Vegan Chinese New Year Luncheon

The Chef: Colleen and Wild Pepper

The Menu: A Chinese New Year vegan feast featuring steamed vegetable dumplings, black mushrooms with baby bok choy, Singaporean-style curried rice noodles, Hunan eggplant with tofu, string beans with faux chicken, and brown rice.

The Goods: Gong Xi Fa Cai (Cantonese) or Xin Nian Kuai Le (Mandarin)! Only a few of us speak either of these two primary Chinese languages, but we all want to wish you a very Happy Chinese New Year. To celebrate, we ordered in from local eatery Wild Pepper and enjoyed a veritable feast of sumptuous Chinese dishes. We made sure to have noodles on the menu (which symbolize long life) along with dumplings (good fortune) and green beans (parental longevity). We dined al fresco on our private deck right here in the heart of the Mission District (it's about 70 degrees today), and then Jenn surprised everyone with red envelopes filled with wads of cash (okay, $1, but we're thrilled!). Need more inspiration for your own Chinese New Year celebration? Check out our own Alexandra Chang's enlightening guide to the holiday on VegNews.com. And speaking of future world superpowers, Joseph Connelly and I leave tomorrow for the first VegNews Vacation of 2011—to India! We'll be traveling with 25 subscribers for two weeks and enjoying the incredible sights, sounds, and food of the Indian subcontinent. Cheers!

Green Beans, Veggie Soup

The Chef: Chas

The Menu: A super satisfying veggie-filled soup complete with kale, russet potatoes, carrots, kidney beans, pinto beans, sweet potato, and onion paired perfectly with a mixed greens salad brimming with chickpeas, shredded carrot, cucumber, and cabbage mixed with a tangy, smooth avocado dressing. To top off our great, green lunch Chas also prepared a side of steamed green beans  marinated in olive oil and mixed with diced onion.

The Goods: Here at the VNHQ we love three-day weekends, but getting back to work has its perks as well. Namely, that we're putting our July+August Anniversary issue to bed this week—and we couldn't be more excited! In honor of our 10 year anniversary, we've packed this issue full of the very best vegan recipes, lifestyle features, products, and media imaginable, and to honor this milestone world-famous artist Peter Max has designed our cover. Ready to read this must-have issue cover to cover? Sign up today, as it's the final day to subscribe in time to receive our fabulous anniversary issue. Already a subscriber? Gift a year-long subscription to your mother, best friend, or curious coworker and make their summer a little, well, sunnier.

Nice Noodles

The Chef: Charlotte

The Menu: A savory helping of chow-mein-style noodles that Charlotte jazzed up with the addition of green beans, red onions, carrots, and water chestnuts. A bright green salad with butter lettuce, pumpkin seeds, and sliced red onion finished the plate.

The Goods: THIS IS IT, PEOPLE. We would never normally resort to the shouting effect of the caps lock, but today is no normal day. Mere hours remain for voting in the 2009 Veggie Awards Survey, and some categories are literally being won by handfuls of votes. Are our nails bitten? Yes. Palms sweaty? Yes. Does this kind of excitement really take a toll on the overall attractiveness of our staff? Yes! Basically, it comes to this: We've got a fever, and the only prescription is more votes!

Couldn't-Be-Easier Curry

The Chef: Lyndsay

The Menu: A delicious duo of curries! Ms. Lyndsay prepared a totally terrific two-part curry lunch for us today using a new line of organic curries from Curry Love. Lyndsay simmered corn, green beans, peas, carrots, onions, and tofu in both the Blissful Banana Ginger and Passion Red Thai flavors, and served each over hearty helpings of basmati rice. Lunch couldn't have been easier or tastier!

The Goods: Today we're a skeleton crew here at the VNHQ, but are thrilled to announce the arrival of one of our new editorial assistants, Ms. Kailey! We tend to let new staffers have the first week off from cooking duty so they can get up to speed around the office, but we're definitely looking forward to Kailey's kitchen debut!

Asian Combination

The Chef: Jenny

The Menu: A pan-Asian treat of stir-fry and soup! First we enjoyed a very green stir-fry which featured green beans, collard greens, tofu, and noodles. Delicious? Yes. An excellent method of incorporating everything from the fridge? Indeed. Alongside the main course Jenny served up a Thai-inspired coconut-avocado soup. Yes, it would have been appropriate if we had all died of gustatory pleasure after eating this decadent, slightly spicy soup. Yum!

The Goods: We were slightly suspicious that Jenny—who's an avowed sci-fi fan—might have been secretly replaced by a Jenny-bot today. The cause for our concern? The soup was raw! That's right, Jenny (or her android alter-ego) whipped up the incredibly luscious soup without so much as lighting a burner. Since her fiery Cuban disposition lends itself more to cooked foods than raw foods, this was a first for Jenny—and definitely a trend we'd like to encourage, even if the amazing food is robot-produced.

Ready-Made Eats

The Chef: Lisa

The Menu: A mélange of ready-to-go Indian items, including chana masala, vegetable curry, and dhal from Devya Indian Gourmet. Served over lovely, fluffy rice and alongside steamed lemon-and-herb-tossed green beans and swiss chard, these flavorful treats were both yummy and easy. Oh, and that slice of faux-meat hanging out at the top of the plate? That would be none other than the famous Tofurky roast, which was an unexpected treat.

The Goods: Really, is there anything better than a delicious lunch that takes minutes to throw together? We didn't think so. On days when you'd really rather spend your lunch hour enjoying a satisfying meal while sitting in the sun—instead of spending 45 minutes chopping in the kitchen and 10 scarfing something down—it's always nice to know that prefab sauces, curries, and mains can help get you out into the sunshine. Wait, did we mention that it was sunny today? The last few weeks have been one big foggy, drippy mess, so we were all a little extra excited to get our vitamin D today.

Cookbook Week: Veganomicon

The Chef: Lisa

The Menu: A three-fold citrusy feast. Lisa busted out the Chickpea Cutlets from Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero's Veganomicon, which she'd enjoyed in the past but never made for herself. She smothered the toothsome main in an original lemon-curry gravy, and paired it with some recycled lime-infused rice from yesterday, and freshly steamed green beans with lemon.

The Goods: Today's meal was totally filling, but the high lemon content made everything taste light and fresh. Though the delicious flavors were certainly the highlight of the meal, it's nice to know that if by some strange twist of fate the entire VN crew was set adrift today that we'd be safe from scurvy. In somewhat more realistic and decidedly more exciting news, make sure to look for Terry Hope Romero's VN debut in our September+October Food Issue!

Creative Curry

The Chef: Aurelia

The Menu: A delicious, exotic curry comprised of green beans, carrots, zucchini, kale, and faux duck all simmered in rich coconut milk and savory curry. Yum! Served over quinoa and with a vibrant side salad of mixed greens, bell pepper, heirloom tomatoes, and avocado, this was one mega-satisfying main course.

The Goods: Yes, you read that right: faux duck. Our offices have been awash recently with uncommon faux meats in preparation for an in-depth look at the history of meatless eats which will appear in our September+October Food Issue, coming your way in a few short weeks! So, since we've got all these, um, interesting items, we thought the best way to share them with you would be by literally sharing them with you. Conveniently, today being the last day of July (sniff!), it's time for our Café VegNews Giveaway! For loot we have something that we're pretty sure has to be the strangest thing we've ever offered: vegan haggis! We figured that you might want visual proof of this one, so check it out below. Also, just in case faux-Scottish-nasty-potted meat doesn't turn out to be your favorite new food, we're also including a signed copy of VN columnist Rory Freedman's book, Skinny Bitch in the Kitch. On the cookbook theme, we'll be making recipes from cookbooks all next week, so don't miss it!

The Question: So here's what we're wondering: What's the strangest faux meat you've ever seen? You may get bonus points for having eaten it, but then again, you may also get bonus points for not having eaten it. Leave your answer in the comments by Friday, August 8, and we'll select a winner. Good luck!

Sausage Patty Party!

The Chefs: Lisa & Frankie

The Menu: Some seriously scrumptious sausage patties! Ms. Frankie decided to take on the world of faux meat, having already completely conquered the dessert realm, and the results were today's savory main dish. Perfectly Cajun-spiced, these patties knocked our socks off, and they were even better paired with fresh heirloom tomato slices, slabs of French bread, and an amazing garlicky avocado spread which Ms. Lisa made. Lightly steamed green beans took the place of our usual salad, much to our delight.

The Goods: We know it's been said before, but Frankie spoils us rotten. Who else gets homemade faux-meat delivered right to their office? Nobody, that's who. (Well, okay, let us know if you do, and then we'll have ourselves a taste test!) What we know for sure is that getting through a busy week is always easier when Frankie's around.