DDOW - Romesco Rice & Garbanzo Veg Za'atar Salad - Vegan MoFo 2013

Another DDOW! This will be the last DDOW of Vegan Month of Food, but I intend to continue posting these beautiful and tasty dishes whenever I get them.

This week's featured dishes were great, as always. I mixed them together and really enjoyed it. I didn't have any greens, but it would be fantastic on top of kale or arugula or spinach. The bean salad had cucumbers, cabbage, and some fresh herbs. The rice was great too.

From the Website:

Garbanzo Bean & Veg Za’atar Salad (V, GF, soy-free, no added sugar) Za’atar, a spice mixture popular throughout the Middle East, comprises ground dried thyme, oregano, marjoram, toasted sesame seeds and salt, and also often ground sumac, which has a lemony tang. You might encounter it sprinkled on hummus at restaurants. Confession: I bought a large bag at Holy Land Deli on Central Ave, a local mecca of affordable spices. Run, don’t walk.

Rice Romesco (V, GF, soy-free, no added sugar; contains almonds) Romesco sauce is a classic Catalonian simmered sauce of mostly red bell peppers mixed with ground nuts. The carrier here is organic brown rice. You can eat this dish cold or hot. By this week, inexpensive pecks of peppers should be all over the Farmers Markets (a peck is approx 8 dry quarts, with 4 pecks to a bushel). Take advantage of the harvest bounty and make a couple quarts at home to slather on everything (can freeze).

Veggie Wrap and trail mix - Bellagio Casino, Las Vegas, NV

I recently traveled to Las Vegas, NV, and enjoyed quite a few delicious meals. It takes a little more searching to find truly satisfying vegan food (something other than just french fries) but it exists.

Pictured above: a veggie wrap with no cheese filled with alfalfa sprouts, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, served with a little garnish salad of cabbage, sprouts and veggies as well as a pickle. It also came with a plate of french fries. This was off of the room service menu at the Bellagio.

Pictured below: tasty trail mix from the Bellagio gift shop, Tutto. Why take a picture of it? It was impressive for trail mix: pepitas, roasted soy nuts, roasted flax seeds, raisins, goji berries, sliced almonds.



We also ate at a fast food type of place in the Bellagio called "Snacks," where they had vegetarian lentil soup and fries. They also had a veggie sandwich but we didn't get it or inquire if it had cheese or other non-vegan items.

Spinach Salad from Cue at The Guthrie Theater

Here is a lovely salad from Cue, a restaurant inside The Guthrie Theater. A nice pile of baby spinach, tossed in a vinaigrette and topped with chopped Marcon almonds. The salad is surrounded by delectable little raspberries.

Sprouted Grain English Muffins with Almond Date Cream Cheese Spread

I don't know exactly why I made this, but I'm glad I did. I just toasted an English muffin (I get these really yummy sprouted grain ones from Whole Foods) and spread 1T of Tofutti Cream Cheese on each half. Then, I took one almond date roll that I had purchased from the co-op and smashed it into the cream cheese so it became a spread. I'm sure that a better way to do this would be to thoroughly mix the cream cheese and date nut roll in a separate container, but this was more fun.

This was an awesome sweet and savory mix of flavors. Overall, a little indulgent but worth it.

Cheesecake On Parade

In Celebration of my day of birth, I was given and consumed a LOT of vegan cheesecake. All of the cheesecake was from the lovely Muddy Paws Cheesecake in Minneapolis, where they have over 180 flavors of dairy cheesecake and many many flavors of vegan cheesecake. They also have vegan cheesecake single slices available daily, at least one to two flavors.

The large picture shown above is a whole blueberry chocolate chip cheesecake. Wow. That's all I have to say.

Here's a slice:



I was unable to get a decent picture of this Raspberry Almond Cheesecake, you'll have to trust that it is better than it looks here:



Finally, an apricot? style cheesecake. I'm not sure, but that was my best guess as I ate it. It was an unlabeled gift, I just know it was vegan and meant to be consumed by me, haha: