Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving at the new house:

Clockwise from the top: maple glazed brussels sprouts, mashed potato, vegie roast, pumpkin,  stuffing with mushrooms and pecans. The vegie roast was pretty good, and made for nice sandwiches the next day. (R commented that it was probably the best fake turkey he'd ever had -- surprising, since I think the manufacturers were aiming for roast lamb.)

 

Okra

Good to know. Perhaps the NOLAites should take note for next summer.

What we've been eating

This blog has been pretty quiet of late. We've been busy finding our way in our new city, not to mention dealing with some pretty flaky internet service at our hotel. But now I bring you some food highlights of the past couple of weeks:

1. Indo Mie brand mi goreng. There was something of a mania for these instant noodles in my family a few years ago. We were all addicted, and I guess I still am: when I saw this packet I think I started to drool a little bit. Inside there's five little packets of things to season the noodles, one of which the packaging calls 'seasoning powder', but which is obviously crack.

2. Surprisingly vegan dim sum treats we found in Northbridge: these are Chinese doughnuts (deep fried dough wrapped in rice noodle).

3.  Laksa and Malaysian/Nyonya-style food generally. We enjoyed the laksa at Utopia, and yesterday had a great lunch at Sri Melaka. Today I made this laksa-ish soup for lunch (curry paste from a packet, coconut milk, water, carrot, mushroom, napa cabbage, fried tofu, sprouts, yellow mee).

Being vegetarian in Perth is like being vegan in New England

Ouch

Frazzled

What can't a dinner of pizza and ice cream fix?

Three small clean-out-the-fridge pizzas (dough is whole wheat from the freezer at Whole Foods; cheese is Follow Your Heart mozzarella):

1. Sauerkraut, caramelized onions, ajvar. (This was my first time trying sauerkraut on a pizza and it won't be the last. This particular pizza could've done with a little something extra, though.)

2. Salsa, caramelized onions, cilantro.

3. Kalamatas, basil (from the freezer -- I threw in a bunch and it held up surprisingly well), caramelized onions.

Then almond and pecan ice cream (just so-so by itself, but much better with chocolate and peanut butter ganache and plantains).

Righting injustice

Today we found ourselves dogless*, sodden**, and hungry in NYC. I had the bright idea to go to Pukk, a vegetarian Thai place I've heard some good things about. But could we find Pukk? We could not. (I blame the rain falling in our eyes -- Google maps says it's right here.)

Anyway, we tried to console ourselves with lunch at nearby Kate's Joint, but it ended up sucking for two reasons:

1. Given the startling advances in vegan cheese of recent (Teese and Daiya, for instance) what kind of vegetarian/vegan place serves "non-dairy" cheese that's not vegan?
2. I ordered their reuben***. It was not good. I hate wasting food and I couldn't eat it. (I think the main problems were that I was really craving a tempeh reuben, while this sandwich had fake deli meat like this, and that the thousand island dressing tasted weird -- I think it had BBQ sauce in it.)

So, I had to right some wrongs:

Baked tempeh along these lines, sauerkraut, mozzarella, thousand island dressing (vegan mayo, ketchup, plus some ajvar****) on a light rye bread. Yum.

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*He left for Australia today.
**It was raining, and waking at 5am to take one's dog to the airport does not incline one to remember things like umbrellas.
***On the menu it's called the Monte Mount Cisco. The sandwich that they call the Not Reuben has mustard rather than thousand island dressing.
****An untraditional but good addition.