If you are a child of the 70’s, the word “casserole” conjures up images of canned tuna, canned cream of mushroom soup. noodles and maybe crushed potato chips or cornflake crumbs on top. Thankfully, Julie Hasson’s amazing new cookbook Vegan Casseroles: Pasta Bakes, Gratins, Pot Pies, and More will forever change how you see this staple of American cuisine. Julie takes the casserole out of the 70’s and into today. Casseroles are traditional comfort foods at their finest and Julie has updated these classic dishes by taking out all of the animal products without sacrificing any of the taste.
Reviews
We spent part of our anniversary at Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary in Deer Trail, Colorado. Read about our time there and the amazing people and animals who call it home.
Kajitsu means “fine day”, or “day of celebration” in Japanese. Dining here will always be a special occasion for guests.
Natural Epicurean at The Broadmoor has something for everyone, and ordering is made easy thanks to the use of technology.
After months of waiting, we finally made it to Vegde Restaurant in Philadephila. The wait was worth it.
After months and asking and waiting, our local Whole Foods finally is carrying Eat Pastry Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. It is like a dream come true! When I was little, my mom’s idea of baking cookies was using the “slice and bake” roll of cookie dough. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. In college that roll got me through some hard times. However, once I started baking and developed my own recipe for chocolate chip cookies, refrigerated dough became something solely for snacking, not baking. After becoming vegan, I thought refrigerated cookie dough was a thing of the past. Enter Eat Pastry. The amazing people at Eat Pastry have created vegan versions of your favorite refrigerated cookie doughs. Each flavor comes in its own tub that you can eat with a spoon if you cannot wait to bake them. As they are 100% vegan, there is no fear of
While on the field trip as part of the Main Street Vegan Academy, we walked past Palà Pizza at 198 Allen Steet, New York, NY. One of my classmates said they had vegan options so I went in to grab a menu. Unfortunately, they don’t have paper menus to take, but they did give me a match book with a link to their website and told me the site had the full menu on it. I wasn’t able to look it up that day, but as soon as I did, I was so happy. It’s not just a pizza place that will throw some daiya on a pizza and call it a day. No siree. The entire back side of the menu is 100% vegan. There are almost as many vegan options as there are non-vegan ones. Considering how much love pizza, I knew Palà was a must go to. Fast foward
Before we get to the actual restaurant reviews, here is some helpful information for you: 1. You may see soup listed as “crema.” Do not be dissuaded from ordering them. They are not actually cream based soups. A “crema” is simply a vegetable puree that is very thick and creamy, but they are vegetable-based soups. 2. Do not worry about finding vegan food in Madrid. You can find something almost anywhere. There are “kebap” restaurants everywhere. These are Middle Eastern restaurants that all serve falafel, hummus, etc. So, even if you cannot find a vegan restaurant, you will still be able to eat well. 3. Breakfast as a vegan will be a challenge. You might want to pack some breakfast/snack bars. Thankfully we had late dinners and slept in, so this was not a problem. A builder bar was our breakfast every day. 4. Speaking of dinner, forget about a
Michael and I traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for New Year’s week. This was our first trip back since 2006 and our first time there as vegans. In general, we have found Mexico to be quite a vegan-friendly travel destination, as long as you can communicate in Spanish, ask questions and make requests for food prep modifications. Puerto Vallarta (PV) is no exception to this rule. As always, we checked the listings on HappyCow and PlantEaters before travelling so we had an idea of the lay of the vegan landscape. We arrived on a Sunday night and most of the vegan-friendly places we knew about were closed by the time we were settled at our hotel and ready to go get dinner. Thankfully, Planeta Vegetariano was open. Unfortunately, HappyCow had it listed in the wrong place on their map(that happens a LOT on Happy Cow) and our taxi driver had
Ethan and I used to take long weekends down to my parents house in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. However, after Ethan became vegan, we stopped going down there. The dining options were incredibly limited, and the grocery stores were woefully inadequate. However, when we came down this summer for a family gathering, we were quite pleased with what we saw. Now there are many new restaurants with easily veganizble options, a new Whole Foods that just opened this year and even the nearby Publix has ample vegan options. What a big difference in a short period of time. Our routine when we arrive here is to stop at the grocery store before heading to the house, figuring we will be eating in most of the time. So, we stocked up for our weekend and settled in. We had heard of a restaurant by my parents house called Christopher’s Kitchen. Initially
