Pesto and Peas

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: A pasta salad of sorts with pesto, tempeh, garbanzo beans, peas, and bell peppers

The Goods: After an extremely fun weekend of scooting down to LA for the Humane Society's Genesis Awards on Saturday, my dinner when I got home last night was decidedly of the "throw together whatever's in the fridge" variety. So, with some on-hand cashews, garlic, frozen spinach, and one bunch of fresh basil, this impropmtu pesto came to be. Back at the VNHQ the excitement continues, as tomorrow we'll be talking veganism and manliness in our Twitter Chat, and Thursday we're headed out for SF Vegan Drinks! Whew!

Pesto Pasta

The Chefs: Jennifer and Valencia Whole Foods

The Menu: Savvy Savories Vegan Pesto Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes

The Goods: I blame Editorial Assistant Hilary Pollack for my addiction to this pesto pasta. She bought it all the time, and she made me try it to understand her obsession. Now, I'm hooked. The roasted cashews add a nice cheese-like taste to this pesto. I could eat it every day. Stop me. Immediately after eating this savory dish, all I really want is something sweet. So it's a good thing I'm baking up the Chocolate Sugar Cookies Iced with Crushed Candy Cane Topping recipe from our Holiday Cookie Contest. I'm not the world's best baker so I'm glad I'm chatting with some of the best vegan bakers tonight at 6pm PT during our VegNews Twitter Chat to get some help.

Bolani

The Chef: Joni

The Dish: A bolani—traditional Afghan flatbread—stuffed with potatoes and a side of pesto for dipping

The Goods: When I saw this Afghan specialty at the grocery store, I knew I needed to try it—I’m always on a quest to incorporate international flavor into every meal I eat. Adding worldy pizzazz to food would definitely be a good tactic if you’re considering entering the VegNews Holiday Cookie Contest. We’re looking for the most inventive and delicious cookie recipes known to the holiday season, so send them our way for a chance to win fabulous prizes, like a KitchenAid stand mixer.

All Green

The Chef: Joni and Valencia Whole Foods

The Menu: Pesto pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, tofu and green beans glazed with ginger, and iced green tea

The Goods: Seriously, think twice before sampling this pesto pasta sold at Valencia Whole Foods—it’s so good that I have to it nearly every day. Why is something so delicious located just a block away? Speaking of delicious, check out this huge delivery of bread that arrived today, courtesy of Dave’s Killer Bread. After all this pasta and bread, you can certainly find me happily snoozing on our sunny deck. Thank you, post-lunch, starch-induced coma. For a more exciting event on the deck, come to the VegNews Book Bash with Spork Foods on October 21. Tickets are selling out fast!

Eggplant and Sundried Tomato Sandwich

The Chef: Hilary and Herbivore

The Menu: A hearty eggplant sandwich with tangy sundried tomatoes, herbaceous pesto spread, and fresh side salad with avocado and mustard dressing. 

The Goods: After Publishers Joseph Connelly and Colleen Holland were generous enough to bring in a smorgasbord of bagels for the staff this morning (complemented by Office Manager Lyndsey Orwig's amazing butternut squash butter—like apple butter, but to reiterate, butternut squash!), I didn't foresee my appetite springing back into action for hours. However, due to a lively brainstorming session for the cover of the November+December issue, which will contain the eagerly awaited results of the 10th annual Veggie Awards, I needed something majorly nourishing by lunchtime. Sorry to brag, but having an all-vegan café right around the corner comes in really handy sometimes. Keep San Francisco in mind when you plan your next road trip, as we're launching our own Ultimate Vegan Road Trip on VegNews.com this month. Follow us as we cruise the country finding all of the best veg eats that America has to offer. 

Pesto Pasta

The Chef: Anna and Valencia Whole Foods

The Menu: Cashew-pesto pasta with slow-roasted tomatoes on top of a bed of greens and carrots

The Dish: This pesto pasta is killer. It's tasty, filling, and comes in just the right amount (for three dollars, no less). I decided to health it up a little by adding the greens, and I must say, my experiment turned out nicely. Coworkers Colleen, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Hilary, and I all enjoyed our various lunches (three out of the five consisting of Valencia Whole Foods' offerings) on our sunny deck, happy to have the September+October issue at the presses. You know what that means—we're already hard at work on November+December! Make your own mark on the issue by voting in the 11th annual VegNews Veggie Awards (the highlight of the November+December issue, if we dare say so).

Spring Rolls and Vegan Pesto

 The Chefs: Elizabeth and Valencia Whole Foods

The Menu: Two ready-made dishes, fresh from the cold case. Spring rolls with carrots, romaine, cucumbers, avocado, and a ridiculously delicious dipping sauce, plus a side of Savvy Savories pesto pasta, topped with some of the company's Italian sausage.

The Goods: Sometimes you want to eat delicious things but a) don't have the time to whip something up yourself, b) need to also sneak in a quick run at lunch, in addition to procuring and devouring said delicious thing, and c) happen to have a really great grocery store right around the corner from your office. All three of these qualifications were true for me today, and thankfully Valencia Whole Foods totally came through. Do pesto and spring rolls usually go together? Maybe not, but I tell you what—they should! You know what else should go together? You and me! I'm thrilled to be going on VegNews Vegan Yoga Retreat to Mexico, and you could be too! Check out our VegNews Vacation lineup for 2012 here.

Spinach & Kale Pesto Pasta

The Chef: Jennifer Chen

The Menu: Spinach and kale pesto with Jovial whole grain Einkorn pasta, topped with Parma.

The Goods: This is a meal I love making because it's a recipe from a dear friend and it's the perfect meal to make a big batch to have for lunches during the week. Since I make this pesto a lot, I have stopped looking at the recipe, but here's the general breakdown. In a large pan, I sauté one head of spinach and one head of kale (you can sub-in a bag of frozen of each green) until cooked. In a sauté pan, I warm a few tablespoons of olive oil and add chopped garlic, and cook until the garlic browns. I add the spinach and kale to the olive oil and garlic mixture and toss until coated. My final step is using my immersion blender to create the pesto. Of course, I also cook pasta and then combine the pesto and pasta. After a fantastic weekend in Los Angeles with VN Managing Editor Elizabeth Castoria attending the 25th Genesis Awards, this warming meal was a perfect way to feel like I was back at home.

Presto Pasta

The Chef: Colleen

The Menu: A ready-made meal of pasta with an alfredo pesto sauce, courtesy of Newleaf. Colleen busted out a simple cucumber salad that perfectly complemented the hearty pesto, and we topped the whole plate with tons of Parma!, as per usual.

The Goods: It's stunningly gorgeous outside today, so you can be we dined al fresco. This is going to be a busy weekend, and we hope the beautiful weather keeps coming. The Genesis Awards are happening down in LA, where Elizabeth will be for the festivities. Then Joseph and Colleen have to get packed since they set sail on Sunday for a week-long cruise with A Taste of Health! Bon voyage, all! We'll be back on Monday, provided we can tear ourselves away from the beach.

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!

Philip Gelb Caters!

The Chefs: Philip Gelb and Cori Spence

The Menu: (Please make sure you are sitting down/not drinking hot liquids before you read this to reduce the risk of falling/spitting coffee all over your computer.) Ok, first we enjoyed an incredible black-lentil soup that was perfectly spiced. It warmed us from the inside out on this blustery, winter day. Next up, we enjoyed the trio of treats you see here, namely ravioli, salad, and collard rolls. The rolls had homemade tempeh, rice, kabocha squash, and an incredibly good marinade. The salad was blood oranges, fennel, and greens with blood-orange vinaigrette. Oh, and that ravioli? That would be filled with pumpkin and homemade vegan cheese, and covered in a perfect pesto. No, it does not end there. We also devoured the amazing poached-pear tart that you see below with homemade vegan banana-chocolate ice cream.

The Goods: You know what? Just go ahead and see above if you want to hear about goods. This meal was freaking incredible. This is the second time Philip has graced us with a delicious lunch, and we hope to see lots more of him in the future.

Soup and Pasta Salad

The Chef: Sara

The Menu: A lovely, spicy tomato soup with a side of toasted tortilla triangles, and a big pesto pasta salad with fresh veggies. Sara chopped up zucchini, broccoli, red onions, carrots, and greens, and added a ready-made pesto by Maison Le Grand for our dining pleasure. Yum. We then proceeded to drown the memory of our healthy lunch in ice cream, which is just not a bad idea at all.

The Goods: We are thrilled to announce that for the first time ever, VegNews has our own, customized holiday cards on sale! They are pretty stinking cute, so you should probably go check them out. Unless you want us to be sad and drown our sorrows in Candy Cane Joe-Joe's, which we might be doing anyway.

Pesto Pizza

 The Chef: Sara

The Menu: A yummy pizza and tons of veggies! Sara topped a Clean Cravings Perfectly Pesto Pizza with some of our supply of Daiya, and we totally devoured it. She also roasted carrots, sweet potatoes, and broccoli, and whipped up a yummy tomato and avocado salad with pine nuts. 

The Goods: Um, things are pretty awesome. We've eaten pizza two days in a row, and we followed up today's meal with an impromptu cookie dough taste test. Our amazing guest chef from Monday will be returning tomorrow. Why the fancy food again tomorrow, you ask? Well, that would be because we're going to host one Jonathan Safran Foer for lunch. Yes, that Jonathan Safran Foer. Maybe we're excited. Maybe it would be nearly impossible for us to be more excited. We're just saying.

Raw Week: Zucchini Zaniness

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: A zillion uses of zucchini! Today's zukes were peeled into ribbons to make raw pasta, which Elizabeth topped with a pesto of basil, garlic, cashews, and a splash of hemp-seed oil. Since you can't very well make ribbons out of the seedy parts of zucchini, those got blended with carrots, maple syrup, and cinnamon to make the little soup shooter you see at the top of the plate. Finally, a very, very simple salad of romaine and red bell pepper completed our plates.

The Goods: We're still enjoying our raw refreshment after the insanity of Expo West, but today we were feeling a little bit dessert deprived. Thankfully, we found a stock of really yummy raw gelato in our freezer from Organic Nectars, which we quickly devoured. We're not sure if the whole gelato-gorging process is really in the spirit of the diet cleanup, but it followed this week's raw law to the letter, which is good enough for us!

Messy Pesto

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: A late-summer pesto with broccolini, sautéed red bell peppers, and big, lovely bites of avocado. This meal took a turn for the lighter side with the substitution of rice noodles for the traditional wheat pasta, and the standard side salad brightened the plate a little bit too.

The Goods: One of the tell-tale signs of an Elizabeth lunch is the heavy-handed avocado. But really, why stop at adding it to one dish when you can just as easily add it to both? If you haven't yet tried sprucing up your pasta dishes with avocado, go for it. We're pretty certain you'll be glad you did. If you's just not an avocado fan, well, we're sorry to say, you probably have no soul. Er, um, we mean, uh, it's okay to not like something as intrinsically awesome as avocado. Sure.

Raw Week: Pesto Fettuccine and Caesar Salad

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: Pasta without noodles? No problem. If you've got a vegetable peeler, some patience, and a big pile of zucchini, you can make a perfect pesto-transportation medium. Ribbons of zucchini stood in for cooked pasta, and stood up to the task of supporting the thick sauce. The pesto itself was a blend of fresh basil, spinach, garlic, cashews, and pistachios. A couple dashes of nutritional yeast and salt rounded out the sweetness of the basil nicely. What to do with the seed-laden middles of the zucchini? Elizabeth stuck them in the food processor with some capers, lemon juice, olive oil, and cashews, and made caesar dressing, which got generously poured over a salad of romaine, spinach, tomatoes, and avocado.

The Goods: Fettuccine pesto with caesar salad: aren't those the first two menu items that come to mind when you think of raw food? Perhaps they should be, since this meal was easy to whip up and satisfied the Italian-food afficionados in the office. We just don't recommend trying this menu for Valentine's day, what with the effects of heavy doses of raw garlic on breath quality. Suffice to say, we are glad to be guest-free today!