South Asian Leftover Mash-up

The Chef: Joni

The Menu: A mishmash of leftover Thai, Burmese, and Indian foods—spicy tofu, glazed eggplant, yellow veggie curry, and coconut rice

The Dish: I had family in town recently, which means lots of dining out (no complaints here!). I’m pretty sure we ate at every South Asian restaurant in San Francisco, hence the assortment of leftovers for lunch today. While South Asian cuisine occupies a large portion of my love for food, so does dessert, and I’m ready for some cookies! We spent much of yesterday sorting through the myriad of recipe entries to the VegNews Holiday Cookie Contest and our top 10 finalists sound amazing. We’ll be having a bake-off on Friday to determine the winners and I can’t wait to bake the Peanut Butter Blossoms. It will surely be the perfect end to the week.

Vegetable Rice Bowl (and Cake!)

The Chef: Colleen

The Menu: Rice bowl with pea shoots, cherry tomatoes, avocado, red onion, and yellow pepper—all over warm brown rice and tossed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and sea salt

The Dish: It's the Tuesday after a three-day weekend, and it's time to start eating healthy! It seems like there have been far too many opportunities to eat out lately, so a nice, healthy rice bowl was just what I needed. This is one of my all-time favorite dishes, and I have it at least three times a week (for either lunch or dinner). And given how gorgeous it was today on the VegNews deck, it was the perfect meal to enjoy outside with my colleagues. Since tomorrow is Assistant Editor Anna Peraino's birthday, we toasted her today with a homemade chocolate-peanut butter cake (inspired by our friends at Vegan Treats). Happy Birthday, Anna!

Anna's chocolate-peanut butter-bomb cake, which we quickly devoured.

A closer look at the three-layer, peanut butter frosting-filled cake.

PB&J with a Tossed Salad

The Chef: Joni

The Menu: Peanut butter and strawberry-raspberry jelly sandwich on flax seed bread, and a tossed salad with baby greens, red onion, green bell pepper, chickpeas, and teriyaki tofu, drizzled with Annie's Naturals' Vegan Goddess Dressing

The Goods: The three words that best describe this lunch are simple, quick, and delicious. What more could you ask for with a lunch that you prepare just 10 minutes before leaving the house in the morning? OK, I admit it—a PB&J and a tossed salad are not exciting, novel ideas, but Goddess dressing spruces up even the most boring of meals. According to the SF Gate, Goddess dressing was invented right here in San Francisco by chef Phillip Roemer in 1923, making it a local classic. Annie’s Naturals veganized it and now it is one my personal favorites. If it’s not your favorite, let us know by voting in the VegNews Veggie Awards, the world’s largest survey of vegan people, places, and products. Vote for your favorite vegan restaurant, cheese, chocolate, city, store, cookbook author, blog, website, and more! 

PB&J Thursday

The Chef: Liz

The Menu: A classic peanut butter and jam sandwich on whole-wheat bread.

The Goods: To clarify, I didn't eat three-fourths of a sandwich for lunch. No, I had in fact already begun eating my sandwich when I remembered I needed to document my meal. This truly stacked sandwich will fuel me for a few hours, until mid-afternoon snack time, when a bag of fresh, crunchy carrots will tide me over until dinner. Before dinner, however, I'll be sipping on Sake Pomegranate Lemonade martinis at SF Vegan Drinks! If you live in the Bay Area, be sure to join us for a drink or two or 12 tonight at Martuni's, the perfect place to celebrate cocktail hour.

PB&J, Crunchy Carrots

The Chef: Liz

The Menu: Liz's favorite school-lunch standard, a fluffy PB&J made with whole-wheat bread, all-natural peanut butter, and homemade plum jam. With protein, carbs, and natural sugars all accounted for, Liz balanced out her meal with a serving of crunchy carrot sticks.

The Goods: It's a short week here at the VNHQ, but after our sunny holiday weekends, we're refreshed and ready for the days ahead. If you didn't get to enjoy the long weekend, or just already miss the numbered days of summer, sign up for a warm-weather getaway with VegNews! That's right, we've just announced two more VegNews Vacations for 2011! First, embark on a fantastic adventure with our Exotic Getaway to Laos in May, and then explore vegan-friendly Thai eats with a Food Lover's Tour to Thailand in September. Reserve your spot now, as spaces will go fast!

Peanut Butter & Jam

The Chef: Liz

The Menu: A classic lunch combo including a PB&J made with whole-wheat bread, peanut butter, and homemade plum jam paired alongside a serving of crunchy carrot sticks and a ripe, red apple.

The Goods: Thanks to VN volunteer extraordinaire Frankie McGee, my favorite childhood sandwich got an all-natural upgrade with homemade plum jam. In addition to gifting the VN staff with this PB&J-approved plum jam, Frankie regularly brings in homemade jellies, jams, veggie spreads, preserves, pickles, bread, and desserts—vegan chocolate mousse with amaretto, anyone? Because yes, Frankie kindly whips up all of those tasty treats for the VN staff. I enjoyed my satisfying sandwich al fresco today, and finished off my midday meal with a refreshing ice tea from Java Beach.

Spicy Peant Kale Pasta

The Chef: Kristen

The Menu: This delicious medley is Kristen's signature dish, and we love it. A simple pasta with tomato sauce, peanut butter, kale, and garlic. Yes, it's fantastic and we could eat it every day. Today Kristen topped her dish with crushed cashews for an extra crunch. As always, a lovely side salad balanced the plate.

The Goods: So far it's been a fairly quiet week here since our publishers are enjoying their yearly jaunt to New York City. Yes, we'll have their photos loaded on Facebook for your perusal, and until then we're working like mad on our July+August 10th Anniversary Issue! Eeeeeek!

Sensational Spring Rolls

The Chef: Abigail

The Menu: A delicious bounty of rice-paper rolls, soup, and salad. The rolls were stuffed with fantastic baked tofu and sesame sauce, the soup was a non-chicken base with lovely toasted nori, and the salad was our typical blend of mixed greens, grated carrots, and cherry tomatoes that was elevated to a whole new level by Abigail's amazing spicy peanut butter dresssing.

The Goods: This was one of the tastiest and most creative meals we've had in a while, and was the perfect base for the long evening ahead of us. Why the long evening, you ask? That would be because we'll be out whooping it up at a little something we like to call SF Vegan Drinks. Not in the San Francisco Bay Area but want to hang out with us? Then come to India with us!

Peanut Butter Pasta

The Chef: Kristen

The Menu: One of Kristen's signature dishes, the peanut butter and tomato pasta toss. This delicious dish is a savory treat featuring collard greens, a simple sauce of—you guessed it—PB and tomatoes. Maybe that combination strikes you as a little crazy, and maybe it is. Crazy good! Kristen also made one of the loveliest salads we've seen in a while: mixed greens, homemade croutons, avocado, grated carrots, halved cherry tomatoes, and toasted sunflower seeds. Yes, we are happily full!

The Goods: It's a rainy, vile day here in SF, but we won't let the weather dampen (aside from literally, as we all pretty much got soaked on the way into the office today) our spirits. Why not, you ask? That would be because this week we have the time-honored tradition of SF Vegan Drinks to perk us up! Come out and see us this Thursday, or we'll be forced to drink all of the drink specials before you get there.

Christmas Crab Cakes

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: A colorful composition of lemony crab cakes made with Match Meats and Le Grand Lemon Confit, sautéed spinach with garlic, peanut butter roll-ups with jalapeño jelly, a bright salad with red cabbage and mango, and hunks of warm bread.

The Goods: The inspiration behind this meal was clearly cleaning out the fridge before we leave for the holidays! Frankie and Kassie provided the roll-ups, and with so many ready-made ingredients on-hand, this complex-looking meal came together in just about half an hour. Oh, and there might be about 80,000 types of cookies, fudge, candy canes, and other holiday-type goodies hanging around the office, so we're all feeling pretty freakin' jolly. We're off for the holidays until the beginning of January, so we'll see you in 2010! Happy New Year!

Milestone Meatless Ribs

The Chefs: Abby and Frankie

The Menu: Yes, those are Frankie's Falsies ribs. Yes, they are just as delicious as we remembered them. Abby roasted these babies up and doused them in Frankie's barbecue sauce, which was absolutely perfect. She also made her signature biscuits—Abby can whip these up in about 10 minutes flat, and they are so, so good right out of the oven—with the surprise addition today of Daiya and an absolutely incredible cashew gravy. Oh heck yes. Also, there was a salad. But really, Daiya biscuits!!

The Goods: In case you were wondering what milestone we're celebrating today, it's the 500th post on Café VegNews! Yes, our first-ever blog is still running strong, and we're so happy to be able to share our weekday meals with everyone on these here interwebs. In honor of the event, Colleen made a fantastic apple crisp and Frankie made a delicious peanut-butter-chocolate pie from Alicia Silverstone's new book, The Kind Diet. Since we couldn't share the pie with everyone, we made a crazy, one-day giveaway for you! Just leave a comment with your favorite Café VegNews post by midnight tonight, and we'll randomly draw one winner, who will receive an enormous tub of Sjaak's Peanut Butter cups. They are, in a word, incredible, as you can see below.

Award-Winning African Stew

The Chef: Jill Nussinow, The Veggie Queen

The Menu: An award-winning West African sweet potato stew served over a perfectly fluffy bed of millet and absolutely delicious winter salad. The savory stew had tomatoes, swiss chard, peanut butter, and just a little kick of ginger. A slightly sweet salad of greens, persimmons, and dried cranberries dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette completed the yummy meal.

The Goods: Today's lunch was full of treats! First of all, it's not every day that we have a cookbook author come over and make lunch for us. Not only did we get the day off from cooking, but lunch was absolutely scrumptious. Jill also gave us her tips for perfect pressure-cooker meals, which sounded totally ideal for the coming winter nights. Here's the whole gang:

Celebration Extravaganza

The Chef: Banhwich

The Menu: Vietnamese sandwiches! And spring rolls! And exclamation points! Okay, so maybe we are a little excited, but more on that later. Let's just say that these sandwiches were quite possibly the freshest ones we've ever had. The bread was delicious, the tofu was perfectly marinated, and even the cilantro haters (okay, make that hater—there's only one) in the office found the fresh green delectable. Oh, and those spring rolls? Yeah, all we can say is that perhaps we ate more of them than was advisable. Yum! Since we are pulling out all the stops today, we also had a sweet treat in the form of an incredibly rich chocolate cake with thick, amazing peanut butter frosting from Sugar Beat Sweets,which you see pictured below and modeled by VN's resident hand model, Aurelia.

The Goods: Um, okay. Are you sitting down? Item number one: tomorrow is our fabulous editorial director/hand model's birthday, which would have been reason enough to celebrate on its own. Item two: today is the one-year anniversary of Café VegNews! That's right, our very first blog is officially a year old. Oh, but what's that you say? You're looking for more reasons to celebrate? Well maybe our brand-new, freaking gorgeous, extra-exciting website has finally launched! We've got a completely redesigned VegNews.com for your perusal. You just might want to go ahead and make sure that you don't have any plans for later, since you'll be flaking on them! Oh, did we mention that there are daily giveaways on the new site? And maybe we also have a little something we like to call the Tree Free edition—aka a completely digital version of the magazine—the first issue of which is free so you can decide just how much you love it! If anyone needs us, we will all be dead from excitement for the next 24 hours. Eeeek!

Extra-Super Awesome Surprise

The Chef: Frankie

The Menu: Chocolate-covered everything! No, like, literally, everything. Frankie just came in to the office—on her day off no less!—to bring us a sweet smorgasbord of chocolate-covered goodies. Included in this incredible array were peanut-butter-filled pretzels, regular pretzels, faux-cream-cheese-filled dates, raspberry jam, peanut butter, coffee beans, and toasted almonds. Oh, did we mention that she just made these out of the goodness of her heart? Because she did. Are we dead with joy? Yes.

The Goods: It just really doesn't get much better than a surprise delivery of epic, chocolate-covered proportions. Frankie, as you may recall, spoils us routinely with her homemade goodies, but this is an extravagance, even by her standards. Also, did we mention that she is maybe absolutely our favorite person on the planet? Because she is, hands down.

Cleansing Week: Day One

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: Maybe the most delicious pb & j ever. Multigrain bread, crunchy all-natural peanut butter and sweet apple butter made for a lovely, yet lonely, lunch.

The Goods: So, the plan was for everyone in the office to do a cleanse this week and get our digestive systems working good as new. We'll be posting on each of our experiences on our "cooking" day, and let you in on how these little food-free experiments are going. You may have noticed that it says, "the plan was for everyone" to cleanse this week. Well, here's what happened when Elizabeth gave The Master Cleanse a try.

For anyone unfamiliar, the Master Cleanse involves drinking a mixture of filtered water, lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper for 10 days. It's a widely used cleanse, and seemed fairly innocuous. Elizabeth started on Monday, thinking that having the first day done with when she got back to the office today after the long weekend would be a boon. The cleanse proved to be a touch too intense, and by 9:30 pm Ms. Elizabeth was cranky, dizzy, had an absolutely splitting headache, and was ready to shiv someone for something solid to chew. Thankfully, a well-stocked pantry kept her from committing any crimes, and she thoroughly enjoyed a simple bowl of noodle soup. As the only one in the office who's eating, pb & j seemed the obvious choice for lunch since it didn't make the kitchen smell like food and was portable for a sunny, early afternoon stroll. Make sure to check back all this week and see how the other VN staffers are doing on their fasts, and kudos to them for sticking with it!

Also, we've just received word that VegNews is nominated for "Best Vegan Publication" in the 2008 Vegan Environmental Awards, which is quite an honor considering that the awards are given in Britain and we, as you may have noticed, are based in the US. Click here to vote for us!

Teaing Off

The "Chef": Lisa

The Menu: A big, steamy cup of Earl Grey tea, salted pretzels, and chunky peanut butter, all courtesty of a Mr. Trader Joe.

The Goods: With Joe and Colleen at the New York Farm Sanctuary Gala, Elizabeth at the Chicago Green Fest, Aurelia working from home across town, and Lisa hosting Canadian visitors, all of the VN editors will be out of the office this afternoon, and so will not be here for lunch. We promise we'll have our fabulous, regularly-scheduled lunch-programming back in full effect next week, but, for now, we hope you are somewhat sated with our mid-morning snack. Bon weekend!