Vegan Eats of the Week 11/28/18

Hope those of you in the U.S. who celebrated Thanksgiving this past week had a nice holiday, whether it was with family, friends, or some needed alone time! Holidays such as Thanksgiving tend to revolve around food, but it doesn’t necessarily have to either! To me, Thanksgiving is more about acknowledging the things in your life that you are grateful for.

But one of the things I am grateful for is good food — specifically, good VEGAN eats! Vegan food has come a long way in the past decade or so. People have come up with creative ways to prepare vegan/plant-based food that is just as good as (or, in some cases I would argue, BETTER than) non-vegan eats.

Case in point: my Thanksgiving evening. My roommate and I weren’t in a position to cook Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves, and we couldn’t go out to a restaurant either. So, we looked online for places that were open and that would deliver. To my surprise, a good number of places were open for delivery. We ended up going with LuAnne’s Wild Ginger. I’ve been to their Boerum Hill location a good number of times, and they’re awesome for having a nearly 100% vegan menu with lots of gluten-free items. I didn’t know until searching that they had a Crown Heights location! So, my roommate and I got a few items to share: the Malaysian Comfort Curry Stew, the Jap Chae, and the Miso Grilled Eggplant. The first two had tofu instead of their “soy medallions” so that they were gluten-free.

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Earlier in the day on Thanksgiving, I spent several hours at Yoga Pole Studio, helping to host our Thanksgiving Day Open Workout. With YPS being my home away from home, and my fellow instructors and students there being my second family, I am more than grateful for having them as part of my life. No Thanksgiving would be complete without spending time with them. We had a couple of aerial hoops hung and a couple of poles up in the studio, and we just had play time for a few hours.

But we also had snacks, because we aerialists get hungry when we are working/playing hard! I think I ended up bringing most of what’s pictured here (carrots, hummus, a chickpea walnut spread that was heavenly, green pea snacks, granola, garlic roasted almonds, sweet potato tortilla chips, almond flour crackers, and rice chips), but others brought other snacks as well (lots of fruit, etc.). Yum, yum, yum.

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I also got to visit Peacefood Cafe a couple of times, and got their gluten-free veggie biscuits. These were some delicious flavor combinations!

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One Friday, I reported for jury duty. Because I live in Brooklyn, I had to go to the Kings County Supreme Court building. Luckily, it’s pretty much across the street from Perelandra Natural Food Center, where I went to get lunch. They’ve recently switched up their Friday hot food bar offerings to be an Indian-inspired buffet. Palak Tofu, yellow split pea dal, spiced carrots, garlic green beans, brown rice, and quinoa. It was rather spicy, so my mouth was on fire, but it was DELICIOUS. I love Indian food! And it was, of course, all vegan and gluten-free!

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While on my lunch break from work one day, I went to A Matter of Health as I often do to replenish my snacks. I found these cookies made with plantain flour, coconut sugar, and coconut oil. I am definitely NOT on what became an ill-fated coconut oil fad train now shown to be debunked, and I don’t necessarily buy into the claim that coconut sugar is better than other kinds of sugar. But these cookies with non-traditional ingredients intrigued me, so I bought a pack of these to try. They aren’t bad, and they could satisfy my sweet tooth, but they are actually kind of TOO sweet. They also have a plant-y taste to them (that’s the best way I can describe it) that I don’t like. I probably won’t buy them again.

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Stay tuned in upcoming weeks for more vegan eats from around New York City!