My new favorite snack: Teriyaki flavored cactus jerky!

This stuff is totally vegan and is made from dried prickly pear desert cactus. At first glance it looks like dried seaweed, but tastes nothing like it. It honest-to-goodness tastes just like real meat jerky. The texture is so close yet it’s still chewy and moist, maybe just a bit softer than the real thing, and kind of fruity too, like fruit leather. Alright, no one is going to be fooled into believing this is beef, but that’s a good thing, right? I love, love, love this stuff and I’m pretty sure that if you have taste buds, you will too.

I picked mine up locally at the Full of Life natural foods market in Burbank but for those not in the area, you can easily order some directly from Amazon.com. There’s also a spicy variety which I haven’t tried yet, but rest assured I certainly will.

I found a great place where I can enjoy a nice dinner with my meat eating parents, without the struggle of trying to find a restaurant we can all enjoy together, Cafe Graikos Greek and Vegetarian Cuisine in Northridge.

They have a number of vegetarian options and sides, I went full force ahead and got the ‘Vegetarian Combo Platter’ described as follows: “Vegetarians, you cannot ask for anything more. This combo platter comes with Imam Baldi, Briami, lentil pilaf with its delightful Horiatiki salad and Yalantzi.” Allow me to translate that for you. Imam Baldi is “long eggplants, stuffed with walnuts, tomatoes, onions, garlic and cilantro, topped with house tomato sauce and baked to perfection”. Briami is “mixed fresh garden vegetables of eggplant, potatoes, onions, fresh garlic, Italian zucchini, cilantro and green bell peppers, seasoned with herbs and spices and baked in tomato sauce”. Horiatiki Salad: a traditional Greek Salad of chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, onions, tossed in lemon juice, olive oil and dry mint, and topped with feta cheese and olives” (I got it without the cheese). Yalantzi: grape leaves stuffed with rice, onions, tomatoes, bell peppers and cooked with special herbs and spices.

Every last bite was fantastic. It had been forever since I’d had Greek food, so I was eager to try this place once I heard they had veggie specialties, and it did not disappoint. I also had the Fassolatha which is baby Lima beans soup with onions, carrots, potatoes, garlic and a hint of house spices. Very tasty, though the cup portion was pretty small (which was not an issue considering how large the main dish was).

If you are the only vegetarian in the family, you know what a struggle it can be to eat out with others. This is the perfect place to go with your family or friends where everyone is sure to find something they’ll like to eat. Well, as long as they like Greek food.

This one is for Celine at havecakewilltravel.com who didn’t enjoy her go with the new Ricera yogurt, which is made from brown rice.

I on the other hand really enjoyed it. I tried the peach variety and paired it up with some strawberries and blueberries. It doesn’t really taste like yogurt, but it’s still got all the good active cultures that a yogurt should have. It’s got a much thicker texture, more like a custard or flan. The flavor was good and did not taste artificial (it’s made from real organic peaches), and was very mild… not overpowering with peachiness. I’ve since also tried the strawberry and I liked that too.

Apparently the company was initially using a non-vegan form of Vitamin D (D3), but after having this brought to their attention, they modified the product to use D2 from non-animal sources instead. From their website: “Ricera is a Vegan product, and contains no casein, dairy, or animal-derived ingredients.” However, the ingredients on their website still list D3, but my guess is they haven’t gotten around to updating their website yet.

And here’s what become of three of my luscious homegrown tomatoes…

Let’s call it “Tomato-fennel sauce with sprouted pasta and broccoli”. I basically made it up from ingredients gathered for this purpose as I went along. First I sauteed in olive oil some minced red onion (I bought these suckers pre-cut = no more tears!), ginger and garlic, then added in some dried oregano, rosemary, coriander and red chili flakes. Once these started to brown and smell amazing I added in one large fennel bulb which had been sliced and roughly chopped. I let this cook for about 5 minutes, splashing in some rice wine vinegar, and then some lemon juice when the pan would get dry. Once the fennel started to soften I added in the three biggest tomatoes, chopped into large chunks. After a couple minutes I added one large portabello mushroom which had been diced. I left this cook and simmer in it’s own juices until it started to thicken up a bit, and mixed in some torn basil leaves right at the end.

While all of that was going on I’d also been steaming some broccoli and cooking the pasta, Food For Life’s ‘Ezekiel 4:9 Organic Sprouted Grain Pasta (fettuccine). Everything was mixed together in a large bowl, and allowed to meld with some more fresh basil leaves before serving.

It came out great. I realize the tomatoes don’t really look like they were featured here, but the sauce came out just right, exactly as I had intended for it to taste (yea me!). I probably should have taken the time to peel the tomatoes first because the skins came off on their own in the sauce, but that was just as well (lots of nutrients in there). I’d recently read the new information about how the excellent health benefits of tomatoes and broccoli are compounded if you eat them together, so using those two together was the inspiration behind this.

Garden Wok, along with it’s sister restaurant Vegetable Delight, are two vegan Chinese places in the area I’d heard and read much about but not yet had the chance to try. My chance finally arrived to visit Garden Wok in Reseda (Vegetable Delight is in Granda Hills), and my only regret is not having tried this place sooner.

As an appetizer I had the Lettuce Wraps: “Fresh lettuce heads filled with minced fresh mushrooms, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, soy chicken and dried tofu stir-fried in delicious hosin sauce”. These were so tasty, the lettuce was perfectly crisp, the filling excellently flavored… the sauce was both bold and subtle at the same time, not too salty. This tasted and felt very “meaty” with delightful crunch from the bamboo and water chestnuts. Non-vegetarians would be hard pressed to miss the meat in this one.

For the main course I had the Garden Three Ingredients: “Combination of veggie-chicken, veggie-beef and veggie-shrimp stir-fried to perfection in a delicious ginger-soy sauce with broccoli, carrots, zucchini and mushrooms”.

Again, this was awesome. I loved the flavor (I love anything ginger flavored actually) and all the faux meats where delicious and convincing. I believe the soy shrimp they use here is not entirely vegan (it contains whey), and this is stated clearly on the menu so you can make your choices carefully.

What I liked best about these dishes as that they were very light and healthy, not overly heavy and greasy like a lot of Chinese food tends to be. Good stuff, I can’t wait to go back and try more.

I’ve got a plethora of food adventuring in the Bay Area to tell you about, just as soon as I’m all caught up on life. In the meantime, behold the glory of my first homegrown tomato harvest. They were ripe and ready for me when I got home:

Soon you’ll get to see what I do with these lovelies, although I’ve almost grown too attached to be able to eat them. Oh well, once I turn them into delicious salsa and/or pasta sauce I’m sure I’ll get over the guilt quick.

This was my first visit to M Café de Chaya in Hollywood and I really enjoyed it. They serve organic “Contemporary Macrobiotic Cuisine”. Rather hoity-toity and very California, I know, but don’t knock it till you try it. Everything on the menu sounded excellent, and everything I saw on other people’s plates looked lovely.

I decided to try the ‘Bi-Bim Bop’ rice bowl: “Pan-fried tofu, Korean-style vegetables, spicy miso sauce & house-made kim chee”. It was great. The different veggie toppings included kinpira gobo (a Japanese burdock root and carrot salad) as well as a pickled cucumber salad, a mushroom salad, bok choi and a number of other goodies you can’t see under all that which I can’t really identify. The spicy miso was very tasty, similar to Korean style bbq sauce.

Along with my entree I also had a carafe of iced barley tea (yum, I wish I had more with me right now)…

…and to top it all off, a flax seed and currant scone.

M Café de Chaya is not an exclusively vegetarian restaurant, but the vegetarian/vegan items do seem to be their specialties. I’d be happy to eat there again sometime, being especially intrigued by their Gado Gado with tempeh (an Indonesian salad with peanuts) as well as their Madras Tempeh Wrap which involves masala-baked tempeh and soy yogurt. If you’re doing the hipster thing and happen to find yourself hanging out down on the trendy side of Melrose (it’s just before La Brea), be sure to give this place a try.

I’ve got a lot of meals to post for you, but first off the one I’m most excited about, Chilled Asparagus Fennel soup. It’s exciting because not only did I make it from scratch, but also because it turned out amazingly good!

I’d been to the evening farmers market that they hold at the Northridge Mall. Among other things, I picked up a bunch of asparagus, which was organic and fresh picked on the farm just hours previous. Awesome. So with all this lovely asparagus to use up, I decided to try my hand at a cold soup. After looking through a number of online sources as well as my cookbooks at home, I found the perfect recipe in a book which I’d just picked up a couple of weeks ago (for super cheap at the used bookstore), “The American Vegetarian Cookbook from the Fit For Life Kitchen” by Marilyn Diamond.

For the most part I stuck exactly to the recipe, except for one significant change and a few minor ones. Below is the recipe, along with what I did differently.

Cream of Asparagus and Fennel Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup sliced green onions
1 small potato, peeled and cubed (optional)
2 pounds asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 inch segments
1 bulb fennel, coarsely chopped
7 cups water
1 tablespoon powdered vegetable broth or 1 vegetable bouillon cube
1 tablespoon light miso (optional)
1 tablespoon fresh tarragon or 1/4 teaspoon dried
1 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh basil or 1/2 teaspoon dried
1/4 to 1/2 cup Cashew Cream (1 heaping tablespoon raw cashews liquefied in 1/2 cup water)

1. Heat oil with onions in a large soup pot. Add potato, asparagus and fennel, then saute briefly, stirring constantly. Add water, bouillon, miso and herbs. Mix well and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to medium. Simmer 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Prepare Cashew Cream.

2. Cool soup slightly, then liquefy with a hand blender or food processor until smooth and creamy. Stir in Cashew Cream. Adjust seasoning and reheat but do not boil. (Serves 6).

Ok, so to begin with I forgot the green onions when I was gathering my ingredients at the market, but in my defense I did use the medium onion (which nearly killed me to chop… I don’t know how you people do it!). I don’t know if a red potato was what the recipe intended, but I wanted to keep everything organic and was only able to find organic red potatoes, so that’s what I used. And I didn’t peel it either (that’s where a lot of the nutrients are packed in). I used premade vegetable broth instead of powder or bouillon, substituting one cup of the broth for one less cup of water. Everything else was done just as in the recipe, until it came time to make the Cashew Cream.

I envisioned the cream being, well, creamy. It wasn’t though, so I added in more cashews. It still wasn’t very creamy, more like white watery stuff. So I poured out some of the water and poured in a lot more cashews, as in, probably closer to 1 1/2 cups worth instead of the heaping tablespoon called for in the recipe. Sure enough, a few more pulses in the food processor turned this into a nice, thick nutty cream. I then proceeded to liquify the soup (in batches as there was a lot of it), leaving it still a bit chunky, then mixed in the new and improved Cashew Cream. The flavor of the soup was excellent, but very mild. To boost the flavors a little bit I added in just a few shakes of black pepper and a dash of cinnamon.

It was so delicious! Light and yet at the same time filled with complex flavors. This was so great after a tough workout on a hot day, not only tasty to eat but wholesome and nourishing too… just what I needed. Even if you don’t fancy yourself much of a cook, you should give this one a try. I can’t really cook either, but as you can see by the directions, it’s super easy with not much possibility of messing up. Take my advice though and go overboard on the cashews, it was well worth it.

Here’s another fantastic salad from HealthyCA. I told you I was going to be making my way through their salad menu, and this latest option most certainly did not disappoint.

It’s simply called the HealthyCA salad and features: avocado, hearts of palm, apples, jicama, mandarine orange, spicy pecans, asparagus and Italian parsel on a bed of greens. What a great combo of flavors and textures! I had it with the roasted pepper dressing (addicted) and they also serve it with a small fruit cup (or your choice of quinoa salad, potato salad or rice). So good and healthy and fresh… I ate every last bit of nut and green and crunch off my plate!

Another cool note about HealthyCA. They do serve some non-vegetarian items here, including their own homemade sausage. They also have a very delicious vegan version of the sausage. Recently I made a big mistake and ordered the wrong one (totally my fault). They brought it, it looked good, I bit into it, it tasted good… then I started to realize that it tasted too good, as in, too much like real sausage. I quickly realized my mistake, and after being grossed out for a bit at what I’d just had in my mouth, I took it back up and let them know I’d made a huge mistake when ordering, and that I had actually meant to get the vegan version. I then placed another order so I could get what I’d actually planned on eating. I pulled out my wallet with full intention to pay, but the nice guy who works there (I think he’s one of the owners) refused to take my money and told me it was on the house. How cool is that?! He didn’t need to give it to me for free as it was in no way their fault. That’s the kind of thing that not only ensures they will continue to get my business, but also that I will wholeheartedly continue to spread the news about just how great they are. Now if only they would stay open later and open up on weekends, I’d be in HealthyCA heaven :)

That’s the sesame tofu from the deli at Whole Foods. The veggies I made myself: steamed asparagus, orange bell pepper and shitake mushrooms. Seasoned with just a bit of lemon juice, curry powder, coriander and gomasio. A quick and healthy meal.