The Way Of The Veggie: On Sandwiches (and catching up!)

About Me and This Blog

I've been a vegetarian for almost six years now. For the first four years, I was a pescetarian (I ate fish). These days, I lean towards veganism and am very passionate about animal rights and welfare. Before going veg, I ate A LOT of meat. In fact, I had a bumper sticker on my first car that read "If we're not supposed to eat animals, then why do they taste so good?" Yeah, I was that person. I loved cooking meat, now I love cooking vegetarian EVEN MORE.

I post a lot of stories about animals and veggie food on facebook, and friends started asking me for recipes and more information on how to be a healthy vegetarian. This blog is my answer to those questions. Most if not all of the recipes can be made vegan by omitting cheese or subbing with vegan "cheese". Email me anytime.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

On Sandwiches (and catching up!)

Good morning, veg-heads! Personally, I have a bit of a thick head from consuming beer AND sangria last night with some friends while watching Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals - nothing a ton of water today won't fix. Besides Vancouver's win (yay!), the best part of the night was the discovery of THEBESTVEGGIE BURGERIHAVEEVERHAD. And let me me tell you, I've had a veggie burger or two in my life. I thought about taking a picture of it, but it was too dark in there, so you'll just have to take my word for it. It was the restaurant's special during Canucks games - Burger and a Beer for $11.95 - any kind of burger you want, including veggie! It was stuffed with amazing-tasting ingredients and the bun was like this delicious brioche piece of heaven - agh! I want it again! (I'll be back for it)

In any case, if you ever want to try it, Cats is part of the Brown's group of "social houses", and they have a ton of them all over the lower mainland. The cool thing about the menu is that you can substitute tofu for almost ANY meat dish in the place - in the place of fish, chicken, beef, etc. That, my friends, is super cool. Locations and menu here:
http://brownsrestaurantgroup.com/brownssocialhouse/menu/
http://catssocialhouse.com/

Now then. I've been really into sandwiches lately. We have this awesome sandwich maker/panini press thing at work and I've been all over it. Lately, my breakfasts have been a cut up morningstar vegetarian sausage (heated), tomato and avocado plus salt and pepper between a pita and placed in the sandwich maker. SO good. I used to put cheese in this, but am as cheese-free as I can be these days, and really, with avocado, who needs it??

Last weekend, I made this AMAZING vegetarian sandwich with whatever I felt like - this little baby had fresh spinach, red peppers, grated carrot, cheddar cheese, avocado, cucumber and, what I believe to be the key ingredient, lots of fresh basil. I also used Tofutti cream cheese - herb flavoured. Seriously, this sandwich makes me laugh in the face of meat sandwiches.

Yesterday for lunch I did a good old fashioned pb&j, although I really would have preferred a pb&b (banana). Man do I love a good pb&b. I've been getting cravings at work lately for something sweet around 3pm, so I and the pb&js are taking care of cravings business. Put it in the sandwich maker and voila....molten peanut buttery goodness.

What do all these sandwiches have in common? Protein. In the form of whole wheat bread (mostly), cheeses, tofu cream cheese, peanut butter, avocado...on and on. Delicious and damn well-rounded.

Sorry for the lack of new recipe posts, folks! I actually decided about three weeks ago that I needed to go back and re-make the recipes I posted at the beginning of the blog so I had pictures to add to them! If you haven't visited the old recipes for a while, take a look, a lot of them have accompanying pictures now. I'm making the Balsamic Eggplant Parmesan tonight so will have that picture up tomorrow.

Happy eating!