We have been cooking from our cookbook rotation program! By we, I mean I, and it's been pretty heavy-handed on the Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen. This is Tomato Bread Soup! It's pretty great. And easy! Speaking of Chloe, we have gone to her restaurant about 6 times already since it opened this summer and it is so amazingly delicious. I haven't taken a picture of my food from her restaurant probably because it's a complete madhouse in there and you basically have to pounce on a seat the second someone even motions to get up. Like, put your butt in the chair maybe even before the person has vacated the chair. It's that serious. I've yet to see it not busy, which I assume happens never. Again, another reason to skip it -- but I can't. The food is too good.






We've been to Blossom on Carmine a couple times this fall, both wonderful successes. I finally tried the Salmon Tofu that they are so famous for. It was amazing and maybe a little salmon-like, but mostly tofu-like. That's okay. I'm vegan, so... I wish they would take it easy on the horseradish creme with dill they put on the top. You can just see a tiny sliver of pink underneath it! Overall it tasted great and I would order it again! It's also all about the gnocchi for appetizers!!


We saw Jim Shaw's Entertaining Doubts show at Mass MoCA last month, and knew we wanted to see his show in NYC, The End Is Here, at the New Museum. We went on the weekend of my birthday to check it out! I really like the show in Mass better. The NYC show was more... well, trippy shit. I think his other show certainly had elements of that too, but the overall quality of the work at Mass MoCA was just a lot more appealing. The show at the New Museum has mostly a large collection of his early comics, drawing, and collections of objects or found works. There was at least one room that had 4 or 5 large paintings that were really great, exhibiting his skill while still supporting his satirical style. The rest, well, I wouldn't go back twice.


On the top floor of the New Museum, theres a sky-lounge where you can step out and see the view of the city. It was a little cloudy, but still very impressive! On my actual birthday we went to Paulie Gee's for vegan pizza in Greenpoint, which was delicious, but it's far too dark in there to take any pictures! I noticed a lot of people using the light of their phones to read the menu. However- they make a great effort to include vegans, and not a shabby effort either! They are constantly adding new vegan pizzas to their menu, and their vegan pizza is not just your average daiya cheese. They make their own vegan sausage, vegan cashew ricotta, season with nooch(!) and cary vegan ice cream for dessert. It's pretty expensive for a personal-sized pizza, (18$!!) but honestly, I really appreciate the effort to have such proper vegan options at a pizza place, when they could easily just say, "the tomato pie is vegan" and call it a day. I'm looking at you, Roberta's.

 My husband looking super cute as he always does, at the top of the New Museum in the LES.


While we were food shopping at one point last week, Alex picked up a prickly pear and asked me what it was. I identified it, mostly because I'm a Chopped ninja, but also because ever since my parents visited Texas they have been huge fans of the prickly pear, mostly in margarita form. We bought three and took them home to make a smoothie with them. The seeds dont really grind up well, even after several minutes on high in a Vitamix. If you have a juicer, I think juicing them is the way to go. Otherwise, next time I will think about trying to remove the seeds before blending. They are okay to just drink, but don't try to chew them... They are harder than raspberry seeds. The juice provides this gorgeous hot pink color maybe not otherwise found in nature, and a very delicious sweet taste!

I made my second pizza from Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen, the White Wild Mushroom Pizza. This is definitely my spirit pizza. I've discussed at length over many blog posts before, that as a child, I loved mushrooms so much that when my family ordered a party-sized combination pizza I would take all the mushrooms off and put them on my piece. Alex, once a mushroom-hater, really enjoyed this pizza! I was definitely impressed by that, though he said it could be improved by red sauce, to which I disagreed. The Mozzarella Sauce is for real tho.


Alex has been asking me to make gnocchi for him nonstop since we ate gnocchi at Blossom, so I made the Garlic Herb Gnocchi from Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen with a vegetable and white bean mix on the side. I say "on the side" because it takes up the whole other side of the plate besides the gnocchi. The gnocchi tasted great, but I think they needed a sauce. I doubled the recipe since she only called for one potato (?).
More weekend adventures and vegan cookbook reviews are to follow!
<3
KZ