Keeping it on the DL...KC Vegan Crawl!!

This past Sunday commemorated something very special and pretty DL...I started an underground restaurant out of my apartment!! I still need a name, but it is every Sunday from 11 am to 8 pm, and I will be serving one big meal and an awesome dessert, all for under $8! I have been working on the concept and details for about 3 months or more, and it was wonderful to see my hard work come to fruition last weekend. It was crazy to open VegNews this month and there was an article about the exact thing I had been planning for months! Vegans be workin' so harrrrrd! Turnout was pretty small, but I am hoping it will get bigger every week. This all relies on word of mouth, people! If you are in Kansas City or the Missouri/Kansas area, come by! Send me a message and I can give you the details.

For the first week, I made one of my absolute FAVORITE meals: BBQ seitan with all the fixin's. BBQ Seitan (with homemade seitan and homemade bbq sauce), Organic Baked Beans, Whole Grain Cornbread, and Sauteed Local Greens with Garlic (and Hot Sauce!). Soooo comforting and delicious!! Everyone loved it, of course!


And for dessert, I made Oatmeal Butterscotch Pecan Cookies! I made a modified version of my recipe I posted a few months ago....and they were even better than I remembered! Perfection.And just to show you how awesome and veg-friendly Kansas City is...my friend, Dane, is also doing a vegan dinner out of his house every Sunday night, currently called "Sustainability Sundays"! His starts after mine, so it is all friendly between us :) His angle is sustainability in growing, purchasing, and preparing foods, all with vegan ethics in mind. So great! I just had to use this blog to give him vegan props!

This week, he made Local Fruit Pasta with Tomato-Peach Marinara, with local Ciabatta Bread. Not pictured was a Spinach and Berry Salad and Strawberry-Apricot Oatmeal Cookies. He uses basically 99% local ingredients, except stuff like some spices and oil, which is just fantastic! Dane even distributes some literature on sustainable living each week! yay!

So last weekend was the first KC Vegan Crawl, with my place open 11-8 and Dane's 8-11. How could you beat that?! So cheap, so local, so vegan, so good! GO KC!!

Alfredooooooooo! I've missed you!

I am in a veeeerry good mood after my dinner tonight! I made Vegan Alfredo Sauce over Local Sweet Potato Pasta, with Sauteed Kale and Homemade Italian Sausages!!! This meal is exciting for a number of reasons!! I think they will make you happy, too!

1) The Italian Sausage is homemade, for my DIY post this week. Homemade sausages are sooooo much better than store-bought, and a whole lot cheaper! I must admit, I do love a Tofurkey Beer Brat or Field Roast Apple-Sage Sausage when I am feeling lazy, but it is realy worth the effort to make my own! Did I mention that it's cheaper?! I used Julie Hasson's famous steamed sausage recipe from the Everyday Dish site. These are so good! I should have made a ton of them and frozen them for later use....maybe next time. 2) I finally got to have Alfredo Sauce! I haven't had any alfredo-type sauce since going vegan, which is about three years now! I know, I know, there are tons of vegan alfredo recipes out there. I just never remembered to make them, really! Soooo, with the help of some PPK'ers, I found Lachesis' Vegan Alfredo recipe on the PPK forums, and it is so wonderful! Another DIY part of this meal...homemade sauces kick the crap out of store-bought sauces. This is a fact. Decadent, yes, but we could all use a little extra fat in our meals now and again! Oh goodness this was so flavorful and creamy and just like I remembered alfredo sauce being in my pregan days! JOY!!!3) I used the local Sweet Potato Pasta from Pappardelle's, a local pasta-maker here in KC. And I loved it! The sweet potato flavor wasn't too strong, but definetely there! Thanks farmer's market! :)4) This was a healthy and complete meal, pretty quick and easy to make, and it tasted amazing...what's not to love?!??!

(No Animals) Sufferin' Succotash!

Yeah, cheezy title. sorry. This post is aptly named because I discovered a new vegan-friendly restaurant in Kansas City today: Succotash! This was the first Saturday of the season that I went to the farmer's market in downtown KC, which was exciting in itself, but while I was there, I of course had to eat lunch! So when I saw Succotash, it was obvious what my job was. I had heard it was great before AND my mom had a gift certificate AND I was at the City Market, where it is located....how could I not eat there?? The restaurant is in a warehouse-type space and it is decorated really cool, lots of bright colors, paintings, retro lamps, etc.....Also, they have great food! The Pitch voted them best breakfast in Kansas City! I wouldn't say this applied to vegans, as there weren't really many vegan breakfast items, but the lunch food was wonderful! About 90% of the people who worked there were really nice and helpful, but I guess you always remember the 10% that wasn't. Anyway, one of the girls who worked there was vegan, and she pointed out some options on the menu and substitutions and whatnot.

I had the Veggie Wrap: spinach tortilla stuffed with lemony lima bean hummus (subbed for the eggs and cheese. yuck.) , succotash, sun-dried tomatoes, and spinach, served with a HUGE side of home fries! This was amazing! The succotash was really crisp and flavorful, with tons of dill in it, and the lima bean hummus was amazingly creamy and fresh-tasting. I am in love!My mom had the Veggie Quesadilla: spinach tortilla with grilled succotash, tomatoes, spring greens, sun-dried tomatoes, and lemony lima bean hummus (subbed for cheese again), served with also a HUGE side of home fries. She really, really liked this, too! It was a lot like the wrap I had, since we made so many substitutions to make the items vegan, but we both loved what we had! And it was really reasonably priced! Yesssssss!While we were at the farmer's market, we picked up some Sweet Potato Pasta from Pappardelle's, a local pasta maker/vendor. They had a wide selection of pastas to choose from, but many of them had eggs in them. Luckily, they were really helpful in picking out which did not contain eggs, and I knew which one I had to have when my eyes landed on the words "sweet potato" and "pasta" since I am a carb lover and proud of it! Now I just need to figure out a meal special enough to use this in!We also stopped by a local natural foods store, Green Acres Market, to pick up a few groceries. While shopping, we discovered they had a new vegan item in their bakery: Vegan Chocolate Chip Raspberry Bars! I was pumped, because I love the raspberry chocolate chip blondies from VWAV, and these were inexpensive and already made for me! Lazy points! These were really good...not even close to as good as Isa's, duh....but quite tasty for a natural food store's bakery section! The crust was nice and dense and there was just the perfect amounts of both raspberry and chocolate. Very nice. In unrelated news, we had Waldo Pizza for dinner last night! Waldo is a KC local pizza place that has Follow Your Heart Vegan Mozzerella as a topping option, toooooons of veggie topping choices, and several vegan crust and sauce choices! They even sometimes have vegan cookies and brownies, but only if you go on the right day. Figures. We had the standard Veggie Pizza with Vegan Mozzerella...I added some Italian-Baked Tofu I made once we got it home, you know, for a litte more protein. It was so freakin' delicious!! The traditional crust is just the right thickness and it is soft and flavorful and crisp on the edges and perfect! It is nice to know you can always get a good vegan pizza in Kansas City!

Also eaten this week was my Green Tea-Almond Noodles! It's a recipe I have been working on and thinking about (you know how it is....) for a while now, and I think it is pretty much "there." This Asian-style dish is basically udon noodles, toasted almonds, veggies, and the Green Tea Almond Sauce (below), and it makes for a pretty quick and filling meal on a busy weeknight! This was a perfect pre-LOST treat!

Green Tea-Almond Sauce (makes approx. 2 1/2 cups)

2 cups water plus 2 bags green tea

1/4 cup cold water whisked with 2 Tbs cornstarch

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/2 tsp ginger powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper (optional for extra heat)

1/4 tsp almond extract

1 Tbs maple syrup or agave nectar

2 Tbs Dijon or spicy mustard

Bring water to a boil and add tea bags. Remove from heat and let steep for 5 minutes. Remove tea bags return to medium heat. Add the cornstarch slurry and the rest of the ingredients and whisk constantly for about 5 minutes, until the sauce has thickened to a honey-like consistency. Toss with noodles, veggies, and almonds, and then serve hot or cold!

p.s. Is everybody ready to make Easter dinner tomorrow? What are you fixing?

Noodles and a Taste Test

I have been really in the mood for cooking lately, which makes me really happy! Also, I have been doing this thing where I plan the meals for the next week and make a grocery list to match, which has been saving me a TON of money, time, and stress for cooking...and that makes cooking all the more fun!! Here's a few dinners from the past week...I have been craving noodles, so we've had them several times! mmmmm. nooooooooodles.punk-in pasta...with my home-roasted pumpkin, from La Dolce Vegan (with greens added!) and a side of baked apples! the pasta is whole wheat and made LOCALLY! bonus!
mugwort soba noodles with baked tofu, veggies, and a homemade peanut sauce

freaking amaaaazing tempeh reubens!!! ok, it's not noodles, but sauerkraut is noodl-y looking i guess :)

Okay, now on to the chocolate taste test! Our local natural foods market, Clover's, starting carrying this limited edition Chocolove chocolate that is single-origin, fair-trade, and from a 2007 vintage cacao bean crop! I adore chocolate in all ways, so when Steven and I saw that there were four different varieties, he had the genius idea of doing a taste test! We are now well on our way to becoming chocolate connoisseurs!! The four varieties were: 76% cocoa from Tanzania; 72% cocoa from Ecuador; 70% cocoa from the Dominican Republic; and 60% cocoa from Grenada. They were all some of the best chocolates I have ever tasted...perfectly creamy with a good bite, and a wonderful balance of sweetness and bitterness. We did a side-by-side comparison of the four and here were our results (we cleansed our palates in between, of course!)

(Steve took this picture! how cute :) )

Steven's Picks:
1. Grenada 60%

2. Tanzania 76%

3. Dominican Republic 70%

4. Ecuador 72%

My Picks:

1. Tanzania 76%

2. Grenada 60%

3. Ecuador 72%

4. Dominican Republic 70%

You should give these wonderful chocolates a try...even if you don't do a taste test! Or try doing a taste test with a different favorite food...it is a ton of fun!!!!