Portland, Oregon: Probably the only down-side to Vegan Month (besides the serious lack of Parmesan) is the serious lack of restaurant options to we rural folk. Downtown Portland has many vegan restaurants and plenty of restaurants with vegan-friendly options. I'm just not willing to drive 30 miles for tofu when I have perfectly good tofu at my house. As I wrote earlier, we have had two lunches out (Cafe Yumm! and Chipotle), both casual places with plenty of animal-free options. Dave and I really like to dine out, and we have eaten dinner at home 19 nights in a row. I think this could be a record of some sort?
Typical day is a bowl of fruit for breakfast (not abnormal most days of the year):
This morning we enjoyed Tuscan melon from Red Hat Farms in Corvallis and Oregon blueberries.A bowl of Chinese-style noodle soup is common-place as well, but more common this month. DT especially loves a bowl of noodles, and I can use any stray veggies to round-out the veggie broth and Taiwanese wheat noodles.
Today the soup bowls were filled (about 3/4 full) with fresh spinach leaves, topped with the hot cooked noodles, the broth (veggie stock flavored with miso paste and sesame oil) was poured over all and fresh cilantro leaves were used as a garnish. We slurped this up!For dinner, we traveled from Taiwan to Mexico, dining on tacos made with a block of extra-firm tofu - crumbled by hand and drained. I super cheated and used an envelope of Simply Organic Spicy Taco Seasoning Mix. The tacos, served in warmed white corn tortillas, were really good. We used to eat Tofu Tacos quite often back in our vegetarian days (the 90's).
Though the taco "filling" looked like ground chicken, it was not - but it did taste exactly like ground chicken spiced with a taco seasoning mix.
Toppings were of the usual variety - lettuce, cilantro, tomatoes, avocado chunks and salsa. Fresh strawberries were served as the side dish.
The only topping missing was shredded Tillamook cheddar cheese... which neither of us missed.
This was a good dinner. A bit of chopping for the toppings, and a bit of time to drain the crumbled extra-firm tofu, but worth any effort.The only things we consumed today that were NOT organic? The melon, the noodles and the salsa.
Until my next update, I remain, your "but it wasn't the same as Tacos Gonzalez" correspondent.