandwich guy, and no lifestyle choice would be sustainable for me if I couldn't have sandwiches, so I came up with this. It's nothing special, it's just simply vegan :)

Toasted wheat bread, with mustard and vegenaise. On one of the slices I like to sprinkle flax seed for an added crunch, plus it adds some fiber :)

Inside the sandwich:
- Sliced tomato
- Chunks of sliced avocado
- Baby springs
- Spinach
- Sprouts (brussel or brocco)
- Slices of vegan cheese*
- Slices of Tofurkey*

* When toasting the bread I also like to grill the Tofurkey and cheese! Follow Your Heart's Cheddar Cheese melts a little too well, so what I'll do is get 2 slices of tofurkey, slab a slice of cheese on it, and get 2 more slices of tofurkey, sandwiching the cheese and throw it on a frying pan (no oil or anything needed) until the cheese is all gooey, flipping both sides.

Be careful! The cheese gets very hot and drippy. I've learned to kill the flame and let it cool down for a minute before I transfer it over to the sandwich, otherwise while it's resting on the spatula being transferred, the cheese will drip off and burn my arm. Okay, it only happened once but I learned!!

Eat with tortilla chips and *drool* so friggin' good!!!! My post might make it sound a little complicated but basically, just read the ingredients I use and make a sandwich out of it! Voila! Simple!

Seasoned potatoes

I could eat potatoes every day of my life. In fact, lately, I think I have been! Oops. Last night I played around with some potatoes and ended up making this delicious little dish. I don't know what to call it, so it's just "seasoned potatoes".

Just as a forewarning, I never use specific measurements when I cook things like this. The only time I measure is if I'm baking. Everything else, I do according to how I feel that day. Perhaps today I'll want a lot of garlic, maybe tomorrow I'll want a lot of pepper. Either way, here's how to do it...

Preheat the oven to 475*. Chop enough potatoes keeping in mind how many servings the dish will be used for. I eat a lot, so 8 medium sized potatoes yielded about 3 servings for me. Put the potatoes in a large bowl and toss in some olive oil, an amount enough to lightly lather each potato all around.

Next, add:

1) Black pepper
2) Dry basil
3) Italian Herbal Seasoning (the specific one I use is from Costco)
4) Salt (the tiniest portion possible, gotta watch the sodium levels!)

Place on a baking sheet with the chopped taters evenly laid out, and bake for about 25 minutes. And yummmm

Enjoy by itself, or, add some chili beans on top! I'll add my vegan chili bean recipe later.

Chocolate covered strawberries!

I feel like this blog is slowly turning into The Chocolate Vegan! So I had an idea for this while making the chocolate peanut butter cups, and they turned out yummy. I bought a pack of strawberries @ Fresh and Easy, and these may have been some of the best strawberries I've ever had! I made the chocolate dip by melting together some Earth Balance butter, Godiva semi-sweet chocolate chips (no direct milk or egg product, but produced in a facility that may contain milk and eggs, yadda yadda yadda. My veganism hasn't reached OCD yet, so I'm not bothered by that), and let them create a thick fudge in a small pot on the stove.

Then I added Silk's Very Vanilla Soy Milk to make it a bit thinner... and voila! If you try this, be careful not to leave on the stove for too long, or your chocolate will taste burned. Set aside, dip the strawberries, let sit in the fridge for about 30 minutes and voila! Enjoy :)

Iced Tea

I tend to want to try recipes simply because of pictures! I'm totally the guy who judges a book by its cover. Here's a green tea recipe from scratch taken from CountryHome.

Lemon Verbena Iced Tea
To make a gallon of tea, steep 1 cup lemon verbena herbal tea leaves in a quart of boiling water for 15 minutes. This creates a concentrated liquor. Strain, then transfer lemon verbena liquor to a large container and add 3 quarts cold water; cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days. For a 2-quart pitcher, add half of the tea mixture. Quarter 1 orange and 1 lemon. Squeeze orange and lemon quarters into the pitcher. Add mint sprigs for garnish. To serve, pour over glasses of ice and add a sprig of fresh lemon verbena or mint and citrus slices to each.

Vegan with Moby

chocolate peanut butter goodies

I'm starting to really delve into the second part of Alicia Silverstone's book, "The Kind Diet" - which is the fun part: recipes! Some things I can get right from the get go, but others, like this dessert, will take some practice. The recipes call for 10 graham cracker squares, and I put in 10 whole graham crackers, which is 20 graham cracker squares. oops!! haha, still pretty good, just a little too crumby. I'll give these a go again soon :)