Stuffed Manicotti Dinner

Mr. Coconut and I cooked a tasty Italian-style dinner for Mr. Coconut's Grandparents. We decided to make one of our favorite meals, Stuffed Manicotti, which I've blogged about before.

I made some focaccia-style bread and some bruschetta mix to go with it. We made some sauce from a combination of some canned whole peeled tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil, oregano, tomato paste, and basil. The star of the show, though, is the pesto tofu ricotta. A blend of basil, garlic, olive oil and walnuts for pesto; mixed with extra firm tofu. We stuffed that into cooked manicotti and then spooned sauce over the top and baked it to heat through everything.

We served the meal with a salad of greens, onions, snap peas, and pepitas (pumpkin seeds toasted and salted).

A Close-up of the meal:

Curried Split Pea Soup from Vegan With a Vengeance

Homemade curried split pea soup, recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance. I dressed the soup up with dulse flakes, spicy tamari roasted pumpkin seeds, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The soup was paired with an apple and a small spinach salad with cherry tomatoes and balsamic/olive oil vinaigrette.

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.