World-changing avocado

My first trip to New York was awesome. Firstly, it's like vegan mecca. I hear a lot of places are like this;
Portland, for example, is supposed to be filled with delicious vegan food. And I suspect my hoemtown, Toronto, would impress many a vegan who came to visit, with our many delicious vegan restos. But way back in 2010, I was delighted to find a city with so many delicious vegan and vegetarian places to eat, including the breakfast joint of my dreams, 'Snice.
This delicious breakfast was in the restaurant in the main floor of the hotel I stayed at. The hotel is The Jane, and the restaurant is called Cafe Gitane. It is vaguely retro-Moroccan-themed, and I read a review recently that called it overpriced. But I was really impressed--it had all the breakfast staples an mnivore expected, so my friend could enjoy herself as well, and I had a solid 4 or 5 breakfast options, way up from usual choice of, um, dry toast.
The dish that really blew me away was the, um, toast. Avocado on toast, actually, which I was so impressed with that I actually took a photo. It was beautifully presented, of course--much better than the green smudge I normally make myself--and served on whole-grain bread with fresh lime juice, a drizzle of olive oil and chili pepper flakes.
I now make this dish ALL THE TIME. If I can find ripe avocados I snatch them up and and devour them, guilt-free, for as many meals as I can before losing my ripe avocados to the Brown Spots of Doom. I recommend you do, before the Brown Spots set in and wreck your delicious travel-nostalgia breakfast. 

(Road) Avocado Part 2: La vida es Buena en Ecuador!

I love to travel. I grew up in a military family, so I think somehow all that enforced change seeped into my cells and somehow transformed into a desire to seek out new things.
However, as we know, travelling as a vegan can be tricky. So when I went to Ecuador with my mom earlier this year, a good third of my suitcase was food: instant soup, protein bars, shake'n'go smoothie powder, dried fruit... let's just say I brought a lot of food with me. But I brought a lot back home too, since I ate very well for most of my trip.
When we registered for the group tour (we went with GAdventures, by the way, and while this won't be a full-colour ad for them, I can't recommend them enough) we were told I may have trouble during the homestay part of the tour. I won't get into all of it quite yet--waxing poetic about all the delicious things I ate will definitely take more than one post--but the homestay portion was definitely not the hungriest part of my tour.
On my second day in Ecuador (my first day involved a challenging meal at a Chinese restaurant, normally a good option for vegans, in my experience, and "not much" egg), I had an amazing vegan ceviche. I knew about ceviche from Terry Hope Romero's Viva Vegan but my attempt at mushroom ceviche from that cookbook's recipe fell flat. I was delighted to have vegetable ceviche made with peppers, mushrooms, onions, cauliflower, tomatoes and more--served with thick ripe slices of avocado. Heaven! I had veg ceviche a few more times in Ecuador, and soon found it was usually served with a unique regional twist--but more about soon.

(Partially) Illustrated Things I can Always Eat.

I asked a colleague out for lunch last week. She said, "I was going to suggest sushi but you just had some on Friday." First of all--good memory on her, no? Secondly, I can have sushi anytime.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, midnight snack, post workout...I hope you get what I'm saying. There are a few things like that--if someone asked, "How about this for dinner, again?" I would say, hell yeah! So for my first post of VeganMoFo 2012, here is my very informative list, of (Partially) Illustrated Things I can Always Eat.

Sushi, obviously
The elegance of Japanese food is inherently appealing. The focus on the aesthetics is so different from the meat-potatoes-veg dinners so many of us grew up with. Hallelujah for that! And plus we get to use chopsticks, which is how I measured when I became a fully-formed city girl.

Pizza
Generally speaking, I have to make it myself. So I do. If I am especially disciplined, I will make a pizza and take it to work with me for a couple days' worth of lunch, health-ified with a salad on the side. Sex is like pizza, right? I can't remember how exactly, but it sounds right.

Dumplings
They're tiny and varied, they're stuffed with things, and they come with sauces. If dumplings aren't on your list of OMNoms, you must have been born without taste buds.

Grilled Cheese
Since going vegan, grilled cheese wasn't a popular item on my menu rotation. But then there was Daiya; and I discovered my panini press makes grilled cheese extra awesome. (It's all the extra space for crispy-ness that the panini press makes.) Now there is now going back. 

French toast
This has much the same appeal as grilled cheese--it's fried and it's carbs, so gimmeh! Only with French toast, it's not the gooey cheeze that make it extra nom-worthy, it's the stuff you eat it with--fruit, fruit sauce, maple syrup, icing sugar, or completing the full-on hot-breakfast trifecta of hash browns and meatless sausage/bacon. Weekends are made for this, people.

Falafel
Another food that builds on the basic fried carbs, falafel kicks it up a notch. Not only do you have the fried falafel balls and the pita, some food genius decided that contrasting this with cool, crisp parsley and adding some tahini for depth of flavour would take this food to a whole new level. And it did. 

Mexican

There is something about the flavour palate and the often vegan-ness of Mexican-style food that I can't get enough of. And seriously, anything I can add avocados to has my heart. Furthermore, chipotle peppers are the perfect addition of heat, and leave me teary with delicious joy--and a burning tongue.


Avocado
Do I really need to explain this one? If anything with avocados has my heart, then avocados themselves must be amazeballs. It's like this: if movies with Ryan Reynolds are inherently awesome, then Ryan Reynolds himself must be awesome squared. Hard to argue with my impeccable logic, right?
Avocados are smooth and creamy and go well with everything. If you're not convinced, look at the picture and try not to imagine how tasty that is.

Hummus

Humans have four basic needs: air, water, food, shelter. This being the 20th century, we can add Facebook and funny photos of cats if we wanted the list to be truly accurate. Vegans can add hummus to the list of necessities. How many sad, hungry vegan, lost and forlorn--on the road or at an event--has found that delicious saviour, hummus, and become instantly rejuvenated? Hummus is a vegan food that can be found so many places now that it frequently saves us from "just the salad". And thank hummus for that!

Plug in, eat up

I do love my kitchen gadgets. I always toast bread, because keeping a loaf in the fridge means it always needs a little heat before eating. I use my stick blender almost every day to make smoothies. A coffee frother makes delicious faux-lattes with foamy soy milk. And then there's my panini pres...
A panini press is definitely more of a luxury item. Unlike my stick blender, it really does only one thing--make sandwiches, or sandwich-like foods. Unlike my coffee frother, it costs wayyy more than a latte. But it makes cooking so easy.
Tortilla shells are something I pretty much always keep on hand. I have been buying sprouted grain tortillas, which need to be kept frozen, so it makes them slightly less instant, but the added benefits of having something other than plain wheat tortillas makes it worth it. Why? Because my Mexican-style dinners can ready in minutes with my beloved panini press.
With tortilla shells on hand, the only other things I need for an almost-instant meal of vegan quesadillas are chedddar-style Daiya and salsa. If I have cooked black beans on hand, add them and I up the heartiness by half. Add avocado and you double the decadence. To really bring on the delicious glam and the nutrients too, I add cubed sweet potato and kale for a huge, panini-pressed stuffed tortilla. When I make it with that many ingredients, I fold the shell in three so I can press the whole thing but still hold the goodness in.
...I may have a somewhat-unhealthy relationship with my panini press, but the healthiness (and speed!) of the resulting meals more than makes up for it. Happy panini-ing!

Break out of your recipe rut

Sometimes we find ourselves doing the same thing over and over again. Habit can be comforting but it can also be boring. Often we don't even realize we're stuck in a rut until we're on the verge of the umpteenth iteration and we think, "Of course. This again."
I do that with food a lot. I'm sure I'm not the only one--they say most of each person's diet consists of the same 20 foods. And that wouldn't surprise me. There are a few foods I have in the fridge all the time--two of them being toast with hummus and fruit and soymilk smoothies. Both of which I eat for breakfast almost every day. There are sound reasons for this: I don't have a lot of time on weekday mornings and it's simply easier to make the same thing time and again. However, it definitely counts as a breakfast rut. So I was pleasantly surprised when I tried Polenta Rancheros from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Brunch. It was something I could make on the weekend and heat up in the morning, and it would shake up my morning routine enough that it would get me on a new track for breakfast. And frankly, it's delicious. When fresh, the polenta (in place of eggs in the non-vegan huevos rancheros) is soft and creamy, and the contract with the spicy, saucy rancheros is divine. I also love the chance to cram more avocado into my day. So join me, get out of your rut--polenta rancheros for breakfast!