I Love Giveaways

Lots of good giveaways I keep stumbling on lately and this is one of them!

http://thesuburbanjungle.blogspot.com/2010/03/organic-valley-review-and-free-product.html

Buenos Aires

I am hoping to spend some serious time in South America this summer and Buenos Aires is at the top of my list.

Now I just have to convince my vegetarian boyfriend to come visit me in the land of la vaca.

Maybe this will help:

Choice Tables - Buenos Aires For Those Who Shun Steak

The Biscuit Problem

Generally, R stays with me Monday through Friday, going home only on weekends if at all. Typically, during those days, I am effectively a vegetarian (unless laziness kicks in and I make super quick and delicious Trader Joe's pork gyoza for lunch). During these days, I also tend to do the bulk of the cooking.

I imagine every couple has a division of labor with respect to a lot of domestic tasks. R fixes my computer, and I cook and bake most of the time. Considering that I think of my laptop as a little box that performs magic behind a thin screen, I think it's a very, very fair trade.

To make my life easier and reduce the burden of figuring out "what's for dinner?" on a nightly basis, I like to plan 4 separate dinners over the weekend that can be easily executed on a busy weeknight. I only do 4 because we always have leftovers or get lazy and eat out.

Last week I made: Chinese chow mein with fresh veggies and sauteed tofu, baked falafel wraps, and baked, cheesy pasta. One night I got lazy and asked him to cook -- he made delicious pad thai.

This weekend, my brain wasnt working. When I tried to think of new meals to make, or recipes to try, I couldn't. I could only think about biscuits and mashed potatoes...neither of which constitute meals, right?

Here is my problem: I want to make cheddar, chive buttermilk biscuits because I bought buttermilk 2 weeks ago that I have yet to use. Also, I have 4 large russet potatoes from the Dosas we never made (too lazy to go buy curry leaves) and would love to make garlicy mashed potatoes.

These are carby side dishes...side dishes to what? MEAT! I have no idea what vegetarian items to put next to them and no idea where to even look.

There are so many food blogs out there, which is amazing and wonderful and I am addicted to about a dozen of them. But where is the website that will tell me what, that hasn't died, I can put a buttermilk biscuit next to and call it a meal.

HELP!

This blog...

I started this blog last spring out of frustration.

I love to travel and have chosen a life and career which not only allows me to travel, but demands that I do. R and I have never really "traveled" together. We have driven up and down California to get from college to home and back and he visited me in Texas twice when I lived there...but neither of those really constitute "traveling".

However, even those situations, we have found it unnecessarily difficult to find tasty vegetarian food for him at a wide variety of places. We can always eat Indian food, but what about when we want Mexican and the only thing they have for him is a cheese enchilada? Who knows if they even use vegetarian cheese sans animal rennet anyway. Honestly, you would think that every place would at least have one decent vegetarian option...but it doesn't always work that way. I've been surprised, shocked actually, at how often it doesn't work that way.

To be clear, R is a lacto-ovo vegetarian. This broadens the options, but still...it's not as easy as one might imagine.

Originally, I wanted to start a blog about traveling with a vegetarian. I invisioned posting restaurant reviews for every place we visited together. That idea died quickly since I was living 2,000 miles away from him at the time -- I ended up not posting for months.

Now, I am back with a vengence. Being a mixed-eating couple (yes, I know, it's a dumb term...but got any better ideas?) has its own unique set of challenges. I was reminded of those when my baked pasta went awry and I realized I was frustrated that I couldnt make it the way I wanted and he didnt even like it that much anyway.

I will use this as a forum for recipe postings, restaurant reviews, and general thoughts on dating a vegetarian and holding on to my own food habbits and preferences.

Self Feed

I'm sitting at my desk in an empty house, talking to myself like a crazy person about my mediocre dinner.

I'm eating leftovers. A baked, spicy, creamy pasta concoction that is a vegetarian version of what my stepmother calls Mac & Jack. I just accidentally WAY oversalted it while reheating it on the stove. Bleh.

The way my stepmom makes it is with mostly cooked pasta, gruyere, a low fat cream sauce (thats right! flour, a bit of butter, and skim milk), with jalapenos, ham, and sometimes sauteed peppers an onions. When I make it I ALWAYS use the bell peppers and onions + fresh basil, several other cheeses, and procuitto as well. I'm a pretentious foodie and have messed with what was already one of my favorite meals -- it never comes out as good as when she makes it.

I made it 2 days ago for my boyfriend, R, a vegetarian. The lack of ham, procuitto, and some of the saltier cheeses (have to be careful about animal renet) left it no where near salty enough & I forgot to compensate.

He didnt like it anyway. Usually he loves what I cook for him, but he has a deep seeded opposition to spicy pasta that I was unaware of and it ruined it for him (generally I agree, this is my only exception). The no meat ruined it for me.

I've been dating R for coming up on 3 years. We are currently looking for an apartment together but he basically lives with me as is...which means my meat consumption has dropped almost to 0. He often goes home on weekends to return to his big screen TV and functioning dishwasher, at which point I typically choose to "meat out" and cook the food I am accustomed to eating.

Hours after this particular pasta mishap he was hungry. What did he eat? What does he always eat? A bowl of Frosted Flakes.

I've heard a rumor that some men can "self-feed"...I have seen no evidence of it yet :)

I told him I would try to adjust this dish further to his preferences but that once we are living together, there will be times when I wanted to eat something he didnt like or wouldnt eat (aka: meat) and that he would have to learn to "self feed" better...a phrase that for years we have jokingly used to refer to his unwillingness to cook unless he has a 3 hour block of time to make elaborate Indian curry dishes.

He didnt take this announcement too well.

Not because he invisions me chained to the stove. Not because he can't cook (he is actually an excellent cook). But, because he felt angry at me for wanting to eat meat. He knew it was irrational. He told me he wasnt upset, that he had no reason to be upset, that he knew and understood that I ate meat.

Knowing is one thing.

Accepting is another.

Veggie Heaven

R is still in town :).

Veggie Heaven (99% vegan, 100% vegetarian)
1914 Guadalupe St, #A
Austin, TX

We went to Veggie Heaven on Wednesday. It was a typical small cheap place...plastic looking tables, etc. The service was definitely mediocre, our waitress spoke inaudibly softly. The food was fine, nothing to write home (or blog) about really. R got the bamboo tofu and his was pretty good, better than mine (hoisin tofu), but it tasted like the kind of dish you would get at a cheap, bad Chinese restaurant, but minus the grease. Bamboo tofu had flavor and spice (mine did not) but both were drowning in their sauces. We split vegan pot stickers for an appetizer and they were quite good, but didn't really resemble pot stickers physically or in taste. It was basically some kind of veggie puree (with an oddly smooth texture) inside of a rice wrapper that was fried into a circle. Never the less, we both enjoyed them. I have heard good things about their yam dish but forgot to try it. The one perk of this restaurant: options. There were 50 entrees on the menu + appetizers, etc.

We are going to Curra's tonight and I am excited. They boast that they have award winning enchiladas. But, more importantly, they have molletes. A treat I have not had since my summer in Morelia, Mexico. They also have soy chorizo on th menu and I read on one vegetarian website that they will substitute it for any meat in a dish. :-P

Austin, the first of many

As you know, I am living in Austin, Texas at the moment. An oasis in a desert. Literally.

In this blog I plan on not just including purely vegetarian restaurants, but ones that have delicious vegetarian options (plural. I know how frustrating it can be for a vegetarian to go to a restaurant that someone else chose and see that the only thing they can order is a Boca burger or the most plain pasta on the planet).

The first two restaurants listed below I tried within the past few weeks and liked quite a bit. I went to Madras Pavilion last October, but will go again soon and update.

Mother's Cafe and Garden (100% vegetarian)
4215 Duval St.
Austin, TX 78751
http://motherscafeaustin.com/

R (the boyfriend) and I went there yesterday for dinner. I had the Fettuccine Primavera and he had the Garden Stir Fry which came with black beans. I didn't try his, but he was very happy & mine was delicious. The "sauteed vegetables" they advertise on the menu turned out to include: onions, carrots, bell peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, and yellow zucchini. Delicious. It was served with a light cream sauce (which was a little too abundent for my taste, but it was a thin sauce so it wasnt overwhelming) and egg fettuccine (which tasted and looked home made). All in all, very good. I hear they have great brunches too.

Swad (100% vegetarian)
9515 N. Lamar Blvd #156
Austin, TX 78753

Finally some good Indian food in Austin!! I have been here twice now and have been very pleased. Their masala dosa is good...but after living in the bay area it is hard to even think of a dosa as amazing as some I have eaten out there. The dosa itself I found to be a little too thick and slightly over cooked. The potato curry inside was plentiful and very tasty. The sambar was solid and standard. Chaat Samosa (samosa with a chick pea curry poured over it) was amazing & I am a huge fan of their plain samosas as well. There was another dish, I cant remember what they called it, but it is also known as Chole Bhature (spicy chickpeas in a thin curry with a fried bread)...maybe they called it Chana Bhature, and that was excellent. Paneer pakora was a little bland and lacked the nutty flavor of well cooked paneer that I enjoy, but the sauce they serve it with makes up for any lack of flavor :). Overall, an inexpensive and delicious Indian experience.

Madras Pavilion (100% vegetarian)
9025 Research Blvd #100
Austin, TX 78758
http://www.madraspavilion.us/MPAustin.html

I went here for the lunch buffet a while back and thought the options were delicious and varied. A little pricy, if I remember correctly. Around $12 for lunch but very good food. I hope to go back there to try some non buffet items soon and I will add to this review then.

Thailand

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/travel/01choice.html?ref=travel

Below is the complete text of the NY Times article I referenced in the last post:

Choice Tables

In Thailand, Vegetarians Find a Place at the Table

The New York Times

Students at Gap’s, a cooking school in Chiang Mai, sample their assignments.

By GREGORY DICUM

Published: March 1, 2009

FIRECRACKERS rained down like hail, filling the street with sulfurous billows. Young men, dressed in white, waved towels, trying to keep the explosives away from the black-faced god seated in the ornate sedan chair that some of them held aloft. There, in the center of it all, Phuket Town fell away; the formerly opulent Portuguese-Chinese mansions and rows of boxy concrete shops faded as the hot morning sun swooned before clouds of acrid smoke.

Participants in Phuket’s annual Festival of the Nine Emperor Gods follow a strict set of moral guidelines during its course, refraining from drinking alcohol, fibbing, killing, gossiping and, among other things, eating meat. Yet if the festival is known at all outside the region, it is for this small detail: In English, it is usually called the Phuket Vegetarian Festival.

Put this way, it sounds so earnestly wholesome. And to me, a longtime vegan, it sounded ideal. On many of my previous visits to Thailand, trying to find meat-free meals had been a challenge, ending up in forced marches and rumbling stomachs. Even with the best of intentions — and with Thai friends interceding and explaining my predilections carefully — I have found Thai cooks hard pressed to skip the fish sauce. But of late, things have been changing. So I thought the festival would be a good starting point for an exploration of a broader growth of vegetarian food within Thailand’s cuisine.

But things in Thailand always turn out to be more complex — and more fascinating — than one expects. “I thought that it would be a celebration of our lifestyle,” said Maria Brenner, a vegan from Los Angeles I had met at the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, “but this is something else.”

As she spoke, possessed spirit mediums clad in iridescent satin aprons wound through the smoke-shrouded streets. Each had pierced his or her cheeks as a sign of — and aid to — deep trances. Many make it a competition, walking through the streets of Phuket Town with saw blades, television antennas and model ships poking through suppurating slits as they visit streetside altars laid out by townsfolk and bless onlookers.

The festival is a wildly syncretic melee, combining elements of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and the traditions of Ming Dynasty secret societies. During the nine-day festival, which honors the North Star at the start of the ninth lunar month, usually in October, household gods are brought to the city’s elaborate Chinese temples.

The event attracts few foreigners. The festival takes place before Phuket’s high season, and most visitors keep to the beaches and shopping arcades outside the city. They are missing out: Phuket Town, along with the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore, is home to a peculiar hybrid of Chinese commercial culture and tropical laissez-faire that dates back centuries. During the festival, which began in 1825, the Straits Chinese culture — richly wild but also inclusive and eagerly welcoming — is on display at its most exuberant.

“The North Star is special for Overseas Chinese,” said Karidee Chotithamaporn, a psychologist and amateur historian who chronicles the festival’s history. “It is the leading star — it never moves — and shows the way back home.”

I met with Ms. Chotithamaporn at the Bang Neaw shrine. We looked across the courtyard under the shrine’s opulent dragon-wreathed roof at a bustling evening scene of thousands of people dressed in white and carrying bundles of incense beneath multicolored banners. A troupe of boys provided an unrelenting storm of drums and cymbals punctuated by the occasional thunder of fireworks. Billows of smoke ascended into the warm night air, past a long bamboo pole that held aloft a set of nine oil lamps that floated above the crowd like the stars themselves.

In Thailand, food made without animal ingredients is called jeh, a term generally used interchangeably with the Western idea of vegetarian food, particularly at restaurants frequented by foreigners. But it also has a deeper dimension of religious purity: at the festival, only food made at the ornate, bustling shrines is sanctified and thus technically jeh. Devout participants come each evening to collect their jeh meals in steel tiffin carriers. The food, prepared by cheerful volunteers in cauldrons as big as bathtubs, is free. If it has a certain overcooked institutional quality, it is from an institution that knows its way around herbs and spices: flavors are assertive and complex.

But the real action was in the streets. In front of each temple was a buzzing sidewalk market of food stalls, each flying little yellow flags — the color of the Chinese Emperors — signifying participation in the festival. It was a sort of alternative Thailand; a vegetarian paradise where I could just plop down and eat whatever mysterious morsel was dropped in front of me.

The biggest was a stretch of several blocks of Thanon Ranong in front of the Pud Jor Shrine, near the heart of old Phuket Town. Thousands of yellow flags fluttered in the hot afternoon air. Mopeds and laughing children dodged huge woks of boiling oil as strolling festivalgoers, all wearing white, snacked on roasted plantains, fried bananas, curry fritters, spring rolls, noodle rolls, hunks of jackfruit and durian, mangoes and rose apples, and sticky rice wrapped in pandanus leaves. I stopped for a classic: flawlessly ripe mango, soft and succulent and resting on a divan of toothsome sticky rice, all bathed in silky, suavely salty coconut sauce.

I walked slowly past grilled corn, boiled peanuts, steamed buns, fruit-flavored mochi rolled in coconut, dark cubes of grass jelly, and roasted purple-skinned sweet potatoes. At a gleaming stainless steel stall festooned with fresh morning-glory leaves, I had a bowl of wheat noodles in a rich brown broth topped with wood ears and white fungus, crisp tofu chunks and fried wonton wrappers. I moved on past fresh juices, soy chicarrones, heaps of noodles, steaming pots of curry and the ingredients that would go with each: long beans, greens, bitter melon, water mimosa and small green eggplants.

With Ms. Brenner and her fiancé, Matt Flanzer, I ducked into the shade of an awning shared by a number of stalls for a sliced cutlet of faux chicken (crispy skin, succulent flesh — so convincing it’s impossible to guess what it might have been made of) served on rice with a hot, sweet barbecue sauce redolent of peanuts and coconut. In a droll play on globalization, the stall was called “JFC”. Two dishes of “chicken” and rice, some noodles and a couple of Cokes cost the equivalent of about $4. As we ate, a medium in a yellow apron, his head shaking from side to side in trance and his bare arms covered in tattoos, came through the dining area sweeping a black flag above our heads. We raised our hands to our foreheads, and he blessed us all.

The combined influence of newly strict interpretations of Buddhist principles, Western notions of vegetarianism and prominent Thai vegetarians like Chamlong Srimuang (he led last year’s antigovernment protests and started Suan Pai, a chain of indifferent vegetarian restaurants) has resulted in a growing contingent of restaurants serving vegetarian Thai food — a welcome addition to one of the greatest eating countries on Earth. It fits in well with Thailand’s culinary sophistication, a tradition that prizes freshness and bold, but balanced, flavors.

After the festival, I headed to the northern city of Chiang Mai to taste how the country’s vegetarian currents come together most completely. I visited Khun Churn, a pioneer vegetarian restaurant that has just moved to a new location in an outdoor garden on a quiet street. Students from the nearby university, visitors and stylish but casual locals gather for painstakingly crafted vegetarian versions of classic Thai dishes. I tried mieang ta krai bai cha pla, bundles of fresh herbs (including lemon grass, mint and cilantro) mixed with roasted sesame, peanuts, coconut and chili paste set atop a pretty flower of dark green betel leaves. I wrapped one into a zingy little bundle and popped it into my mouth, marveling at the peppery bite that demonstrated the incomparable qualities of Thai food in Thailand: rare ingredients, sublimely fresh and prepared by masters.

Larb Esarn, a northern dish in which the ground pork was replaced by steamed chopped tofu with dried chilies, ground roasted rice, shallots, mint, green onions and coriander root, was just one of 14 spicy salads on the menu. It was vibrant and peppery; salty spice carried a high note of lime juice in an explosive bouquet.

I can’t help judging a Thai restaurant by its green curry, and Khun Churn’s gaeng keaw wan yod ma prow was alive with delightfully succulent white coconut sprouts, chewy soy protein, crisp baby corn, soft green eggplant and tiny eggplants the size of blueberries that popped in my mouth with a soft crunch. I thought the curry was a little light on coconut milk, but it made my nose run in short order, just the way I like.

Nakaret Montienmanee, one of Khun Churn’s owners, told me that his parents had originally run a nonvegetarian restaurant, but they had been so impressed by a local monk’s teaching of ahimsa — nonviolence — that they had been moved to start Khun Churn. “Fifteen years ago, there was only small jeh,” he told me. “This is more complex.”

Pun Pun Restaurant, not far away on the grounds of the Buddhist University at Wat Suan Dok, is a quiet oasis under a spreading banyan tree. The obligatory and charmingly personable saffron-robed monks wander the grounds amidst plenty of foreigners, both visitors and students at the university. I visited on a hot day, when the shade of the tree and an ice cold glass of lemon grass juice, with simple syrup on the side, made for the ideal refuge.

As befits a restaurant associated with an organic farming and seed-saving project, the menu at Pun Pun was the least traditional, but most playful and delicate, at the restaurants I visited. Salad dok mai was a mound of vibrant fried flowers: fuchsia bougainvilleas, little green buds and pink blossoms like crepe paper that carried a note of bitterness under a lush garlicky dressing. Khao Soi, a classic northern dish of egg noodles in yellow curry sauce, was spicy and rich. The crispy-soft noodles fell like elegant ribbons from the tips of my chopsticks. Pad pak good was a stir fry of fiddleheads, which I had never before encountered in Thailand. The unfurling fern leaves were crunchy and just slightly succulent, offset by delicate cubes of tofu and shiitake buttons. This artistry emboldened me to try Pun Pun’s gaang massaman. It was creamy and rich, just as it should be; tawny with cashews and angular cubes of potato jostling on my spoon with silky oyster mushrooms.

I strolled back out into the sun, past the temple’s peaked, glittering roof and the golden and white chedis gleaming under the blue sky with my next stop already in mind: I had to figure out how to make some of these things.

Chiang Mai has dozens of cooking classes, including a few all-vegetarian ones. I took a mixed class from Gap’s, a highly regarded school run by a guesthouse that also runs a vegetarian restaurant. In a big, leafy garden, my fellow students — a pair of French sisters, an Israeli couple — and I learned that, aside from uncompromising freshness, the secret to Thai cooking is having someone else do the prep work. A team of cheerful assistants handed us freshly chopped ingredients at just the right moments to follow along with our instructor, who went by the nickname Joe, as we stood before individual outdoor woks.

Green curry paste? Tom yam jeh? Steamed pumpkin? No problem at all when the ingredients — farm fresh shallots, galangal, lime rind, coriander root and so on — are ready to drop in the pot. Still, Joe worked us relentlessly, moving the group through seven or eight complete recipes in a few hours. We even left with a to-go bag full of pad thai and spring rolls we had made. I ate them later that night, on my way out of the country: easily the best food I had ever had in an airport, and the perfect — and perfectly ephemeral — souvenir.

SPLENDOR IN THE LEMON GRASS

The Phuket Vegetarian Festival (www.phuketvegetarian.com) is in the fall. All events are free; streetside food is inconsequentially cheap. There is also a more intimate vegetarian festival at the same time in Bangkok.

FOOD

Khun Churn (120/2 Nimmahaemin Road, Soi 17; 66-53-224-124; Chiang Mai; www.khunchurn.th.gs; there is one in Bangkok as well) offers well-executed vegetarian versions of Thai classics. The lunch buffet is 80 baht, about $2.25 at 36.19 baht to the dollar, and a big dinner is 200 baht.

The Pun Pun Restaurant (at Wat Suan Dok on Suthep Road, Chiang Mai; 66-81-470-1461; www.punpunthailand.org) features local organic produce on its extensive and inventive menu. A big lunch runs around 175 baht.

COOKING SCHOOLS

At Gap’s (3 Rachadumnern Road, Soi 4, Chiang Mai; 66-53-278-140; www.thai-culinary-art.infothai.com), all-day classes are 900 baht.

Mai Kaidee’s (202 Ratchaphakinai Road, Chiang Mai; 66-86-398-4808; www.maykaidee.com) is part of a growing vegetarian empire of restaurants in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and a new all-vegetarian cooking school. Classes are 1,200 baht.

READING

The “Vegan Passport” by George Rodger (Vegan Society, 2005, $7) has an explanation of veganism for waiters in nearly 60 languages.

The new Moon Handbook to Thailand (Avalon Travel, 2008, $21.85), offers up-to-date listings and coverage of Thailand’s culinary variety.

“Exploring Phuket & Phi Phi” by Oliver Hargreave (Odyssey, 2008, $24.95), covers the festival in depth.

I am not a Vegetarian

I am not a vegetarian.

My boyfriend is.

I have been thinking about starting this blog for a while now. An article I was reading from yesterday's NY Times on vegetarian travel in Thailand gave me the final push to do it.

I have always loved traveling around the United States: my family criss-crossed the country every which way during my youth. But, a visit to England and France with my aunt when I was 19 changed my life. I fell in love with travel. Since then, my wanderlust has taken me to Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Peru, and Mexico. This summer I am returning to England for an extended London stay and hopefully exploration of Great Britain and perhaps more of Europe. We'll see.

This will be a travel blog. I have been dating my boyfriend for over two years and want to see the world with him. Hopefully, I will have the chance. In my travels around the world and around the world wide web I have discovered that it is a harsh world out there for vegetarians. There is a dearth of information on vegetarian travel.

Traveling with him even around California, where we both went to high school and college, has been difficult at times. As students at UC San Diego they dont exactly make it easy for you. Now I am living in Austin -- a world of bbq and Tex-Mex -- and his options are even more limited.

I hope to share in this blog my experiences traveling as well as information I gather about vegetarian eating around the world. Perhaps, ocassionally, I will post a recipe...maybe...if you are lucky :).

Right now I am living in Austin, Texas but have trips planned to San Diego and Berkeley, CA and New York City to visit graduate schools. Expect posts on those locations soon.