That’s right, I hauled off to New Orleans for the week of Thanksgiving to visit with my guy. Kittee has an awesome restaurant guide (she has a revised edition, email her if you want a copy), but alas it is pretty much useless when you’re in the city on Thanksgiving because nothing is open. Except for a Chinese fast food place that puts unlabeled-on-the-menu ground pork in their tofu dishes and kinda stare at you crosseyed when you ask for it to please be remade because I can’t/won’t eat it, secret pork or otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, they were super nice, but were genuinely confused; I guess the tofu dishes don’t get ordered very often.

I spent most of my time across the lake from NOLA, in Mandeville, so I was out of range of the guide for most of the trip. However, it was rad-tastic on the way back to the airport. The ability to check Gmail from your phone has become an absolute eating must for me. Anyway, I didn’t eat a whole lot when I was out there, my appetite goes far, far away when I’m visiting. We did go out for sushi, Lebanese, and a yuppie hippie supplement store that has a juice bar/deli.

Note to yuppie hippie juice bar: pretty please with sugar on top, use actual vegan cheese on your vegan-labeled burger, or none at all?  Or list the components on your menu to help people opt-out? Or not argue with a customer when they ask you to please remake the burger and insist with her that your soy cheese (Veggie Slices, with casein and butterfat right on the label) is vegan? I understand that the whole world doesn’t know what vegan means and I can appreciate that, and I’ve been on the shit end of customer service myself, so I know how dumb and just plain mean customers can be.  Just, uh, buck up homegirl. For the record the manager did come out, unexpectedly, and apologize for the lack of vegan options and asked me exactly what would be okay to put on the burger. No harm, no foul. People are trying, and that’s what really counts.

So anyway, I got fed when I needed to and it wasn’t a huge deal even if it wasn’t terribly easy. It definitely made me appreciate how vegan-friendly Southern California is; I don’t think I’m allowed to bitch anymore that there are only two restaurants in a 20 mile radius that have vegan kitchens. We did buy a few things to cook, and I just picked up a block of tofu and a bottle of Iron Chef General Tso sauce. Not really cooking, more like semi-homemade 30 minute meals, but it was popular enough. Here’s a picture, because I thought it was kinda funny.

Yeah, I forgot to buy vegetables to go with it. Oops.

And then when I got back from Louisiana, I decided to make the dish again, but from scratch with the extremely popular recipe on VegWeb. It was yummy, though I had to add a bit more cornstarch and a lot more red pepper and added some cayenne pepper. General Tso’s is supposed to be sweet and hot, dammit. I’d say it was a success, even if I baked the tofu instead of breading and frying. Believe me, there’s enough oil in the sauce as it is.

I’d say it was a success. A delicious success.

Welcome back to California, miharu.

Vegweb provided me with recipes for Matar Tofu and Naan, and so, I made them.

I ended up using the instructions from Isa’s BBQ Pomegranate Tofu for the tofu, because I ain’t deep frying anything. The tofu texture came out very close to what I remember paneer to be like, though it could use a little bit of a more salty flavor.

While I like the recipes on VegWeb, unfortunately they don’t go through the QC/testing process that cookbook recipes do. I also received a vegetarian Indian cookbook in the mail this weekend and I’m looking forward to converting them; which brings me to an interesting thought – why can’t I find a vegan Indian cookbook on Amazon, dammit?

I made attempted my first tofu scramble, ala breakfast burritos, today. I think I followed the recipe pretty closely, but I have a feeling that either it needed a) more tofu b) more potatoes c) less spices.

Jake didn’t seem to think that it was so bad, though he did agree that it was a little over spiced.

I was amazed at the texture (yes, creative to-fu *karate chop* still manages to impress me) and the taste of the tofu, while Jake didn’t think that it was better than eggs or anything. I’ve never liked the flavor (or smell, yak) of eggs, so perhaps that’s why I’m so in love with tofu. Jake did say that he’d like to freeze the tofu beforehand to give it more of a chewy texture; I dig the fluffier texture myself.

I can’t wait to get my two Amazon vegan cookbook orders in, then I’ll be driving Jake crazy with delicious (or really bad, I’m a spaz) cooking.