Along with the regular menu at Real Food Daily, they also offer weekly specials as well as one monthly special. For my last visit I had November’s special, the “Vermont Harvest”.

Maple dijon tempeh and winter vegetable stew over wild rice and quinoa with pan seared delicata squash, sauteed apples and walnuts over wilted baby spinach. It was fantastic. I’m not even a big fan of wild rice but I loved every last bite of how it was prepared here. It was a delicious, filling, warm and hearty cold weather meal.

I put this together in literally about 5 minutes.

My visit to Vinh Loi Tofu earlier in the day sent me home with a few of their yummy faux meat creations to-go. What you see is what I was inspired to make using their awesome fake squid. It’s made with gluten and flavored with lemongrass and chili. I don’t like seafood flavors and to me this doesn’t tasty fishy at all. I love the great spicy flavor and fun texture.

All I did was wilt up some spinach, carrots and cabbage in fresh squeezed lime juice, then added in the pseudo-squid (and it’s small amount of sauce) to heat it up. I love it when totally improvised, figure it out as I go meals come together into something healthy and delicious (as opposed to the ones which are complete failures).

Mmmm… mmmm… M Cafe de Chaya. “Contemporary Macrobiotic Cuisine featuring balanced, nutritious, creative cooking … prepared fresh daily, using only the finest ingredients without any refined sugars, eggs, dairy, red meat or poultry” never tasted soooo good.

This here is the Seitan Katsu Bowl: “crispy seitan cutlet, tangy katsu sauce, shredded cabbage salad & steamed vegetables”. Very good, there’s lots of broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and brown rice underneath the cutlet.

Why resist? Inari Sushi made with brown rice and topped with Kinpira Gobo (a Japanese salad of burdock and carrot).