Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Thai one on

Thai Sawatdee—known to my friends as “Teeter Thai” for its location in the Harris-Teeter grocery store on Cloverdale Avenue—has opened up a second location. The new restaurant is on Healy Drive in the strip-mall spot formerly occupied by Miss Annie’s Caribbean and French restaurant.

The one thing lacking in the Harris Teeter location has always been ambience, and the new spot rectifies that. It’s small, but with lovely, Asian-elegance decor. And there aren’t flourescent lights shining down on piles of grapefruits and apples a few feet away.

More important, the food is outstanding and a great value—and the menu is larger. At lunch, there are 24 specials to choose from, with tofu available in all but a couple of meat-specific dishes. For $6.95, you get a healthy entree portion, rice, two spring rolls and a salad with yummy peanut dressing. My pad eggplant (No. 24) was bright and colorful, with purple-skinned Asian eggplants, julienned carrots, onion, mushrooms, bell peppers and basil—and the best tofu I’ve had in quite awhile.

Dinner dishes are also reasonably priced, at $8.95 for an entree with tofu.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Krankies’ Farmers Market

Today I finally managed to make it to the Krankies Farmers Market, which is held on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. in the blocked-off block of Patterson Street directly behind Krankies. I’d been meaning to for awhile, but never seemed to get around to it. Boy, was I was impressed! It was bustling today—helped in no small part (pun intended) by the first-graders on a field trip running around. There were more booths than I expected, and the produce looked uniformly stellar. The lettuces looked particularly bountiful. I picked up a bunch of unblemished multi-colored radishes, some flawless red potatoes, an indulgently gooey sticky bun and a feta-cheese-filled bread pocket. There were so many other options, too—locally made cheeses and butter, bread and pastries (including gluten-free), fresh herbs, tomato plants, mushrooms, homemade soaps, turnips the diameter of small plates, those beautiful lettuces, even wraps and other items for a quick lunch.

I definitely need to check out this market more often!

Monday, May 17, 2010

Finally, a vegetarian restaurant!

In case you didn’t see the story in Saturday’s Journal, Winston-Salem is finally getting a vegetarian restaurant! Chef Darryl Murray, a former sous chef for the Carolina Hurricanes, will open a vegetarian restaurant in the space currently occupied by Mary’s Of Course! Cafe. (The veggie-friendly Mary’s is moving to a spot on Trade Street.) The new restaurant will be called The Grilled Asparagus.

It’s about time, and I can’t wait for it to open! Are you as excited as I am about this?

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Vegan Frappuccinos

You may have heard that Starbucks is introducing its “However-You-Want-It Frappuccino” by offering the drinks at half-price during a 3 to 5 p.m. happy hour each day through May 16. I’m especially happy that the new frappuccion offers several vegan-friendly options.

The regular and creme frappuccino bases are vegan, although the light base is not, according to the Veggywood blog. You can order the drink made with soymilk and without whipped topping for a dairy-free treat. Many of the add-in options are also vegan, with the exception of java chips and caramel drizzle (but the caramel syrup is reported to be vegan).

You can also see how the drink stacks up nutritionally by going to the nutrition section of Starbucks’ Web site.

Thursday, May 06, 2010

Put on a happy face

People who go veg because of concerns about how animals are treated often extend that compassion into other areas of their life. In addition to not eating animal products, vegans don’t wear animal products such as leather or wool. And many people, not just vegans, are opposed to animal testing for personal-care and household products, and want to avoid buying from companies that test on animals.

Fortunately, as awareness of these issues has grown, it has become easier to find information about companies’ policies. Unfortunately, as being “cruelty-free” has become a selling point, some companies may make misleading claims on their labels. As the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics, the group behind the “Leaping Bunny’ logo seen on some products, says: “Designation as ‘cruelty-free’ or ‘not tested on animals,’ or even the image of a bunny on a label may only refer to the finished product, when in fact, most animal testing occurs at the ingredient level. Furthermore, while a company may claim, ‘We do not test on animals,’ it could still contract other companies to do the testing.”

The coalition is a project of several national animal-protection groups, including the American Anti-Vivisection Society and the Humane Society of the U.S. Inclusion on its Compassionate Shopping Guide indicates that a company has made “a voluntary pledge that cosmetic, personal care, and/or household product companies make to clear animal testing from all stages of product development. The company’s ingredient suppliers make the same pledge and the result is a product guaranteed to be 100 percent free of new animal testing.” Because it covers ingredient suppliers as well as manufacturers, it is a most comprehensive standard.

But even if a company doesn’t test on animals, in some cases their products may still contain animal ingredients. So if that is a concern, look for additional information. Ingredient lists such as PETA’s “Animal Ingredients and Their Alternatives” can be helpful – but in some cases may be difficult to interpret without additional research. That’s because some ingredients such as collagen are clearly from animals, but others can come either from animal or plant sources or be produced synthetically. It may be most effective to look for products that indicate on the label that they are vegan, or state that they do not contain animal products.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Cheap and Easy

I have more books on food and cooking than a person could use in any one lifetime, on subjects from fermentation, to raw foods, to punk-rock musicians’ favorite vegan dishes ... and still I keep buying them in the hopes of finding the cookbook that will change my life for better forever.

The latest is Robin Robertson’s Vegan on the Cheap, which offers a wealth of tips and recipes designed to help vegans save both money on their food bills and time in the kitchen. Robertson calculates the approximate cost per serving of each recipe, and they range from 50 cents to $2.

Saving time and money are goals I need to strive for, but the recipes what really sold the book to me. They sound both innovative and appealing, with names like “Walnut-Dusted Fettuccine with Caramelized Vegetables” and “orange-Chipotle Dressed Salad with Black Bean Salsa.”

More about Robertson, including sample recipes from Vegan on the Cheap and her other cookbooks are available at her website, Global Vegan Kitchen. Also, vegan mother Krys of the Two Vegan Boys blog has started a project to cook each recipe from the book and blog about it. So far, she has raved about the “Linguine With Variations on a Pesto” and “Stovetop Cheezee Mac.”