Herbivore Knows Sandwiches

The Chef: Gabrielle, Lyndsay, and Herbivore Restaurant

The Menu: A marinated tofu wrap packed with pickles, avocado, veggies, and garlic spread, along with potato salad and green salad. We were feeling particularly famished, so we also split an order of spring rolls with peanut sauce.

The Goods: While this meal can hardly outdo the Thanksgiving feast we enjoyed yesterday, today's lunch was still a pretty epic affair. Office Manager Lyndsay Orwig and I thought it only right to set the tone for the Thanksgiving holiday by ordering a hedonistically large meal at Herbivore. I easily devoured my entire tofu wrap while Lyndsay enjoyed her vegan chicken sandwich, and we also shared the Vietnamese-style spring rolls. Pretty much the only thing that could have improved this meal is pie. Since we enjoyed so much delicious food, we though we'd sneak in this bonus picture of our delicious spring rolls. Happy Thanksgiving (eating) everyone!

Marinated Tofu Sandwich

The Chef: Gabrielle and Herbivore restaurant

The Menu: A marinated tofu sandwich piled high with tomato, avocado, pickles, and lettuce, paired with a delicious salad dressed with a mustard vinaigrette.

The Goods: It's Monday, I forgot to pack a lunch, and I was absolutely famished. What to do? Oh, hey, just head to that fully-vegan restaurant around the corner from the VNHQ. I feasted on this sandwich accompanied by Office Manager Lyndsay Orwig and Associate Editor Liz Miller, where we all enjoyed the sun streaming through the windows on this gorgeous fall day in the Mission. May I direct your eyes to the most exciting thing to launch on November 1 other than Vegan MoFo? That would be the 2010 Veggie Awards, and the results are in!

Chickpea Picatta

The Chef: Gabrielle

The Menu: Leftover chickpea picatta with shallots, capers, garlic, arugula, and lemon, simmered in white wine; served over roasted garlic mashed potatoes and paired with a simple spinach and corn salad.

The Goods: This picatta from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming book Appetite for Reduction might very well be one of the best meals I've made recently, which fairs well for the yet-to-be-released cookbook. Isa's recipes (whether authored alone, or with the superstar VegNews columnist Terry Hope Romero) comprise what are hands down my favorite cookbooks, and even my omnivorous mum agrees that Veganomicon is one of the best cookbooks out there, veg or not. Over the weekend I was searching for something delicious to make for the week ahead, and was thrilled to find that Isa had posted some sample recipes from Appetite for Reduction on her revamped Post Punk Kitchen website. I promptly made this recipe (with a tiny modification to allow garbanzos to share real estate with black eyed peas), and served mine over some decidedly not low-fat mashed potatoes that are my own recipe. That is, if you can call potatoes, garlic, a lot of earth balance, salt, and nutritional yeast a recipe, and not just delicious!

Healthy Leftovers

The Chef: Gabrielle

The Menu: Spicy sautéed kale, oyster mushrooms, and braised tofu, accompanied by a scarlet runner bean and heirloom tomato salad dressed with a pumpkin seed oil vinaigrette.

The Goods: As a Canadian, I heeded my mum's request and made myself a bunch of dishes to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving this past weekend. I guess I didn't think about the fact that I was only cooking for one because my fridge is now packed with leftovers, but I'm not complaining! The bean salad was made possible by fancy organic scarlet runner beans and the highest quality pumpkin seed oil included in a recent care package I received from a friend all the way in Austria. The kale and mushrooms in the other dish are courtesy of the Inner Sunset Farmers' Market, which is my favorite place to be on a Sunday morning.

Oktoberfest Sausage

The Chef: Gabrielle and Rosamunde Sausage Grill

The Menu: Apple-sage sausage with sauerkraut and hot peppers, and a pickle.

The Goods: As I’m sure you’ve noticed by our Mexican-, Mediterranean-, and Japanese-inspired lunches of late, the Mission district offers an ethnically diverse selection of eats. Since my dad is a German professor and my first name is Germanic, I took it upon myself to celebrate Oktoberfest today and get a vegan sausage at the nearby Rosamunde Sausage Grill. This place sounds about as unvegan as you can get, but Rosamunde actually does care about vegans, offering us four vegan sausage varieties. I ordered the Field Roast apple sage, with complimentary toppings sauerkraut and hot peppers to round out the flavors. I added a pickle on the side to get my veggies, because that counts, right? With free curry ketchup and spicy brown mustard, Rosamunde is definitely a place I’ll revisit. Oh, and they also offer an impressive selection of craft beers, for future post-work libations!

Sushi!

The Chef: Gabrielle

The Menu: Ume and shiitake sushi rolls with seaweed salad from the Mission's We Be Sushi Restaurant

The Goods: Office Manager Lyndsay Orwig and I set off in search of something tasty on this very sunny Friday. We found We Be, a very reasonably-priced sushi restaurant with lots of vegan options. We both started with a seaweed salad, and I ordered an ume plum and grilled shiitake roll for a wallet-friendly $3 each. This week has been a great one for eats, as evidenced by the luncheon Brooke and I attended yesterday, Lyndsay's wrap, Elizabeth's posole, Liz's classic sandwich, and Brooke's Mediterranean plate. Can we just say that we love our new Mission location?!

Queso Veggie Sandwich

The Chef: Gabrielle and Java Beach Café

The Menu: A huge veggie sandwich featuring cucumber, tomato, avocado, sprouts, and mustard in a fresh baguette slathered with some warm and spicy Nacho Mom's Vegan Queso.

The Goods: Tired of lusting over our delicious Java Beach sandwiches? Well, I'm not tired of eating them, though I will be able to mix it up a bit when we move to our amazing new office in San Francisco's Mission district, an area known for excellent vegan offerings like at the fully-vegan Gracias Madre and Cha-Ya Vegetarian Japanese restaurant. Today's sandwich was one of those meals you think about for the rest of the day, due mainly to the delicious Nacho Mom's Vegan Queso I slathered all over it. Accompanying the sandwich is an essential pick-me-up in the form of GT's Synergy Kombucha. Though I usually make my own, sadly I had to leave my scobies back in Canada, so it's GT's to the rescue since this vegan doesn't buy into the controversy surrounding kombucha's alcohol content. Will there be brownies from Allison's Gourmet during my afternoon snack-fest? Um, probably!

Kale Salad and a Burrito

The Chef: Gabrielle

The Menu: Delicious sesame-scented kale and arame salad complimented by an Evol Spinach & Tofu Burrito.

The Goods: You may have noticed that we're kind of nuts for Evol Burritos! While I had grand plans to bring in a serving of the delicious gazpacho I was planning to make from the gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and peppers I scored at the Farmers' Market this past weekend, a plumbing incident in my kitchen meant that the roommate and I were stuck with salad and toast for dinner. Luckily, the salad was my favorite (kale), and even more fortuitously, Evol Burritos have been staking out prime real estate in the VegNews freezer for a while now. The whole thing was doused in Sriracha post-picture.

Semi Pad Thai

The Chef: Gabrielle

The Menu: A lovely, VN kitchen take on pad thai sans the peanuts, with rice noodles, tofu, and spinach marinated in a lovely, tangy sauce of lemongrass, garlic, onion, ginger, lime juice, and Braggs Liquid Aminos.

The Goods: Today, Ms. Gabrielle turned out her first meal in the VN kitchen, and lets just say we're pretty darn happy she did. As ardent fans of all things noodles, we were pretty much in heaven with this flavorful, gluten-free feast. In addition to preparing her first lunch at the VNHQ, Gabrielle also posted her first Press Pass entry today! Read all about her adventures touristing the city, and find out which doughnut shop she recommends you check out, asap. Today's balanced meal was exactly what we needed on this chilly Thursday, but we're hoping for brighter skies tomorrow when award-winning vegan chef Chloe Coscarelli stops by the VNHQ to generously cater us a homemade meal. We're totally thrilled to catch up with Chloe and her equally fantastic mom, Shelley. That is, assuming we don't die of anticipation before lunch. We'll work on that.

Coconut Curry, Cucumber Salad

The Chef: Colleen

The Menu: Comforting coconut curry, fragrant and flavorful basmati rice, and a refreshing cucumber salad rounded out Thursday's satisfying meal. Colleen threw together this tasty curry with tomatoes, mushroom, bell pepper, collards, and potato, and served up a crisp salad of mixed greens and cucumber, lightly dressed with a sweet vinaigrette.

The Goods: We love having lunch guests here at the VNHQ, and today's lunch included not only our beloved weekly guest, VegWebmistress Laura Beck, but also fantastic VN contributor and activist extraordinaire Jasmin Singer. In addition to our lovely guests, we have even more reason to celebrate today, as it marks VN Editorial Assistant Gabrielle's first day on the job! Yes, between launching the 2010 Veggie Awards poll this week, anticipating the arrival of our September+October issue, and welcoming Gabrielle, you could say its been a pretty great week thus far.