Vegan MoFo 2015: My Favourite Nutrient

11 Focus on a nutrient.

How about RIBOFLAVIN?

So, I remember as a kid we’d be driving home from shopping and I’d be reading aloud the ingredients on the cat food bag, as one does, and I came to RIBOFLAVIN and I read it “RIBO-FLAAHHHHHVIN”.

Not correct, perhaps, but it’s way more fun to say RIBOFLAHHHHHVIN.

So, I just learned today that riboflavin is another name for vitamin B2. (Let’s face it, I may be an intelligent adult, but I just eat food, and don’t usually pay a ton of attention to the nitty gritty details of nutrients.)

Some top riboflavin sources for a plant-based diet are soybeans, spinach, beet greens, tempeh, crimini mushrooms, asparagus, and almonds.I’d kind of like to talk about almonds. I love almonds. Almond Item #1: Yesterday I went to Grocery Depot and in their 3 for $1 energy bar box, I found these:I am *not*, by any means, a supporter of paleo eating, but being a sucker for anything chocolate-cherry I decided to try them. The first ingredient is almonds, and they are super delicious. (I’m not sure cave men would have used brown rice syrup and evaporated cane syrup to bind together their almonds and sunflower seeds and dried bing cherries, but whatevs.)

Almond Item #2: When I was little almonds were my favourite nut, and I think some friends and I cracked some into a paper cup and then did some sort of high-falutin’ parade through the living room holding high our paper cup full of shelled nuts. And then we ate them.

Almond Item #3: Forms of almond that I do *not* like: almond extract, almond butter.

Almond Item #4: I’m going to link you to a yummy recipe to sugar plums. It calls for honey, but brown rice syrup would be my choice as a sub. The rest of the ingredients are fine. I made them years ago and really liked them, and considering that was before my taste buds readjusted to “weird vegan food”, that’s a pretty good recommendation. 😉

Vegan Month of Food Intro: Layers of Goodness

Well, Vegan MoFo is once again upon us! I had lots of ideas about what to do as a theme, but some of them became too complicated when I sat down to actually write out a plan. And then I thought: LAYERS. One can layer almost anything. What could be easier and more variegated than that?

I think this is going to be loads of fun. So, here’s a rough idea of what you’ll be seeing here for the next four weeks:

Sundays will be whatever I want.

Mondays will be breakfast.

Tuesdays will be sandwiches.

Wednesdays will be a wildcard, because I had ideas that didn’t fit in my categories, or that were overflow, or… wait, I really don’t need to have a reason. Or to ‘splain.

Thursdays will be casseroles.

Fridays will be desserts.

And on Caturday, er, Saturday, photos of my cat will be unleashed on an unsuspecting internet, because the internet needs MOAR CAT PHOTOS. My cat may or may not write the posts to go along with the photos. We’re still negotiating the details.

Kicking off tomorrow with Breakfast Bars! I’m not telling you anything else about them right now, so come back.

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In the meantime, because it’s Sunday and I get to post whatever I want, here’s a picture of Native Foods restaurant’s chicken run sandwich.

I went to the Portland location back in February because a friend took me there. (I’m too cheap to go out to eat on my own, for the most part.) However, it was a place I definitely want to go back to. This sandwich was fantastically fantastic. Everything they serve is vegan, the atmosphere is delightful, and it’s pretty much impossible to just pick one thing. We got a couple different desserts to split because they all looked amazing. And the “chicken” patty was so uncannily chickenlike that we were almost wary of eating it, except that it was so GOOD, and of course it wasn’t really chicken, but it was astoundingly like chicken, but it WASN’T.

So, to sum up, if you live within 3 hours of a Native Foods location, GO THERE posthaste, and get tasty food.

It’s nearly 11pm and this old lady is usually in bed around 9, so I think this post needs to stop now because I’m babbling incoherently now. I’m sure when I reread it in the morning I’ll cringe, but oh well.