New York!

Last year my mom and sister and I took a trip to New Orleans to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday, and almost immediately decided we needed to make a mini-vacation become an annual tradition.  This year we decided to go to New York to see The Book of Mormon, and invited my mother-in-law along as well.

Mom & Hillary and I all arrived around the same time on Friday morning, shared a cab into the city, and immediately hit the nearest sushi restaurant.  Mom got this amazing variety of items for $14:

and Hillary and I got sushi rolls - hers with fish, mine all vegetarian.

It was great.  My favorite thing about going out for sushi is you can stuff yourself virtually as much as you like without getting too out of control calorie-wise. Which was especially good considering we had four days of NYC food coming up.

Our hotel was on 8th Avenue between the Theatre District and Hell's Kitchen, a very central location for everything we wanted to see, and right around the corner from the Book of Mormon's theater.  After lunch we walked over to Times Square and then up to Central Park.  The weather was absolutely perfect all weekend long, sunny and in the low 70s, which was really lucky as the day after we left it climbed into the humid 90s.

Hillary made us go to the M&M store.  There is a LOT of M&M-related merchandise available, in case you were wondering.

Times Square is not my favorite.  It was a relief to walk up to the park.  

Naturally after all that walking we were in need of some mid-afternoon sustenance.  Our hotel had a really great French-inspired bistro next door where we ate breakfast every day and also a fair amount of dessert.  This is my peanut butter topped brownie a la mode.  Just what you need for a 5:00 p.m. snack.

Mom's profiteroles.

Hillary's truffle cake.

Susan arrived just before dinner time and we walked over to Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian place Ben and I had meant to try when we were in the city a couple of years ago.  I love Ethiopian food, and it was good, but I was kind of relieved that it wasn't any better than the delicious food to be had at our weird little Ethiopian place in Raleigh.  That means I've been eating the real stuff here!

Vegetarian sampler:

Susan with her Stella:

After dinner Susan and I walked up through Times Square and to the Plaza to see the flowers in the lobby.  Times Square sure is something.

The next morning we set out for Brooklyn to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.  I had never been to Brooklyn before!  Here is the only part of it I saw, a park just outside the subway station from Manhattan.

The walk across the Bridge is gorgeous, and there were tons of people doing the same thing we were.  I was fascinated by the people trying to bike across - I would kill someone for sure.

We walked over to the Ground Zero area and tried to figure out if we could see the Memorial without getting a ticket and waiting in line, but it didn't seem promising.  The progress they have made on the new building is amazing - when Ben and I were there just two years ago you couldn't even see it over the construction fence.

We walked up Greenwich all the way to the Village and had lunch at Dean's.

Delicious pizza.

We walked along the High Line all the way back to midtown, which for some reason I did not take pictures of.  The High Line is a really great idea but it was completely packed with people - I guess that's what you get when it's mid-June and only 70 degrees.  After finally arriving at the hotel, we collapsed for a while before heading out to Candle 79 for dinner.  I was VERY excited about dinner at Candle 79, considered one of the best vegan restaurants in the country.  Ben and I had brunch there but I really wanted to try a real meal, and it totally lived up!  Here are some kind of crappy pictures.

The amuse bouche was something with mushrooms and wild rice and fennel.

We ordered a guacamole timbale for an appetizer.

And Hillary and I split the stuffed avocado salad.

Mom & Hillary split the raw lasagna for their entree.

Susan got the chickpea cake:

And I ordered the special entree, which I can't really remember the details of except that it had rice and beans and avocado and chard and seitan and pesto and it was really really good.

After that we walked over to Two Little Red Hens and got cupcakes for dessert.  Successful New York day!

Sunday was the day of the play, so we stuck mostly to our midtown neighborhood and saw some sights.  Times Square again!

Rockefeller Center:

Grand Central Terminal:

St Patrick's Cathedral, which was kind of weird because it was Sunday morning and there were priests around and people sitting in the pews and stuff, but they still let people wander around.

We saw Ben Stiller shooting a movie on the street.  Can you spot him??  We were super uncool and stood and stared at him for a good five minutes.  He's really little.

And then we went to see The Book of Mormon, which was the main reason for the whole trip in the first place.

Now, I am not a musicals person at all but it was great and I think maybe even Ben would like it, provided I could somehow trick him into going and seeing it.  Hillary went to get a glass of wine and they gave her this giant glass and charged her $20.

We had some time to kill before dinner so we went back to the hotel and Hillary cut Mom's hair for some reason.  She did a pretty good job!

Looks like a professional!

We went to dinner at Becco, which a coworker of mine had recommended, but somehow I failed to take pictures!  It was almost comedic how they kept bringing us more and more food.  It was the one meal of the trip that I felt was truly out of control - that didn't stop us from getting some dessert at Europan on the way back to the hotel, though.  How could you resist that dessert case??  I almost sent Ben a picture of this while we were there but I felt too guilty.

The next morning Susan left early and the rest of us were pretty worn out.  We ended up sticking around the hotel until almost noon, then doing a little shopping and eating a quick lunch at the Shake Shack (insane. so good.) and then took a cab to the airport.

The end!  Another successful Annual McGinley (+ McClure) Girls Weekend.

Raw Zucchini Salad + Noodles

Summer is suddenly upon us, and I don't feel like eating hot foods.  I also spent the weekend eating the entire city of New York, so plenty of vegetables are on the schedule for this week.

Last night I made a version of this recipe for a raw zucchini & asparagus ribbon salad.  We made it once at my sister's house and discovered that ribboning asparagus is a horrible pastime, so I skipped that and just chopped it up this time.  I also made a simple tahini-miso sauce (1/4 cup of each, plus a clove of garlic and 1/2 cup water) in lieu of the more complicated Creamy Miso Garlic sauce she recommends.  And I added some cold spaghetti noodles to bulk it up.

It was perfect!  A great light summer dinner.

Stay tuned for NY pictures later tonight.

Waffle Madness

So I keep trying to make vegan waffles and it is always a complete disaster.  I follow the directions and oil the waffle iron and let it cook for a really long time and they still stick terribly and it is an insane mess.  I decided to give it one more try last night, with the Cornmeal Waffle recipe from Vegan Brunch.  But look what happened.

This is sooooo annnnoyyyyyiinnnggg.

Anyway I made little pancakes out of them instead, and dumped the topping - sauteed seitan, onions and peppers with pantry mole sauce, avocado, and cilantro - on there.  It was great.  I will be sticking to pancakes in the future.

Crepes, Crepes Everywhere

I always want to go out for breakfast, but there aren't really that many good breakfast places in our part of town, especially on Saturday - most places that do brunch stick to Sunday for the most part.  Ben is always sort of against going out for breakfast for some reason, but last weekend I railroaded him into it and we went to Simply Crepes, which is in this weird, faux-French strip mall north of our house that opened up in the last year or so.

Sadly, none of their breakfast crepes came with Nutella, but this one with berries, banana, brown sugar, and fruit syrup was pretty awesome.

I didn't take a picture of Ben's but it was similar - more berries and no banana.

This place was a little pricey - $8-9 per crepe, and once you pay for coffee and service and all that it comes to a good $25 for breakfast - but it was fun for a splurgey weekend brunch.

New Car!

Today I said farewell to my Corolla, the first car I ever bought on my own, in October 2000.

It was kind of sad!  I didn't expect to be sad about getting rid of it, given that it had actually become somewhat distasteful to drive.  The interior had completely disintegrated.

And parts of the outside were starting to go also.

Ben has really been wanting a Subaru Impreza and he found a good deal on one that was in Knoxville, so then we had to wait ten days for it to be transferred to the Raleigh Carmax.  It was a LONG ten days.  But today they called and told us it was in!  We went out to test drive and he loved it, so we bought it.

It has a sunroof!  Fancy!

Now we have two new cars like normal grownups!  I'm going to drive the Mazda 6 we bought last summer.  I am so glad to be rid of that grimy old Corolla, even though it served me well for the past twelve years.  RIP!

Japanese Pan-Fried Noodles

This is a very basic recipe from World Vegan Feast of sauteed buckwheat soba noodles with shredded cabbage and carrots, to which I also added thinly sliced red pepper and soy curls.  She called for the sauce to be almost entirely vegan worcestershire sauce, but I only used half the amount she recommended, plus soy sauce and some vegan oyster sauce.

There is actually quite a bit of cabbage in there, but it cooks down a lot and also has the added benefit of bulking the meal up without adding a lot of calories.

We are pretty big noodle fans. This was good.  

Vegan Cuban Sandwich

It's kind of hard to take a picture of a mushed sandwich, but here you go.

I was pretty surprised this worked out!  First of all, there are both pickles and mustard on there, which in the not-too-distant past would have been out of the question for me.  There is also Lightlife fake ham, which I sort of try to avoid just on principle.  And then there is orange mojo seitan from Viva Vegan, which is awesome under any circumstances.

In order to make a real Cuban sandwich you are supposed to mush it flat with a sandwich press while you fry it in butter (or Earth Balance).  I do not have a griddle or sandwich press or anything, so I just smashed it with my hands and then with the back of a spatula.  It worked pretty well!  And the taste was incredible!  I am always in search of a tasty, filling vegetarian sandwich so I am excited about this development.

Shaba Shabu

Lately most of our dinners have been repeats and standbys, hence the lack of posting.  So here is a picture of local vegan eats that did not come from my kitchen.

Today Ben and I met up for lunch at Shaba Shabu, which has (in my opinion) the best vegetarian rolls in Raleigh.  And, bonus, their tempura does not contain eggs, which means I don't have to limit myself to the healthy stuff.  I usually get an avocado roll and then this other one filled with tiny asparagus and a bunch of tempura flakes.  Yum!