Buffalo Cauliflower is a little fusion-y on it's own, but when you put in inside a taco, well, that's super fusion! Bar Bombón makes a good series of tacos, one of which is the buffalo cauliflower taco. I love all vegan tacos equally like children... But this doubly-fused taco is the real gem of the family.


Okay, are you ready for this? Are you strapped in? The vegan sorceror princesses of Peaceful Provisions make this.. creation, and it is even more fused than you can imagine. It is a pretzel-croissant-donut. It is also savory/sweet on top of being all those things. It's a buttery, flaky [crust] croissant dough, that's super enriched, and pretzel-bathed in the salt bath (also in magic vapors), and then fried like a donut! It's frosted with an amazing maple frosting and topped with apple sage sausage! Could you get more fused? BTW, I just guessed at their process, I am just listing what I think they do to this magical creation, I'm not necessarily right though!



Reigning champs of all things fusion, V Street is the winner. My favorite item on the brunch menu, and this is an informed decision because I've tried them all, is the Piri Piri Tofu Shakshouka. The menu description reads: Zhoug Avocado Toast, Long Hots, Spiced Tomato Stew. The tofu is so insanely good, but that is beside the point. The spicy red-chile sauce spikes the tofu, and the cool & buttery, but also spicy, avocado toast balances this dish perfectly. It blends the traditional Shakshouka with the Portugese-turned-African Piri Piri profile, and pairs it with a perfect American Avo Toast. This is the brunch I dream about all week.

The next dish we were served was the shanghai shoots with some kind of brussel-sprout-like mini cabbage pickles on the side. The shoots were served with fermented black beans, which tasted a lot like sundried tomato. We had sort of forgotten the description we were given by the time we ate the dish so we had to look it up later. The flavor was nothing short of magical. The cabbage pickles were great, crunchy and vinegary as any pickle-afficionado/a likes their pickles.


The Korean Fried Broccoli came highly recommended. The menu description says "Basically, it's crack in broccoli form." That definition isn't far off. The broccoli sort of melts away, and you just get a crisp, clean bite of crunchy, salty and spicy all at once. Hard to resist, and definitely one of my favorite dishes of the night.


The next dish was "Mushroom." Mushrooms are my favorite, so I was psyched to get to try it. The menu description of it reads, "Portobello mushroom mousse with sauteed asian pears, cherries and truffle toast." The brown spheres are the mousse that you spread on the toasts, there are cooked portobello mushrooms in the middle, pear slices, and fried portobello chips on top that look like wings. I think this had great flavor pairings. I would never have thought to try mushrooms and pears together, but it was so delicious. I think I recalled this later as one of my favorite dishes we tried. 



Next was "Fennel", described as "raw and pickled fennel with fennel jam on a carta di musica", ie, cracker. There was shaved fennel raw in the salad I think, and some seared fennel on the cracker, too. Then it's topped off with fennel frond oil. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about -- fennel frond oil. You can't get that just anywhere! Brilliant minds at work, people.






We asked to have the broccoli dogs included in the tasting, but I think they were supposed to be included anyway because I saw a bunch of other people with the same food as us get them too. Quite literally a "broccoli dog", the dish was much heavier than the rest, with thick, homemade bread as the bun. I ate this with a knife and fork to give off the illusion that I'm a refined manhattanite enjoying a nice Wednesday evening with my husband, and not a knucklehead that stumbled here from Queens via the subway. Either way, I dug the broccoli dog, and loved the bun. Alex said his bun was dry, but I was into mine. The salt & vinegar kale chips on the side were flush with powdery vinegar that hit the back of your throat every time I took a bite. Maybe that was the only part of any dish I didn't like.


While we got our broccoli dogs, they also placed a giant spread of brussels sprout tacos in front of us. By this point, our stomachs were approaching capacity, but we powered through a few tacos after our dogs. The sprouts were just meh, and the toppings weren't especially exciting. There was guac, pickled onions, salsa verde, pickled jalapeños, radish slices and fried tortilla strips. I loaded mine with a little of everything, but mostly guac and we stopped eating the tacos after we ran out of guac. What kind of sophisticated socialite would eat a veggie taco without ample guac?


We each got to choose our own dessert. I like that idea, since no one really wants to share dessert, though we did try a little of each other's. I ordered the "corn" dessert. This was amazingly whimsical and delicious. The corn cake was sort of vanilla-cake-based with corn elements. The spheres are corn sorbet scoops and the popcorn is super spicy! I liked taking a bite of the sorbet with the popcorn together. I was super into this dish! Very Willy Wonka, if you will.




Overall, I loved the tasting menu. Everything we ate was well thought-out and brilliantly executed. On the downside, I wondered why they didn't just make this restaurant vegan. If the theme of the restaurant is vegetables, including things like dairy and eggs is sort of cheating, isn't it? I know the chef would be more than capable of making these dishes fully vegan and fully delicious. Although all but two dishes could be made vegan, the vegan versions of the dishes were just the original dish with the non-vegan part omitted, not replaced with something else inventive. By the way, the two dishes that couldn't be made vegan were the creamed chard, and the carrot meringue pie. In the age of aquafaba and sweet maresas, we all are fully aware that vegan meringue exists, and any vegan worth their weight in cashews knows how to make creamed chard and make it great. So those are my main criticisms. The versions of the dishes we got did entirely what they were supposed to do, completely reinvent vegetables. I loved Dirt Candy and would definitely put it on the board for best places to get an amazing vegan meal in the country. I still feel the title goes to Vedge in Philly, but Dirt Candy does a great job coming in second! Let me know where you got your favorite vegan meal in the country in the comments!

Alex picked the Pizza Frita, which was lightly fried pizza dough with pesto and cashew ricotta. The pizza tasted so... savory! Not simply salty, but had a particular savory-ness that was really great. I do think it lacked sauce, since it was a little dry. They could have spread out the pesto better, too. The cashew cheese wasn't really the star of the show, like it should have been. I hate to say it, but Paulie Gee's does a better job with the cashew ricotta. Don't follow him on Instagram though...


I got the pasta. The "cream sauce" wasn't all that creamy, and it came out a little cold. It needed some salt, or lemon or something. It did have an olive or two thrown in the mix, but not enough to bring it all together. The guy next to me had me wishing I got the lasagna.

Another reason 2015 turnt down for no one, was that I discovered scallion pancakes. I know that vegan pan-asian restaurants exist all over the country, but they opened one that delivers to my work, so I have a new default love for them, and scallion pancakes are one thing, and that thing, is dope AF.
I say dope a lot for someone who doesn't smoke. If you find yourself at a vegan asian place, don't skip the scallion pancake!


I ate a lot of crepes this year, exclusively from Little Choc Apothecary, who makes great crepes. I have tried the pizza crepe, the mushroom crepe, the breakfast crepe, the apple crepe and the seitan crepe. Oh, and alex aways gets one with banana and nutella with pecans, so I get to have a bite of that each time too :)


I think tea is fun and interesting, and as I've said earlier, I get sick of coffee easily. This place specializes in tea! So it's fun to try out a little teapot full of a new kind of tea you've never heard of. When they bring it out they give you a little hourglass timer box so you know how long it steeped for. Then you can play with it the whole rest of the time you sit there.


I baked some breads to bring home with me for Xmas, including the Cinnamon swirl bread from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day. This bread is great and it's not too sweet the way some cinnamon swirl breads can be. Isn't freshly baked bread the best?


It's even better when it's been freshly baked -- by you :)



I cooked a beautiful meal for my family on Thanksgiving, everything vegan! My dad did cook a turkey and put it on the table with my beautiful spread of food but that's okay. He ate the rest of the food and seemed happy about it. Alex and I were the only ones who ate any of the Field Roast Celebration Roast I made, but it made for crafty leftover-sandwiches -- more to follow on that.


I made some roasted garlic mashed potatoes, cashew-creamed onions, cranberry sauce with pomegranates, and baked stuffing! We did some mashed butternut squash, which needs very little in the way of preparation, and peas that we heated in the microwave. It was delicious and I was really happy with everything! I was also happy to sit down to a nice meal with my close family and not have a super hectic time cooking and traveling.


A special vegan announcement: There's new stuff on the menu at Champs!!!! Tots are on the menu!!


Also, there's something called the "Mac Daddy Bowl" which was basically created with me in mind.


I also got married in 2015. And we looked real cute that day...


This is where we eat. We have an apartment that's too small to fit a dining room table, so we just eat at our coffee table while we watch shows or movies together. It's definitely a different vibe than setting a nice table for a fancy dinner, but having a casual place to eat together is nice too, plus I know things will change one day when we move or have kids and we won't have our little table and our shows together anymore. It's kind of time that we know we're going to miss someday.


I have had a large stack of books to read for a really long time. I have started reading all these books, some I've read over half-way through, some I just read the first chapter of. A couple of them, I didn't really like the beginning of, but still feel funny about not finishing. For me, I think of a book as an endeavor that I must see through, and won't feel right until I do. So as you can see from this large stack of books, I feel very off-kilter from having half-read so many! My goal is to finish all of these books in a timely fashion instead of buying new ones to read first like I did all year.


I know that last year I talked about wanting to eat more salads, and man did I do right by that resolution. I ate salads exclusively for a whole month! It was easy with the help of Salad Samurai. I never got around to making the Bento Box Niçoise salad from the book until a few weeks ago. Maybe I was holding out for purple potatoes. Well I finally found some! And damn-- this salad was amazing. I mean, there isn't much left to be desired. You've got your potatoes, your veggies, your avocado, your greens, lemony dressing and coconut bacon crunchies for the top (or everywhere). The coconut bacon filled a gap in my cold heart and helped me love again.


I finally tried the rainbow cookies by Sweet Maresa's this year! They are perfect in every way and I can't say anything appropriate to how good they are in this language so I will just stop.



Okay so this is my plate from Wigilia this year. I made those pierogies with the help of my mom, dad, and Alex helped pinch them this year too! My golabki is covered in a creamy cumin tomato sauce I made, and above that is my pumpkin-cranberry risotto, that was totally gone by the end of the night! My aunt Karen makes delicious potato pancakes, which I ate 4 of, and my cousin Sarah made this delicious Kale, pomegranate and quinoa salad that we begged her to make ever since the last time she brought it. Spoiled, right??


Alex and I are so similar and cute that we bought each other the same record for Christmas. So cute and barfworthy.


Yeah, I shredded a little bass in 2015... What of it??


My craftiest moment of the year is when I made these thanksgiving leftover sandwiches. I had the perfect storm of leftovers, and purchased nothing that wasn't already in the fridge to make it! It has (ahem), celebration roast slices, garlic mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, chao cheese, and cilantro pesto on pumpernickel bread! I pressed it in my panini press (spoiled), and voila, the best sandwich I ever made was eaten.


My final spoilage of 2015, was my mom finding the most perfect device to fit to our very specific measurements that would hold our dish drain, and support the weight of a multitude of cast-iron pots and pans, and look cute. She scored for seriously. It looks so great and I could finally take the heavy pots and pans out from under the sink cabinet in which the floor of it caved in due to the heaviness of the pots. Kindly don't repeat that to my super.


Today marks my fifth anniversary of veganhood! It seems like forever since I went vegan, but some of my friends have been vegan for 15 or 20 years! They make me look like a newbie vegan. Speaking of newbie vegans, Alex decided to go vegan today! Yay for him! I am so excited to have yet another huge part of my life to share with him. I recognize how lucky (and spoiled) it makes me to have a vegan husband, living together in NYC, and eating at Champs once a week, Chloe's for lunch on weekends, seeing shows all the time, I'll stop, I can see it's bothering you.

Happy New Year to all the vegans of the universe! I'd never be the same without all of you.
<3
KZ

Anyway, this was delicious and the sauce was tofu-based rather than cashew based for a change, so I'm into that too. The shiitake bacon was a nice crunch, but really it just tasted burned to me. I still loved this, and it took 2 seconds to make. Plus look how pretty it looks :)


My fried Amey, from Vegan Eats and Treats, has blogged a few times about how much she loves this dish from Appetite For Reduction which is the Chipotle Chili with Brussels Sprouts and Sweet Potato. It sounds like an odd combo for chili, but it was so totally great and I'd definitely make it again. I had to make cornbread because, like how can you eat chili without it???


One night I made the Pomegranate BBQ Tofu from Vegan with a Vengeance 10th Anniversary and it was so great! I even poured some of the sauce over the baked potato I made. This tofu is baked first, then smothered in the sauce. I really love baked tofu. It sort of changes everything about tofu and makes it really succulent (?) and amazing. I feel like succulent is just a plant... Am I wrong about that?

This dish was the biggest winner for me. The Pesto Mac and Cheese from Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen is just so great. The mac on it's own is a little bland, but when mixed with the pesto, it's like the most perfect combo you ever tasted. Also, I've learned that it's worth lugging out the food processor to make pesto instead of just using your vitamix which is already out on the counter. The food processor gets it the right texture and consistency. The vitamix just pulverizes it and makes like a pesto sauce, as smooth as your smoothie. But I love a good textured pesto with little bits of garlic and walnut in it. It's definitely worth the clean up, and trust me, I hate cleaning the food processor.


We went back to our hometown for a day to see David Bazan play a "living room show", something we've always wanted to see. This host had his own freestanding library/recording studio next to his house, so David just played there. Alex and I were trying to count the times we have seen him play, and it's probably something like 10 times. It was amazing and I'm so happy we got to see him in our hometown.


After the show we went out to dinner with my parents. Alex and I got the veggie burger, which has been good in the past, but really not so great anymore. It's dry and pretty flavorless, and I took a picture so you guys can see how to properly handle a sub-par veggie burger:

 That night we didn't feel like cooking, but we didn't feel like getting takeout, and we had some pesto on hand and some pasta to put it on. So yeah, we can't always be extravagant. Don't even pretend like you don't do this sometimes.


After a pasta-heavy week I decided to make some salads for the few days ahead. I made the Pomegranate Holiday Tabouli from Salad Samurai and the Brussels Sprout Salad with Grilled Miso Apples, also from Salad Samurai. The brussels sprouts salad was great, I never thought to use sprouts as a salad green, but they were great! The apples give it enough attitude to be a salad I'd make again. The pomegranate tabouli was just eh. It had lentils, and not enough dressing. I think it would benefit from avocado or baked tofu, and maybe then it could stand alone. If I'd only made the tabouli, I'd have been hangry by the time I finished.


Both salads had toasted walnuts in it, which definitely improved each salad. Toasted walnuts are special. They are softer, nuttier, toastier... Just better. Just nod so that I know you know.


I haven't made chana masala since probably 2011, when this dish debuted on Isa's blog. Lucky for everyone, it was published in Isa Does It, and now we can make it on the reg. The house smelled so spicy and nice for days after I made this. There's nothing like a spicy curry on a cold and rainy day.


Now, the main event, I decided to finally get a Vegan Cuts Beauty Box subscription! Two factors led to the inevitable decision to sign up for this box, besides me just wanting one: I started having problems with my skin, and I started realizing most of my bath/body/skin care products aren't even vegan. It's really shitty of me to have been vegan so long without paying attention to the products I buy for body/skin/beauty care, and I don't see (now) how it's any different from products I'd buy to eat. I'd hear about some product being vegan and just look for that kind but I always struggled to figure out on my own whether a product either has ingredients in it derived from animals, or has been tested on animals. I also have struggled to find vegan products that work (I'm talking to you, Tom's of Maine deodorant). Luckily, for me, I'm vegan in 2015 and the nice people of the vegan community and interwebs have already done the legwork of compiling a list of vegan companies who make and sell vegan beauty products. I am trying to replace all of my skin/beauty/body care items with vegan ones, but as you know, vegan products can be expensive. I found some affordable brands, and some not so affordable, but at least I know where to find them. The beauty box is great because it includes trial sizes of these products from companies you probably have never even heard of. This way you get to try out a product before committing to spending the $54 on it, or not. I am super psyched to try all these products and support vegan businesses trying to make a living the ethical way.


Each box contains between 4 and 7 items to sample and a handy card to tell what's what.

 My first item was this Indian Hemp & Haitian Vetiver Body Lotion by Nubian Heritage. It smells so good! I am always in need of lotion, so I am glad to find a good-smelling vegan one.


This is a calming botanical facial steam pack by Bohemian Beauty Co, which you pour into a bowl that you then cover with boiling water, and inhale the steam that comes off from the bowl, inhaling the scents and relaxing. It has a lot of common "zen flowers" in the packet, like chamomile and lavender. I'd never thought of using a product like this, but I will definitely give it a try.



Next is Moisturizing Hair Milk with Shea Butter by Shea Radiance. From reading the description of it, it seems to function like a detangler. No woman with long hair could say that they'd not benefit from some detangling spray, though I don't like to generalize. I'll just say that I will totally use up this product and put it to the test with my tangles. Especially in scarf season.


I never really thought of nail polish as being vegan or not. Well, it turns out I have about 25 bottles of non-vegan nail polish and if you want to take some of it off my hands I have the colors of the rainbow and beyond. I have one vegan color now! This is "Galaxy" by Mineral Fusion. It's hard to tell from this picture I guess, but it's a sparkly dark blue. I will put it on my toes in the near future.

Last but not least is Black Tea Liquid Eyeliner from 100% Pure. This is a full-sized product that would otherwise be very expensive to just "test out" seeing that it costs more than the entirety of this month's box. I tried to use it this morning, but realized that liquid eyeliner requires a steady hand, and it got kind of all over my lashes and so I just used my trusty crayon liner because I know how to do that. I will practice and learn the art of the liquid-liner. Swear.
Today my parents and in-laws came for the day and came to the shop-up with us and it was great! My parents especially liked Monks Meats sliders, the winner of the spread we put before them. I ate about 5 macarons so far, and I accidentally ended up with 12 more, so yeah. Not a bad Saturday.