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Vegetarian Frituras… well, of course!!!

18 Jul

I am very, very happy today… because I joined the Tiki Tiki Blog family as a contributor guest blogger.  The Tiki Tiki posted a story I wrote on how the words Latina and Vegetarian are not mutually exclusive and how us Vegetarian Latinas can still enjoy all our fried antojitos in a more healthful, meat-free way.

 

 

 

Carrie, who manages the Tiki Tiki Blog from Nashville, TN, shares great perspective on what it is to be a Latina today.  She had run a few months ago a series on how, as difficult as it may sound, there are Vegetarian Latinas out there… we are not figments of anyone’s imagination.  And we are not less Latinas or give our backs to our heritage or culture just because we decided to forgo animal-based proteins in our diets.  She was positively impressed by our recipes for Spinach Croquetas and BacalaFREEtos recipes that she wanted to share with all her readers.

Spinach Croquetas

BacalaFREEtos

Hope you like my post at Tiki Tiki Blog and hopefully this will be just the first of some more collaboration between us…  and a great shout out thank you to Adriana from Moros con Cristianos who introduced me to the Tiki Tiki blog.  Gracias mil…

Sandwich Roll-Call

30 Jun

It’s summer and let’s get real… it’s hot outside and I am not cooking a lot these days.

I am still eating… but a lot of sandwiches. I am a sandwich lover and I’m not afraid to admit it. Here’s a recap of my favorite sandwiches from my kitchens and the kitchens around me:

Veggie Cuban Sandwich

This is my staple sandwich every time I visit a Cuban panadería. A few weeks ago I got to meet President Obama because I had a craving for this sandwich and scheduled a meeting at Kasalta do I could work and eat simultaneously.

veggie-cuban-sandwich

 

President Obama as he arrived at Kasalta Bakery in Ocean Park, Puerto Rico on June 14, 2011.

Tostón Sandwich

My friend Tania taught me how to make these… not something to eat every day, but DELICIOUS!!!

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Avocado and Tomato Sandwich

This was a sandwich I have eaten for 5 days straight until I was out of the ingredients… I am not kidding you!!!

 

TunoFish Sandwich

When I was hospitalized a few years ago, all I wanted after I got out of the hospital was to eat this sandwich… on criollo bread. Yum!!!

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Hummus Sandwich

This combination of hummus and grain mustard is unusual, but so freking delicious.  Do not critizice until you’ve tried it.

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Veggie Party Sandwiches

This is my staple at kids birthday parties… and I just got a request for an adult birthday party too. They’re just delicious at any age group…

 

Asparagus Party Sandwiches

These are a bit of a pain to make, but the rewards are so gratifying…

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What are your favorite sandwiches???  Please share…  I am always looking for inspiration from you.

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Vegetarian Rennet… Making sure your cheese is 100% veggie-friendly

22 Jun

You have to give it to Whole Foods for always being progressive when it comes to catering to a vegetarian audience. Whole Foods is expensive, but they make up in their attention to the needs of their consumers.

I am cheese lover… I think if you’re an avid reader of this blog you might already knew that. Look at the Tag Cloud on your right…  And it’s a challenge for me when I am buying cheese to make sure the cheeses I buy are vegetarian. I read all the labels and make sure the cheeses I buy at home are free of animal-based rennet.

I remember once at Murray’s Cheese at Grand Central Market when I asked one of the attendants if they had any rennet-free cheeses and she politely, but surely said: “Without rennet, cheese can’t be made. All cheeses have rennet in them.”  The words stabbed me like a dagger in my heart… WHAT!?!? That ALL CHEESES HAVE RENNET???? Impossible!! We used regular cheeses at the yoga center and if those cheeses have rennet, why are we using them constantly???

The girl at Murray’s was not that far off reality… Because rennet is an enzyme used to coagulate milk into curds that are turned into cheese… and the animal-based rennet is derived from the stomachs of baby calves. Not nice… the thing is that there is animal-based rennet and vegetarian or microbial rennet. The difference is the latter 2 are the only ones suitable for a vegetarian diet.  Apparently, most commercial cheeses use enzymes or rennet derived from fungi or bacteria making them suitable for vegetarians.

Artisanal cheeses, clinging to tradition, usually use animal-based rennet. And what I love about Whole Foods is they now label their cheeses letting their customers know which cheeses are OK for vegetarian consumption. Check out the photos here of cheese labels stating if they have Vegetarian Rennet or Traditional Rennet.

Also, the Whole Foods 365 Brand also mentions in their packaging when their cheese is Vegetarian… Until know, the only brands I knew included in their labeling they do not use animal rennet were Cabot and Tillamook Cheese (although the do use animal rennet in 2 varieties only… always read the labels or their websites).

I believe with time, vegetarian food shopping will become easier and easier with the availability of products suitable for our lifestyle. I am sure this came about due to the amount of people asking the same question over and over again. “Does this cheese contain animal-rennet???”

BTW, can u tell I am into goat cheeses????

Now, as a vegetarian, I can shop for cheeses more at ease … and you can too!!!

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Vegetarian Vegas – Other Notables and Pending Places…

18 May

Last month we went to Las Vegas… it was the first time for me, the second one for my Mom. Because we’re not that into gambling, we decided to spend our time visiting the fabulous hotels and casinos, lunching at delicious restaurants and at night, enjoy the extraordinary nightlife and shows.

Let’s do this chronologically…

New York New York Hotel – Il Fornaio

We started most of our days with stops at the New York New York hotel – the hotel so nice they had to name it twice 🙂  Our hotel shuttle would leave us to start our daily Vegas adventures. It is also the home for Zumanity, the first of the Cirque du Soleil shows we went to. Nice place to start… it’s a small theater in comparison to the others we saw and the theme is very risqué and very apropos to the image I had in my head of Vegas.

Afterwards we had dinner at Il Fornaio, an Italian restaurant right next to the Zumanity Theater. I’ll be honest – I was for a while confused with this restaurant thinking that it was a Vegas arm of the Rhode Island restaurant Al Forno, famous for developing baked pastas like my favorite Baked Pasta with 4 Cheeses… The names are soooo similar, no? I was disappointed there were no baked pastas suitable for vegetarians, but was glad they had a VEGETARIAN vegetable soup, meaning made with vegetable broth and not chicken broth. It was comforting on a chilly Vegas night.

MGM Grand Resort

The next night we went to see Ka from Cirque du Soleil. SPECTACULAR!!!!! Simply superb… I was so taken by surprise. I did not expect at all the visual overload we experienced. Fully recommend it.

Ka is shown at the MGM Grand Resort. We tried to eat at two places at the MGM Grand – The Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill and ‘wichcraft, Tom Colicchio’s sandwich place. We checked out the menu at Wolfgang Puck’s place and it seemed super nice… I loved the ambiance too. It’s an open restaurant that you can see straight from the casino floor, but the day we decided to eat there, CLOSED. Apparently some filming or something… and the sandwich place, we looked for it, but never saw it. Could someone please tell us where it is???

 

Vegetarian Picnic @ The Grand Canyon

The next day… Grand Canyon Trip. We opted to travel with Grand-Adventures.com because they offered a sunset walking trip. How nice!!! Start with breakfast, followed by a stop at Hoover Dam, another stop somewhere along Route 66, a picnic overlooking the Grand Canyon, some walking thru the Grand Canyon Southern Rim trails and a drive back to Las Vegas.

I was a bit skeptical of the breakfast and lunch options – McDonald’s Breakfast and Arby’s Lunch, WHAT?!?!?!  Lucky for us online menus and ingredient lists exist. We could order ANYTHING we wanted at MacDonald’s, but I had not stepped inside a McD in over 10 years. I used to love their fries and chocolate shakes until I learned all their potato products are generously sprinkled with beef broth. Yep!!! But we maneuvered thru the menu and got a Brown Sugar Oatmeal with Apples and Raisins, Apple Pie and Orange Juices. Surprisingly satisfying for a fast-food joint… 

And lunch… we could pick among all the Market Fresh sandwich menu at Arby’s, a fast food chain that was very short-lived in Puerto Rico, mostly known for their roast beef sandwiches. Well… because LV is so close to the West Coast, they do not offer them openly in their menu, but you could order a vegetarian sandwich – just imagine any of these sandwiches here, but without the meat filling – 2 kinds of cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onions, mustard… you could even order it w/o the mayo. The view was spectacular, so the food, to be honest took second billing.

You work up an appetite when climbing the Grand Canyon...

Sunset at the Grand Canyon South Rim

The Bellagio

The next day we went to see O at The Bellagio, the logest-running of the Cirque du Soleil Vegas shows. It’s AMAZING!!! I was afraid people had hyped it so much for me that I would not enjoy it. But it is everything people told me and MORE… I hope I am not overhyping it for you…

But O is not the only spectacular show at The Belaggio… the décor inside the front desk with Chihuly’s glass sculptures on the ceiling, the wonderful interior gardens and the Fountains in front are just sublime. We got to watch a few shows there – some in the afternoons, and a few at night. I got some video, but it does not do them justice.  I would definitely stay at this hotel if given the opportunity… lovely, just lovely and elegant.

We went to the later 10PM show for O. We were not hungry before and by the time the show ends at 11:30PM, it was too late to have dinner at Olives by Todd English. I was so much looking forward to eat here because one of the first recipes I did when I discovered online recipes was their marinated olives recipe… We were eating olives for almost a month. I went overboard with the measures, as if I was really doing them for a restaurant crowd. Now Olives is in my TO EAT list on my next Vegas or NYC trip.

Another place we wanted to try was the Mandalay Bay… we visited there one morning and of course all the restaurants were closed still. There we wanted to try several places – Fleur by Hubert Keller, Aureole by Charlie Palmer, with their impressive wine tower where the “Wine Angels” suspend in wires to get your favorite bottle of wine. Amazing, even when they’re just taking inventory in the morning hours…

My mom really was taken by the menu from China Grill, she really wanted some Asian food. Unfortunately, China Grill is only open for dinner and our theater options were not close to Mandalay. I promise her we will eat here on our next trip. And we also wanted to try Border Grill from Top Chef Masters Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. Unfortunately for us, the menu is not very vegetarian-friendly. Although the quinoa fritters Mary Sue made last week on Top Chef Masters seemed interesting enough to consider again.

I hope if you’re vegetarian like us you also get to experience Las Vegas as deliciously was we did… and until the next trip, Ta ta!!!

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Vegetarian Vegas – I LOVE Burgers

16 May

My apologies to the local people of Las Vegas, but visiting Vegas for the first time you feel like going to an amusement park. It’s really visiting one street you walk up and down the whole time you’re there. And depending where you’re staying, you get to really learn the ins and outs of the hotels, where everything is, how to best get there from here…

 

A hotel we visited a few times because of the ambiance, the décor, and basically because it’s THE LARGEST HOTEL in the world was The Pallazo/The Venetian hotel combo. And The Shoppes that connect both hotels are just so special with a replica of a Venetian Channel running all through the center and the ceilings painted as a clear Italian sky… it’s really like an amusement park for adults.

We traversed these shoppes so many times that one particular restaurant captured my eye, time and time again – I LOVE Burgers. I love burgers too… but I needed to know if they loved vegetarian burgers just as much as I do.  AND THEY DO!!!! They have one Eggplant Parmesan Burger on the menu and a Vegan Burger that they only tell you about if you ask about vegetarian burgers. I think they should put it in the menu so people KNOW they have 2 options to choose from.

One day we made it a point to have lunch here. Here is what we had:

Of course we ordered the 2 vegetarian burgers on the menu… The Eggplant Parmesan is just that, an eggplant parmesan sandwich with tomato sauce and cheese on a whole grain burger bun.

The Vegan Burger is a patty made from a bunch of stuff… because it’s not on the menu I’m going by what I remember the server told me – black beans, rice, oatmeal, and a variety of veggies. It comes served on a whole grain bun with onions, lettuce and tomatoes. I was extremely tempted to ask to put some cheese on top, but decided to go truly vegan and opted not to. But not being the greatest fan of beans, the texture is creamy like refried beans, luckily not so much that a little ketchup and mustard could not solve for me.

I LOVE Burgers claim themselves to be on the way to having the Largest Fry Menu in Las Vegas… typical Vegas where everyone is in LOVE with superlatives. We asked the server which were the MOST POPULAR and she recommended the Parmesan Garlic Fries with Roasted Garlic. The fries were AWESOME… really crispy and salty from the sharp Parmesan grated on top. The whole plate was GONE. We had to negotiate who would get the last bites…

We almost ordered a Salad… remember I need to have a salad to feel I am being good to my figure. But luckily we didn’t order because we would not have been able to finish it all. After yesterday’s Buffet at the Wynn, we wanted to take it easier today… We would have ordered de Warm Spinach Salad – The Vegan version with warm wild mushrooms and truffle balsamic vinaigrette. Sounds delicious, no???

The verdict… A great alternative if you want something more casual. And if I go there again, I am sure going to break character and ask some cheese on my vegan burger… deal??

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