Fresh Vegetable Tofu Scramble Collard Green Burrito

My CSA has started, yay!  Surveying today's haul: it's kohlrabi, red leaf amaranth, peas, spring onions, collard greens, fruit share is strawberries, and I got crimini and shitake mushrooms as add on extras.

I'm determined to plan better to get the most out of the veggies.  I start by looking at what I won't use and see if I can juice it.  Starting with the peas.  I shelled them -  It took about a half hour while I rewatched the inspiring documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (Watch it for Free!) - and I'm going to juice the pods.  Not sure how it will work out, but there seems to be a good deal of water in them.

I'm trying to think more raw, but sometimes when I'm hungry, raw just sounds not-so-appealing.  So I took a raw trick - collard green wrapper - and stuffed it with my cooked veggie and tofu scramble.

I sautéed a sliced spring onion and one chopped shitake in annato oil, then added a handful of chopped amaranth and about a 1/3 cup of crumbled tofu with some turmeric and taco seasoning.  I put one collard green leaf on top of the scramble in the pan, then topped with a lid and turned off the heat and left it for about a minute.  This softens it up, but it still holds together so the filling doesn't leak through when you roll it up like a burrito and eat it.  I then topped it with a radish pico de gallo (from my Sweet Grass leftovers below) and some homemade cashew cream and hot sauce.   

I also ate at Sweet Grass (yes, again) last night and got amazing vegan roasted garlic soup and a setian quesadilla.  

Roasted Garlic Soup

 Seitan Quesadilla

I'm really excited they have so many vegan options, both on the regular menu and the specials.  I'm especially psyched for all the new seitan dishes they've had recently.  The chipotle sauce was also fantastic (and spicy) but they didn't pack it up with my leftovers, so sadly I'll have to make due with my own.  The radish pico de gallo was also surprisingly refreshing (hence topping my scramble with it) so I'll have to try something like that when we get radish in the CSA.

More seitan at Sweet Grass

This week the seitan special at Sweet Grass was a steak rather than slices.

Really good, but different.  I once got some gluten cubes from the H Mart (Asian market) that were similar to this.  It's almost bread, but a meaty chewy gluteny savory bread.  Don't get me wrong, it's good but different from the usual wet boil seitan.  I'll have to ask what they did.  I wonder if they baked it.  It's crispy...

Dessert was nut based chocolate mousse.  Delish. I forgot to snap a pic when it came, but here's the menu description.

Sweetgrass Seitan and an evening with Rick Springfield

Finally, my local veg friendly restaurant in Tarrytown, NY, Sweetgrass, has a seitan dish.

I was expecting more of a "steak" but this thinly sliced seitan served it up with flavor.     

Sweetgrass has also refined the Vegan Shepherd's pie.  The mashed potato crust is perfectly crisped and the meaty jackfruit gives it authentic texture.  

Just the right amount of veg, potato, and shredded jackfruit in each bite.

And that wasn't even the most exciting thing of the evening.  My neighbor (yes the bird saving neighbor) and I went to see Rick Springfield at the Tarrytown Music Hall.  (You know...Jessie's Girl.)

Here's a nice blurry photo to set the mood.  

I love the storytelling, acoustic format which feels really intimate and personal.  The Music Hall is a really cool venue (like my old favorite the Somerville Theater in Massachusetts).  He was quite genuine and funny and the songs were great.

He even stayed after for  Q&A which was really cool.  In addition to being an actor, songwriter, pop star, and all around hot guy; Rick wrote a novel called Magnificent Vibration that of course I downloaded and started reading last night.

All in all a fun night out in my town. 

My neighbor just saved a bird and I made some vegan reuben bites

I suppose I needed a jump start on a new post, so this mornings "bird rescue" fits in well. 

I was doing laundry in the complex and heard some banging in the gutters.  I peeked into the part where the drain and the gutter meet and thought I heard some movement, then nothing.  So I feared that the little critter must have gone further down the pipes.  

I went back out and found a neighbor's cat totally stalking the same area and then heard the banging again.  Then my neighbor Amy came up to see why I was staring at the sidewalk with a cat, and she pushed in the gutter just enough so the bird came flying out and away!  Yay!  The cat, however, was not as pleased...

So back to some snacks.  The "bird" in these vegan Reuben bites is Beyond Meat Grilled chicken-free strips.  The Beyond Meat strips are kind of stringy so you can pull them apart for more of a shredded protein texture.  They're quite good and absolutely would fool your friends.  

The background runner in the photo is author Tami's pay it forward gift to me.  I love it!  

I made these into bites because the crusty french bread I used always tears the crap out of the roof of my mouth if toasted on the top, so I opted for open faced and bite sized.

For more vegan finger foods, check out Tami and Celene's newest venture Vegan Finger Foods.  Love the instant gratification of the kindle, off to read it now...