Polenta and Greens

Lately my favorite grain of choice is polenta. It's cheap, easy to make, and super tasty in all its forms. I still have a variety of greens in the fridge leftover from my trip to the market last week to use. There's a fantastic restaurant in Kansas City called The Farmhouse. They probably make the best polenta ever known to man. While my guess is that it isn't completely vegan, it is as one of my favorite bloggers would call, "almost vegan." Most of the ingredients at said restaurant are local. The seared polenta cake is to die for, but even more so are the braised mushrooms, greens and carrots. While the polenta is delicious, the greens are what hit the spot for me. The are perfectly braised and caramelized to perfection. I have no idea what they do to make them taste that good, but there is an obvious balsamic reduction element that helps a lot. Tonight I steamed these (turnip, collard and beet) greens, and sauteed the onions and peppers on the side to brown them up a tad. I added the steamed greens to the pepper pan, and added a little balsamic. Pretty delicious if I do say so myself. I love polenta when it's fried in a decent amount of olive oil, but this girl wants to be cute for summer, so I sprayed the pan with olive oil spray to crisp up the polenta. Simple, filling and yummy meal full of nutrition.

Farmer's Market Bounty - Raw Wrap

I went to the Briarcliff Farmer's Market yesterday. So exciting :) I picked up these big, beautiful collard leaves, glowing red beets, asparagus, radishes, a couple of expensive tomatoes, and yellow cauliflower all for 11 bucks. FUD, the little kc vegan place I love, makes a beautiful raw wrap kinda like this. The owner says eating something like this at least once a week is really great for the system. How could you not feel great after eating every color of the rainbow? I tore off the radish and beet tops and topped it with an avocado. The sauces at FUD are far more amazing than the simple balsamic vinaigrette (is olive oil considered raw?) She also has a few more exotic ingredients, like say, goji berries instead of my humble dried cherries. Anyway, it was delish. I plan to do this far more often during the summer. Did I mention how much I love beets. A-mazing.

Misir Watt

One great thing about being a budding vegan is all the new recipes I have been able to try as of late. I'm one of those cooks who never makes much of the same thing more than once.  I think it gives more creative value to to process of cooking and eating. I do have a few family favorites, but I really do love trying new things.  Recently I went to Blue Nile Cafe at the Kansas City River Market, a really great Ethiopian restaurant.  They have a great selection of vegan items on the menu, all of which are really flavorful and spicy. It got me really interested in learning more about about this particular cuisine. I love discovering new spice combinations. I found a really great local blog called Almost Vegan written by a fellow Kansas Citian (yes there are actually vegans in the Midwest) who had recently taken classes at Blue Nile. She shared the recipe for Misir Watt (Ethiopian Lentils) along with really great instructions, and how to images. This turned out really great. You do have to have berbere, a special spice that I purchased directly from the restaurant, but maybe you could find it at a specialty shop in your area. I also picked up some injera which is Ethiopian bread that I had neither the time nor the inclination to replicate at this time :)  There are a few other Ethiopian recipes I plan on trying, and will of course share them with you soon!

FÜD for Thought - Vegan Restaurants in Kansas City

Every Thursday night my parents kindly watch our 2 boys, so we can have a date night. We never take it for granted, and usually take the opportunity to traverse to new places in our little city.  Thanks Mom and Dad!  You're the best :) Anyway, last night Nate decided he wanted to try to make me a vegan dessert out of one of the five-thousand vegan cookbooks I have littering the house. I'm kind of used to seeing strange ingredients now since I have been reading them for a few months, but Nate, not so much. He was a little overwhelmed to see ingredients like silken tofu, spelt flour, and flax seed meal in the place of 2 large eggs and all-purpose flour. It's the thought that counts, right?  

Anyway, I remembered that there is a new vegan restaurant to try, so out we headed to the west side in Kansas City to visit FÜD (pronounced food.) We were greeted by a lovely couple, and another gentleman who explained a little more about their quaint little establishment. And as luck would have it, they had a few desserts to satisfy our sweet tooths. I visited the website prior to visiting, and was drooling over the Sweet Stack dessert; a vegan brownie topped with raw cashew ice cream and some mouth-watering sauces to boot. They didn't have the brownie last night, but let me tell ya, the cashew ice cream was to die for. The ice cream is sweetened with agave, and would trick any "real" ice cream addict. They topped it with cacao sauce and superfood caramel. I might be dreaming of it right now..........yeah, I definitely am, yum! We will be going back for dinner next time, and hopefully I'll remember to bring my camera, so I can share with you what we get.  Make sure to bring cash because they don't accept credit cards. We didn't have any, and had to drive around town before we found an ATM. Check it out! 

Nate's Two Cents: Proof again, veganism can be a lot more fun than anyone ever says it can be.  The cashew cream was incredible.  No, I don't know how you make a nut-based food taste convincingly like ice cream.  All I know is that it worked.  I'm not a huge fan of ice cream on its own--I like to dress it up in fudge and pecans, usually--but there was a delicate, almost rum-sweet quality to this stuff that really made the sauces drizzled all over it almost unnecessary.  Hey, if you can find a dairy-based ice cream that tastes this good, has no cholesterol, is low in saturated fat and doesn't give you the sugar blues later (and has no artificial ingredients), good for you.  If, on the other hand, you can't, this is an awfully nice, naturally guilt-free alternative.

Veggie Pizza Vindicated

One great thing about choosing to become a Vegan is discovering new restaurants in my own backyard that I never knew about.  Kansas City has so many great local restaurants, and a decent hippie population to boot, so I knew I could find a Vegan restaurant within a stone's throw.  My 7 year old pleaded with me to take him to Pizza Hut.  Since that is no longer an option I looked up Vegan Pizza, and voila, Waldo Pizza!  I ordered the Veggie St. Louis crispy crust with Vegan Cheese. They use Follow Your Heart vegan mozzarella, and run the pizza through the oven twice (as vegan cheese is known not to melt very well.)  It was seriously delicious!  My carnivores, however, ordered the Waldo Choice Cut (5 kinds of meat.)  Nate ended up finishing off my pizza because it was great even to a meat eater. We will definitely be going back!

Nate's two cents:  It was a great experiment, alternating meaty bites with bites of Tara's thin-crust veggie pizza.  Of course it was a little bit like comparing apples to oranges, but all in all the veggie version held its own.  The most shocking thing was how close to the taste of actual cheese the "cheese" on her pizza came.  Don't ask me how they did it. I think the cheese is derived from cashews, or the milk of soy-producing goats or something.  Well worth the trip south, though.  Tara was right about how delicious her "sensible pizza" would be.  And you have no idea how hard it is to admit that...