Vegan Party Favors

Posting this one from my parents' house, which they just moved into nearby us -- we just ate a great meal of quinoa, kale, Tofurkey sausage, and white beans with squash... yum. But that's not what I'm here to talk about! What do two vegans give away as party favors at their reception? Umm... vegan chocolate, duh. This is a non-recipe but very party-related post (we'll get some recipes to you soon!) -- these were a big crafts project for me and my assistant Dan. Here's the final result:

Vegan Wedding Party: Appetizers part 1

Dan and I had our vegan "wedding" (really reception) last weekend, with a welcome party on Friday night and the real deal on Saturday. We pulled off Friday night with some major successes and one minor failure... I forgot to take any photos of the food! I sent a photo of the wine to my friends, which happens to have food in the background, though, check it out:

Appetizer table --
The dishes of this post are in that blue/white dish and the out-of-sight dish on its left,

Vegan MoFo - First Post Fajitas!

I'm planning to use Vegan MoFo as a motivator to get back into posting often -- but for this first week of September, we're up in Wisconsin with not much internet services, so posts will be sparse until we're home. BUT, the reason we're up here is related to our MoFo theme -- we're holding our vegan wedding reception up here!

We arrived on Saturday equipped with photos from cookbook pages, Vegusto and Just Mayo packed in ice, & ingredients lists for everything else we need... and that's just the cooking part. Lots of other prep work to be done (and I had initially imagined this as a low key event.....)

Anyway, as a kickoff post, a pre-wedding-reception meal -- easy to make, healthy (ish?) and delicious. We had some fajitas with onions, peppers, vegan chicken, and homemade tortillas, as well as the summer tomato salad from Cookin' Crunk.  

Mad Momo's

I realize this is the first post in a few months -- I'll pretend we have a valid excuse, planning a wedding reception takes energy! And a reception weekend where we plan on cooking for everything but the main event requires devoted recipe searching/testing energy, thus a diversion from posting. But - it will pay off next month, we will post about the reception for Vegan Mofo in September!

In the meantime -- I felt compelled to sing the praises of a great restaurant near our place, Mad Momo's. (It has a beer deck too - we haven't gone specifically for the beer deck, but how awesome does that sound right now, what with the mild weather this August?)

Dan and I have gone here four times by now - and every time I order the same thing, the vegan thukpa noodle bowl. We also have had the vegan momos, which I don't have a photo of, but they're amazing - not to be missed. 

Vegan tofu thukpa noodle bowl

There's a reason I order the thukpa bowl every time - it's really good. It has tofu, kale, carrots, lettuce, and some herby stuff that dissolves into the broth (sorry for my lack of adequate descriptors.) The tofu is crispy - I'm not sure how they fry it, but I want to learn! The broth has kind of changed each time I've been, from more on the green side to more dark brown colored, but it's always good.

Last time we went, Dan had the vegan naan-mi (there's a cultural mash-up for you...), which has tofu with a bit of slaw inside of a naan bread. With... tater tots? (It works...)

It's not as good as my thukpa bowl, but if I was going to cheat on the thukpa, it would be with this. And hey, the tots are pretty good...

Mad Momo's also has some good cocktails (I like the Get On the Floor) and beer/wine selections. They do half-price bottles of wine on Saturday, which is a great deal.

The restaurant is located on 14th street & Perry Place, about a 7-10 minute walk north of the Columbia Heights metro station. I recommend heading over to Lyman's Tavern afterwards & enjoying another round of drinks with some pinball. Enjoy it while the weather is nice!

Vegan party!

About a month ago, Dan and I hosted a party in DC for our JASC friends to come and eat/drink/be merry & "celebrate togetherness", i.e. our engagement. We had planned for a picnic outside and ordered food and cake in advance, so when it rained that weekend, we had to go to plan B -- which happened to be our favorite sports bar, Rocket Bar. Rocket Bar doesn't have its own food, so it allows you to bring in outside food. This was perfect for us, since we'd already arranged our vegan catering for pick-up!

We had five people staying over at our apartment that weekend, so I tried to start the morning off nice with some vegan cinnamon rolls - a nearly disastrous endeavor, since our oven started smoking, and not in a glamorous 60s kind of way (OK, smoking was never that glamorous.) There was some crud at the bottom of the oven making a terrible smoke, which miraculously didn't leave its mark on the cinnamon rolls. They came out fine - more undercooked than usual, because we were so eager to stop the smoke!

Luckily, the food only got better from that point on. Woodland's Vegan Bistro supplied us with fried "chicken" and macaroni & cheese to feed 15 (and then some), along with barbecue sauce and hot sauce. Dan made some pasta salad, and a friend brought chips and hummus. I LOVE Woodland's vegan chicken, and though it's always better fresh out of the frier, the leftovers kept Dan and I happy for days. And, the macaroni and "cheese" is one of the best dishes in DC, and I'm not the only one who says so.

Our friend Diane got a photo of the plated food -- I was too busy running around ordering champagne and trying to get the jukebox to play good music to remember to take a photo!

We also ordered a cake for the occasion, from Sweet Themez Bakery. They made us a "Cherry Blossom" cake, which was cherry-flavored cake and cherry jam in the middle - we loved it! Again, borrowing a photo from another friend, Yuri.

Sometimes it's not that exciting to have a lot of food and cake left over after a party, but we were grateful for it - with guests staying over the next day, it helped feed us all for lunch and sustained my lunches for a few days afterward. And I could eat that cake for days if I had to!

So, lesson learned - vegan parties in DC are a piece of cake, even when it rains. I won't pretend I wasn't nervous about the logistics of getting us all together & well fed, but it all came out perfectly, and we had a great time hanging out with our close friends.

Homemade vegan ravioli

Last weekend we made vegan ravioli with cashew "ricotta" filling. The pasta dough worked out superbly. I'll share the recipe below so others can partake in the ravioli fun -- it is a bit of work without a pasta roller, but they cook really quickly, and what's better than homemade pasta?

I'll give the recipe, then a few photos of the process, rather than interrupting the instructions with photos - that gets really confusing to follow, I know. So look to the end for photos, and enjoy!

Homemade ravioli! With kalamata olives and spinach over tomato sauce

Salt Lake City Vegan

We just got back from a ski/work trip to SLC, which also turned out to be a vegan food trip (as they all do...) It was like everything we ate just got better and better.

Tiramisu from Sage's Cafe

Cold-weather food

DC weather has been weird this month--we saw the effects of the polar vortex just like everyone else, then it was 50 degrees days later, followed by some near-freezing days. I can't remember if the past two years here were like this, but it seems really erratic.

Anyway, it's been generally cold, and we've been making some soups and curries to warm ourselves up lately. Check it out --

Ramen with smoked vegan goose, baby corn, and bok choy

More vegan holiday meals

We went to Dan's house in Wisconsin for Christmas week, and had some awesome food -- homemade pizza, soups that his mom made, and an all-vegan Christmas dinner!

Dan's mom cooked pretty much everything but the gravy (which I made, but I didn't do that good of a job!) and I helped bake the Field Roast, which is pretty low-maintenance. Clockwise from the very left, you can see the perfectly shaped homemade rolls, Field Roast with gravy and cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes & squash, brussels sprouts, and fruit. I know the sizes seem small, but this filled me up.

This was my first time trying Field Roast, and while I really like many of their products, I have to say I prefer Tofurkey to their holiday roast. But, it did its job filling us up, for sure.

Cinnamon rolls

I also carried on my family tradition of having cinnamon rolls before opening presents in the morning. When I was little, we did the Pillsbury rolls, but I don't think those are vegan -- even if they were, these are way better. I use Vegan Yum Yum's recipe and it always works, even when I accidentally use like half the yeast needed, like this time (needed, or kneaded? ha ha...) I was happy these turned out so well and Dan's family got to try them. 

Dan's mom is also an amazing baker & made tons of vegan cookies and treats -- I didn't get a photo of those, sadly (I was busy taking photos of a kitten...) -- but believe me when I say the cookies were picture perfect & their taste more than lived up to it. 

For New Year's, we were back in DC, and didn't do much on New Year's Eve (I went to work the next day, & we didn't feel much like going out). But, on New Year's Day, we made black eyed peas for good luck.

Black eyes peas, rice, and yes, that's cabbage

The recipe for the black eyed peas is from Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. We might have subbed a few of the vegetables with whatever we had on hand, but it turned out really yummy. The grocery store was out of cabbage heads -- everyone had the same plans, I guess -- so we got some shredded purple cabbage, which is totally not for this purpose, but it's such a nice shade of purple! We put some salt and apple cider vinegar on it and it all worked out.

I hope everyone else had a good holiday season and a great start to the new year. I don't really do resolutions, but I do plan to maintain a lifestyle that helps me and the people around me to feel good. Dan and I will be starting our first year as a married couple, and while I don't think marriage is what makes a partnership special, it will be great to celebrate our happiness this year with our friends and family, and then with each other for years to come. 

On that sentimental note, have an amazing 2014!