Vegan Tomato Soup and Caesar Salad

The Chef: Elizabeth and Gracias Madre

The Menu: A fantastically delicious cream of tomato soup, topped with cashew cream, roasted pumpkin seeds, and chopped cilantro, accompanied by a perfectly pert Caesar salad of romaine, Caesar dressing, avocado, and more pumpkin seeds!

The Goods: You all know how we feel about Gracias Madre. When you go back to a single restaurant so frequently, it would seem easy to get sick of the offerings there. Does that ever happen at Gracias? Heck no. The daily soup special is my secret weapon against lunchtime repetition, as it's always rich, usually cashew-cream based, and switched up daily. The tomato is probably my favorite, which meant that I was a very lucky gal today. Little-known fact? I freaking love pumpkin seeds! And they were in both dishes! Huzzah! I also had the good fortune of dining with our High-Tech Chef columnist, Jesse Miner. There's definitely nothing better than delicious food paired with great company.

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!

Entirely Edible Pasta

The Chef: Kailey

The Menu: A delicious, veggie-filled pasta with tomato sauce. Zucchini, summer squash, fresh tomatoes, cannellini beans, and a perfect blend of spices starred in today's sauce, which Kailey served over just al dente brown-rice pasta. A huge salad with heirloom tomatoes and pumpkin seeds completed the plate.

The Goods: Of course, today's pasta was way more than edible—it was scrumptious! Not everyone ate it, however, as a couple staffers are experimenting with cleansing, and are currently not consuming cooked food. Those of us who did gobble up this yummy lunch were very thankful for it! If there's anything better than a hearty, warm meal on a cold, yucky day, we don't want to know about it. One thing we do want to know about is whether or not you've voted in the Veggie Awards Survey yet, since time is running out!

Makeshift Muffaletta

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: A sandwich—of sorts—and a side salad. We didn't quite have all the ingredients for an actual muffaletta today, but we did have some olives, which Elizabeth processed into a tapenade, and some garbanzo beans that she turned into a homemade, heavy-on-the-garlic hummus. With slices of Frankie's pigless ribs, lettuce, and condiments, today's burger-bun-encased sandwiches were not so much accurate as they were yummy. The salad had fresh basil and corn, pumpkin seeds, and avocado, which basically means that it was the perfect salad.

The Goods: We're a small group in the office today, with just the editorial team holding down the fort. Want to know what everyone's doing out and about? Well, you'll just have to keep up with our extracurricular adventures on Press Pass. Oh, and did we mention that there are now more than 8,000 votes in the Veggie Awards Survey? The word for what we are is "thrilled."

Plenty o' Polenta

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: A big pile of polenta, topped with a wine-infused tomato sauce with simmered garlic, onions, raisins, and Swiss chard. A simple spinach salad turned into something spectacular with the addition of huge, ripe, delicious, amazing strawberries, which were hand-delivered, fresh from the farmers' market. They got tossed in with some cucumber, avocado, and pumpkin seeds, and topped with a cherry-balsamic vinaigrette.

The Goods: Not only were today's strawberries outrageously good, they were also a thoughtful gift from our lunch guests! We had the highly enjoyable company of Melissa's parents, Dave and Sue, which means that we have now met the entirety of la familia Feineman. Our guests lucked out on getting a very sunny day here in SF, which just might have thrilled us slightly more than it did them, since they are currently visiting from Texas, where the daily temperature hovers somewhere around 8 bajillion degrees.

Frittata Florentine

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: An Italian-leftovers-inspired meal! Today's frittata combined some leftover pasta, a blend of tofu and garbanzo beans, and sautéed cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, and spinach. Oh, and maybe, just maybe, about a ton of Parma got mixed in there, too. To help colorize the plate, Elizabeth made a big kale salad with red cabbage, apple, carrot, avocado, and pumpkin seeds. What topped this multicolor creation? You guessed it: more Parma. (And a little flax-seed oil and apple cider vinegar, you know, so that we could call it a "dressing.")

The Goods: Everything sounds better in Italian, no? Leftover pasta tossed with stuff suddenly becomes "frittata" and since we happened to have spinach on hand, "florentine" made today's dish sound extra fancy. In case anyone is wondering, if you're trying to flip your frittata in one fell swoop, it's likely best not to create one solid piece that's bigger than your own head. Was Elizabeth thankful that there weren't any cameras around while she was trying to flip hers today, with two undersized spatulas? Yes, yes she was.