Vegan Mexican-Style Corn Cakes

The Chefs: Rashida and Herbivore

The Menu: Grilled corn cakes with black beans and potatoes, topped with chipotle salsa, vegan sour cream, and guacamole

The Goods: I've been fighting a nasty sinus infection/allergy attack/mystery affliction all week, so spicy soup may have been a wiser choice. But the thought of these corn fritters and their equally delicious brethren (by which I mean delicately spiced beans and Herbivore's house potatoes) had me abandoning my soup-y intentions and my hope of ever breathing through my nose again. Besides being tasty, this meal was entirely gluten-free, which is a word we've been hearing a lot around these parts lately, with everything from lasagna to cookbooks ditching the stuff. Want to give gluten-free cooking a shot? Check out these 5 Spring-Friendly Gluten-Free Recipes from VN contributor Allyson Kramer!

Quick Vegan Mac 'n' Cheese

The Chefs: Elizabeth and Peter

The Menu: A highly delicious, gluten-free, and sunflower seed-based mac 'n' cheese, plus the best salad of all time. The salad included kale, romaine, artichoke hearts, cucumbers, avocado, hearts of palm, grated carrots, and red cabbage.

The Goods: Today we were rich in great food and guests! To be totally accurate, Peter cooked all the food, and we were so grateful that he did! In addition to our hero chef, we were joined by the lovely Whitney of Eco-Vegan Gal, and three members of the Pollack family: Hilary (OK, fine, she's here all the time), her mother Polly, and Reggie, who was easily the fluffiest guest. If there's anything better than enjoying a fantastic meal with wonderful people outside in the warm sunshine, we don't want to know about it. (Because it's obviously a lie, there's nothing better than that!)

Mighty Good Marinara

The Chef: Liz

The Menu: A lovely—and colorful—meal of gluten-free pasta topped with a delicious marinara that had chickpeas, spinach, and rosemary all thrown in for good measure. A bean salad with tons of avocado and cherry tomatoes made a multicolored side.

The Goods: This is it! The next time you hear from us we'll be reporting from LA, where we'll be at Expo West 2010, exploring the miles of booths. Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for all the haps!

Pesto Fusilli

The Chef: Liz

The Menu: A luscious, homemade pesto served with fresh tomato chunks over brown-rice fusilli. A hearty salad with garbanzo beans, romaine, cucumber, and green onion made a delicious side, and Liz also just happened to bust out a seitan piccata. Yes, we are spoiled. Yes, we covered everything in Parma!

The Goods: After Friday's phenomenal meal, we were too scared to come in to the office to make lunch yesterday. Yes, too scared, and also too much enjoying the holiday time off. Liz brought us back to the work-week reality with this yummy lunch, but just in case any of you was hoping for more from the realm of professional chefs, we have a little recap from one of Tal Ronnen's cooking classes over on Press Pass. Let's not, you know, hasten back to reality too quickly. Here's hoping everyone is enjoying the short week!

Pasta Marinara

The Chef: Liz and Karine

The Menu: A lovely marinara with eggplant and lots of garlic that Liz served over rice pasta and topped with cheddar Daiya. Red-cabbage slaw courtesy of our guest, a green salad, and sliced fresh bread made this a mighty fine meal.

The Goods: Today we had the pleasure of dining with Karine Brighten, a local vegan event planner. Karine was responsible for the excellent grand opening of Nature's Express this past weekend, which you might have heard about on a little blog we like to call Press Pass. Lunch was lovely, despite the inclement weather and fact that we've been cooped up in the office this whole week! We can't wait for our next opportunity to dine al fresco!

Amy's Comfort Food

The Chefs: Michelle and Tina from Amy's Kitchen

The Menu: Today we were kindly treated to two of Amy's brand-spankin'-new products. First up we devoured the incredible vegan mac 'n' cheese. Yes, this time it's totally vegan (the cheese is Daiya!) and gluten free. While sometimes "gluten free" really means "gummy and freakish," if our guest chefs hadn't clued us in to the missing gluten in this pasta, we would never have known. The same goes for the roasted vegetable pizza, which is another of Amy's products that's getting a gluten-free revamp. This one was already vegan, but the GF spin is new, and we liked it just as much as the original. And we had a salad. Woo hoo, salad. Not pictured (mostly because we ate it too quickly) was a GF version of Amy's chocolate cake. Yeah, that's gone.

The Goods: One of the best things about our office location is that we are within driving distance of Amy's, and this is the second time that Michelle and company have come down to make us lunch. Um, getting to try new products right away? Yes, please! Now if you'll excuse us, some of us have bowls to lick.

Pancakes A' Plenty

The Chef: Lyndsay

The Menu: Pancakes! Lyndsay whipped up a batch of gluten-free pancakes from Purely Elizabeth, which were lovely. She also roasted a bunch of root vegetables, which were seasoned perfectly.

The Goods: We are thisclose to leaving for the last SF Vegan Drinks of the year. If you're in The City, come see us!

Ike's Sandwiches

The Chef: The team at Ike's Place

The Menu: Um, Ike's. These are the best sandwiches in the world. You can disagree if you want to, but do so knowing that you're wrong and making a mockery of yourself. Fresh, soft Dutch crunch bread, tons of veggies, Dirty Sauce, and any number of fillings make these sammies the be-all-end-all sandwiches. We ordered the Backstabber, a couple Womanizers, Nacho Boy, Chester the Cheetah on gluten-free bread, Eli Manning, and the Meatless Mike—all vegan, of course. When you eat an Ike's sandwich, there's no room for salad.

The Goods: Today has been semi-calamitous here at the VNHQ. Yes, the internet likes to go out when we're working on e-newsletters; yes, the printer decided take a little unexpected break in the middle of printing; and yes, we've all been thinking Office Space kinds of thoughts all day. But! Today is also a special occasion, as it's the one-year anniversary of our relaunch of VegNews.com. To properly punctuate this momentous milestone, we had lunch generously catered by Ike's Place. Let's just say that after these sandwiches, all seems right with the world.

The VN Obsession: Mac 'n' Cheese

The Chef: Lisa

The Menu: Oh, is that mac 'n' cheese you see again? Why yes, indeed it is. Okay, we admit it: we're obsessed. Seriously, make it. Find yourself a copy of the January+February issue, and then you'll know exactly what we're dealing with here. Seriously, this is the best mac 'n' cheese on the planet—and, of course, it's vegan. Today, Lisa even made it gluten-free by using rice pasta and corn-flake crumbs. Since the recipe consists mostly of blended vegetables, there isn't even enough fat in here to make us feel bad about ingesting six pounds of it this week. Lisa also whipped up a lovely salad of crisp romaine lettuce, sliced cherry tomatoes, and shredded zucchini.

The Goods: Really. There just aren't enough adjectives to adequately describe this dish. Just to make it even better, we had the pleasurable company of Steve Bossio, whose family was featured on Dateline NBC for their green lifestyle. It was a great meal made all the moreso by great company! Oh, and it was a good excuse to fuel our all-encompassing mac 'n' cheese habit.