Monday, August 23, 2010

Breaking the Egg Habit

With a half-billion eggs being recalled because of salmonella contamination, it’s a great time to consider alternatives to eggs.

Apart from food safety concerns, the cruelty of the battery-cage system—which involves at least 95 percent of the chickens that lay eggs in the U.S.—is more than enough reason to avoid eggs.

Happily, there are so many “eggscellent” alternatives, you won’t go hungry. The one to choose depends on what you’re doing.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz, author of such popular books as Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, says of eggs in baking, “like a bad boyfriend, they can be replaced, and with pleasing results.” She offers specific suggestions at her Post Punk Kitchen website.

Isa doesn’t mention it, but soy flour is another simple egg replacer. Just use about a tablespoon of the flour and a quarter-cup extra liquid (soy milk, or whatever other liquid you’re using in the recipe) for each egg you’re replacing. One caution: The raw soy flour can cause an unpleasant taste in cookie or cake batter. But never fear, the off taste completely disappears once the dish is baked.

There’s even a mix for making vegan meringue from Angel Food of New Zealand, which is available through mail-order sources in the U.S. I haven’t tried it, but it has received good reviews online.

For breakfast, scrambled tofu is almost as much of a cliché as scrambled eggs. You can find dozens, perhaps hundreds of recipes for it. Isa has a good one. Another great source for breakfast recipes is Chooseveg.com, a project of the group Mercy for Animals. It has at least three scrambled-tofu recipes, plus recipes for “eggs” Benedict; French toast, crepes, and other delicacies you might imagine require eggs. After breakfast, explore the rest of the Chooseveg.com site for more egg, dairy and meat-free ideas.

My personal breakfast favorite is banana pancakes. Add more spice than the recipe calls for, top them with blueberries and a side of vegetarian sausage … breakfast of champions! (They’re even better if you have leftovers and reheat them.)

This post is getting long, and it could go much longer because there are so many delicious alternatives. For lunch, maybe you like egg salad sandwich? ChooseVeg.com has a simple recipe. Maybe for supper you fancy Caesar salad? It’s no problem to make the dressing without eggs (or anchovies)— Beautiful Vegan offers one version—and there are many others.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Veggie Awards

It’s that time of year again to vote in VegNews magazine’s Veggie Awards. You could win prizes, including a trip, a year of Daiya cheese or a collection of vegan cookbooks.

Go here to vote.

Friday, July 30, 2010

It’s On!

Plans for Winston-Salem’s first vegetarian restaurant are on again. A sign at 209 W. Fourth St., the former site of Downtown Deli, promises that The Grilled Asparagus is coming soon. It was reported in May that the restaurant would be in the building vacated by Mary’s of Course! but those plans fell through. It’s very exciting that they have take root at another location—especially one in easy walking distance from my office.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Farm-fresh meal

Serendipity (and an inexplicable police barricade of Sandy Ridge Road) led me to discover the J&S Country Store several months ago. You might remember J&S Farms and their organic produce from their space at the right rear of the retail building at the Triad Farmers Market in Colfax. Well, now they have their own small country store about a mile away at 2301 Sandy Ridge Rd. It’s a wonderful place to find quality organic produce—plus freshly baked goodies, since they share the space with an artisan bakery, SwedeBread.

I visited Saturday and came away with a nice assortment of produce, including several pints of what I mostly went for, organic blueberries. One of the fun things about summer farmers markets is buying what is fresh and in-season and then figuring out what to make with it. Here’s a picture of what resulted from my buying trip:

I made an eggplant, squash and tomato gratin; sauteed kale with white beans, red onion and veggie bacon; and baked sweet potatos with pecans and maple syrup. All the produce came from J&S, apart from the tomatoes and fresh herbs, which came from my own garden. The hearty, multigrain roll came from SwedeBread.

All in all, it was a bright, fresh, filling (and tasty, if I do say so myself) meal. So take this summer challenge: Next time you visit a farmers market, try going in without a meal plan and see what develops!

The phone number of the store is (336) 665-0350, and you can contact them at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). They send out an e-mail weekly to let subscribers know what’s fresh in the store that week. (Just a note: The SwedeBread baker, Lena, is on vacation in Sweden, so there won’t be any fresh bread there for the next month. You can see her Web site here.)

Monday, July 12, 2010

A story to relish

Make sure you check out this Thursday’s edition of relish. The cover story is just for you! Laura Giovanelli talks to area vegetarians and vegans to find out some of their favorite local dishes and places to eat—plus how they get creative when eating out.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

28-day vegetarian meal plan

Eating Well magazine has an online 28-day vegetarian meal plan, breaking down what you can have for each meal, with links to recipes. You can choose a per-day calorie target of 1,200, 1,500 or 1,800 calories. This looks like a nice plan to follow if you’re looking for a vegetarian diet, though you’d probably have to have more free time for cooking than I do to be able to follow it completely. If nothing else, it will give you some great ideas and links to yummy-sounding recipes (Asian Slaw with Tofu and shitake Mushrooms! Carmelized Onion and White Bean Flat Bread! Squash, Black Bean and Goat Cheese Tamales! Carrot Saute with Ginger and Orange!).

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Morningstar Farms

I was at Lowes Foods in Clemmons last night and discovered that Morningstar Farms has added several new products to its line, including: a turkey-style burger with avocado, a 1/4-pound veggie burger, sweet-and-sour “chicken” and a “chicken” enchilada. I didn’t get any, because my freezer is currently stuffed to the maximum capacity, but I look forward to trying them. Has anyone tried them yet?

You can read more about the new products here.

I still haven’t forgiven them for discontinuing their “steak” strips, though.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Curses! Foiled again!

It was a beautiful dream, while it lasted, for Winston-Salem to have its own vegetarian restaurant. The Grilled Asparagus was supposed to open July 1 in the spot where Mary’s of Course restaurant had been before it moved to Trade Street to become Breakfast of Course (Mary’s Too). But, alas, according to a post on the Breakfast of Course! Facebook page, “The original location of Mary’s Of Course at 301 Brookstown Avenue is still available! The gentleman who wanted to open a vegetarian cafe there was not able to.”

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Thai one on

Thai Sawatdee—known to my friends as “Teeter Thai” for its location in the Harris-Teeter grocery store on Cloverdale Avenue—has opened up a second location. The new restaurant is on Healy Drive in the strip-mall spot formerly occupied by Miss Annie’s Caribbean and French restaurant.

The one thing lacking in the Harris Teeter location has always been ambience, and the new spot rectifies that. It’s small, but with lovely, Asian-elegance decor. And there aren’t flourescent lights shining down on piles of grapefruits and apples a few feet away.

More important, the food is outstanding and a great value—and the menu is larger. At lunch, there are 24 specials to choose from, with tofu available in all but a couple of meat-specific dishes. For $6.95, you get a healthy entree portion, rice, two spring rolls and a salad with yummy peanut dressing. My pad eggplant (No. 24) was bright and colorful, with purple-skinned Asian eggplants, julienned carrots, onion, mushrooms, bell peppers and basil—and the best tofu I’ve had in quite awhile.

Dinner dishes are also reasonably priced, at $8.95 for an entree with tofu.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Krankies’ Farmers Market

Today I finally managed to make it to the Krankies Farmers Market, which is held on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. in the blocked-off block of Patterson Street directly behind Krankies. I’d been meaning to for awhile, but never seemed to get around to it. Boy, was I was impressed! It was bustling today—helped in no small part (pun intended) by the first-graders on a field trip running around. There were more booths than I expected, and the produce looked uniformly stellar. The lettuces looked particularly bountiful. I picked up a bunch of unblemished multi-colored radishes, some flawless red potatoes, an indulgently gooey sticky bun and a feta-cheese-filled bread pocket. There were so many other options, too—locally made cheeses and butter, bread and pastries (including gluten-free), fresh herbs, tomato plants, mushrooms, homemade soaps, turnips the diameter of small plates, those beautiful lettuces, even wraps and other items for a quick lunch.

I definitely need to check out this market more often!