My Oakland Veg Week Experience - With Recipe and Restaurant Ideas



I've been really remiss in posting, especially since this past week was Oakland Veg Week. I took the pledge and immediately broke it last Sunday, the first day, when I sampled a great Filipino soup (I'm going to try to veganize it for us) at a cooking lesson.  But I've been true to my pledge since then.

Here are a few of the dishes I ate this last week -- note - these are not recipes, just kind of lists of ingredients/technique for you to consider:

1. sliced Field Roast chipolte sausage sauteed with red bell pepper, poblano chili, new potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and celery.

2. finger-sized slices of eggplant and fresh tofu cubes both cooked individually in the cast iron skillet until browned and cooked through.  Then a sauce of miso, soy, apple cider vinegar cooked until bubbly and the eggplant and tofu added back in and stirred until coated.  Over leftover restaurant white rice.

3. sauteed Chinese greens (partially steamed before stir frying) with stir fried fresh shitake mushrooms, onions and lots of garlic in mushroom vegetarian stir fry sauce (kind of a vegetarian oyster sauce) with chunks of wheat gluten.  Over fresh Shanghai style noodles.

4. stew of sweet potatoes, plantains, corn, carrots, onion, garlic etc. in mole sauce (watch for a recipe or use a canned brand that lists out ingredients to make sure there's no lard!) with white hominy corn (I used canned. If you use dried, soak and cook before using). Served over brown rice.

5. I haven't tried this one yet - but I sampled it at Trader Joe's and it was great -- cooked lentils mixed with TJ's Curry Simmer Sauce.  Reminded me of an Ethiopian lentil dish (messer-wot) I had at an Oakland Veg Week event. More on that later.

I also ate out -- a vegan Ruben sandwich at Nature's Express (an all vegan restaurant), a vegan bento box at Coach Sushi, vegan burrito (I get the Aztec veggie, ask for no dairy, specify black beans and add on the guacamole) at The Burrito Shop (multiple locations) and samples from the wonderful Ethiopian restaurant Cafe Colucci at the cooking class I had as part of Oak Veg Week.

Oakland Veg Week is over now, but the site has lots of info and resources including recipes and local restaurants that are veg-friendly.  Check it out here.

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Graphic from OaklandVeg.Com

Soy Vey es Meir

It's my birthday today and I'm thinking of what I want to do with my veganizing experience.
Probably write it up for a free-lance article, but also maybe a vegan Jewish cookbook (I'd call it Soy Vey but I think the sauce maker has that copywrited)

Tonight, dinner with hubby and sons at Source in SF -- a mostly vegan restaurant. I'll report back.

Bill of Fare - Some Thoughts on Eating Vegan and the Virtue of Plain Baked Potatoes



Assume that's vegan spread on this hot potato


There is something so creative to me, at least at this stage, about cooking without animal products.

I wouldn't exactly say I've lost my taste for non-vegan foods, but I'd also say that the flavors of what I do eat seem so much stronger and cleaner. 
The food I've been cooking (as opposed to making do with when I eat out) has been astounding.  Take today for instance -- portobello mushroom onion soup (made with my good homemade stock) and cranberry bean and dried tomato bean slather on crusty whole wheat bread for lunch (with a small side of leftover kale and bean saute) and sauteed potatoes, onion, garlic, carrots, turnip greens and tomatoes with smoky tempe with lots of spice for dinner.

The flip side is having to almost always find some way to accommodate my veganism when we go out.  Asian and Indian restaurants are the easiest, everything else can be tough.  Do I really want a sorry-looking iceberg lettuce salad and a plain baked potato for dinner?  No.  Have I eaten that, yes. Partly because going out to eat is usually now not about the food but about the convenience (lots of bean and rice burritos have been consumed) or about being with friends or family (lots of baked potatoes and side orders of veggies). 

Since I've always been so food-focused I kind of relish this switch in perspectives and think it is a good thing. Part of my acceptance comes from knowing what I am doing is good for me, part comes from the "game" I'm playing with myself to do it and part comes from feeling like what I reach my weight loss goal I will add in the occasional animal product so nothing will be off limit forever (disclaimer - I still take tastes of dishes with animal products as part of my freelance food writing efforts, although I find that I am creating fewer and fewer recipes that require that compromise).

The truth is I no longer enjoy (nor does my body) eating more than a few spoonfuls of anything non-vegan.  I am enjoying how I feel with being a vegan.

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Photo credit: WP Clipart

The Dish It Up Vegan Manifesto (or Mani-feast-o, This is a Food Blog After All)

This is me - your Temporary Vegan or is it Pragmatic Vegan?

I'm still trying to figure out how to fit this blog and vegan blog concept together with my life and other writing, which is not surprising since trying to conceptualize "what" kind of vegan I am and how that fits into my life and other writing is an on-going issue for me.

Am I a Temporary Vegan? A Sometimes Vegan? A for Now Vegan, but We'll See About Later? A Pragmatic Vegan? A "Really, It's NOT that Hard to Give Up Cheese, Don't Start on That Vegan? I started eating vegan months ago and remain committed to it in my way until I am back at goal weight and all my cholesterol and related "numbers" are in sync.

I think one reason it took me so long to create this adjunct blog was that I just didn't have clarity.  Just naming this blog was an interesting intersection of available blogger URLs, my chameleon vegan identity and not wanting to create a brand/persona/id too similar to other vegan bloggers out there.  Be glad the blog is not called "I am a Veganess (for now) Hear Me Roar."  Since that clarity hasn't yet occurred, I went for Dish It Up Vegan and here are the limited goals I'm starting out with:

1. To record and share my vegan journey -- you get to hear the stuff I'm careful not to bore my friends with, since I assume if you have sought out this site you are interested in the topic.

2. To parse what being vegan means to me which is subject to change at any time and to create a non-judgemental place for readers and me to explore this.

3. To share vegan restaurants, products, foods, books, blogs, menus and recipe ideas and feature other vegan friends and cooks ideas. Note: recipes will most likely be posted in Blog Appetit (my main "all foods" blog) and either linked or reprinted here depending on my whims and page view stats over at BA.  (I publish my RSS feed for Blog Appetit on the page tab marked "Blog Appetit" above.) But I make a lot of vegan food that you couldn't characterize as having formal recipes and I'll be sharing those ideas EXCLUSIVELY on Dish It Up Vegan.

4. I'm Jewish and often write about Jewish food and related topics, although I consider my food, cooking, tastes and blogs more global than specifically Jewish. I do expect some of that Jewishness will leak over into Dish It Up Vegan and I look forward to sharing that with everyone, but it is just one aspect of what we'll be talking about here.  If a recipe is labeled as Jewish it will conform to Jewish dietary law standards, however other recipes may or may not be kosher.

I'd love to hear about your rookie vegan adventures, tips, resources, post/recipe requests or whatever you'd like to share.  You can comment below, email me through my Blogger profile or send an email to clickblogappetitATgmailDOTcom.

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Photo by Bonnie Burt