Recently, as I was making vegan beef macaroni, I was reflecting upon the fact that I’ve come to fall in love with Classico Roasted Garlic pasta sauce.

I used to be a huge Prego fan, until they started putting sugar in their Traditional pasta sauce. Since then I’ve been bouncing around from product to product trying to find whatever was available at my local store. Noticing that Classico was on sale the other day, and that the Roasted Garlic variety (though not all!) come sans sugar, I picked up a bunch.

It’s not as garlicy as I’d like, but I won’t complain too much, since it’s pretty good for the price and ease.

Some day I’d like to grow my own stuff and can my own sauce, but until then, I wonder what other people do for easy, vegan pasta sauce?

Every so often I like to opine on issues that I think come up often in vegan life that deal with a bit more than ingredients and other delicious stuff. In the past I’ve talked a bit about relationships, but today I would love it if I could ramble on a bit about eating (or not eating) out.

My mom’s birthday

Most years we are out on my grandmother’s farm, where my mom grew up, for her birthday. This year is no different. However, this is the first time I’ve been out here since I’ve been vegan.

Anyway, for my mom’s birthday I wanted to take her out to dinner, but seeing how the biggest town within an hour of here has a population of 8,000 and a very limited restaurant scene outside of the all-you-can-eat feed hole and the Sonic, I knew things would be pretty grim.

In the end we went to a place called Washington Street, which is the only thing in town near a “nice restaurant.” Last time I was there I got fettucine alfredo, so I assumed there would be some sort of pasta with marinara sauce, at the very least.

Boy, was I wrong! Looking at the menu, I was a little dumbfounded. In search of real food, I asked about the soup, but no luck there. In the end, I got a house salad with no cheese and no dressing. To say the least, I was pretty damn hungry.

So, what did I learn?

Well, for one thing, I learned that the places I’m used to eating, being not in the middle of “I eat my cow when it’s still mooing” territory, have more vegan options that most places. In fact, the people around my area are likely to know what a vegan person is.

You don’t always have that kind of luck, though. So what then? Well, I guess you can’t go into every situation expecting too much. And even then, there will probably be something to eat. I ended up having a big salad. I got about zero nutrition out of that wad of lettuce (it wasn’t a very creative salad), but it wasn’t deep-friend and beer-battered, so it probably didn’t kill me when I had a snack later.

Even though it would be nice to not go around explaining ourselves all the time and trying to have vegan stuff whipped for us at places that’ve never heard the word, we’re not quite there yet.

Photo: flickr by rexipe

I hate Sonic. I hate it because I like it, and because it’s so easy to eat there. Being a drive-in, all you need to do is swerve off the road, push a button, and there is someone bringing you a soda and some fried junk.

Fast food is evil. Good fast food is even worse. Thankfully, I’ll be back in NJ, where there are no Sonics nearby, soon enough.

I don’t know if you all have Wegmans or not (you can check on their site here), but just a few years ago they opened up a store near my high school in Moorestown, NJ. At first I assumed that the Wegmans would be a replacement for the old chain Zagara’s, which was none for having sort of fancy, expensive food.

It was for this reason I wasn’t excited at first. However, I was drug to the store by some friends on the second day it was open anyway. Even though I wasn’t vegan at the time, I was surprised to find a grocery store with even lower prices than I was used to and a huge selection of vegetarian and organic options.

Returning these days I can generally find anything I want (except the Sunspire chocolate chips I use for cookies), and usually at much lower prices than I’m used to paying for vegan-specific food.

However, the really neat thing about Wegmans, and the thing I really love about the store, is that they go out of there way to have clear labeling on the store brand. I was wandering around the other day before going on my road trip and I bumped into some Wegmans brand soda. I figured I’d bring some soda on the trip with me, so I went to check to see if there was any sugar in it. Much to my chagrin, not only did the soda not have sugar, but it was labeled vegan!

Well, that my seem small, but that just about solidifies my glowing opinion of Wegmans. I’d prefer the Hanover Co-op up at school, but for around home in NJ, nothing can beat the Wegmans. Does anyone else like them or have a store that’s just that amazing?

In response to my recent expedition in vegan black-hole diving, I’ve been trying to mix things up in small ways. One of those ways was to make some vegan beef macaroni last night.

When I thought about what I was making, I had just figured I’d just make some pasta, but for whatever reason my mom decided to remind me that I had bought some Boca burgers and had them downstairs in the deep freeze.

Well, why not make beef macaroni? When I became a vegetarian all those years ago that was one of the few things that I really missed, and I could imagine it being very difficult. So anyway, I don’t know that a recipe is necessary for this, but I don’t know how to explain it otherwise.

Really Simple Vegan Beef Macaroni

2 cups pasta
1/2 jar of pasta sauce (or some other amount to your liking)
1 boca original, vegan patty

Bring a pot of water to boil, and add macaroni. Cook for 8 minutes, or to desired tenderness. While the pasta cooks, thaw one vegan Boca patty and grind it up with a fork. Mix the ground patty with pasta sauce in a pan and bring to heat. Serve with “meat” sauce over pasta.

This recipe could of course be dressed up more, but as you know, my thing is keeping stuff simple most of the time and expanding on it those few times I really think it’s necessary.

Next step: learning to make a good vegan alfredo sauce.

Well, since my last update, the on that consisted primarily of French fries and soda pop (and starvation) over the course of several days, things have been quite a bit better. On Friday, after I picked up my partner at the Milwaukee airport, we went out to Olive Garden in Madison.

Now now, I know the Olive Garden may sound a bit bland, but I’ve lived near one (and the commercials) for my entire life and never had the pleasure of venturing inside. We showed up pretty late (about 10:30 pm), so we were the only ones around, but we still got great service. The waitress completely understood the vegan thing and let me bug her about things like the garlic breadsticks ingredients and went out of her way to check about things that even I hadn’t thought to ask about (sometimes I forget to say no dressing on salads, but she came out and asked me beforehand!).

Anyway, the olive garden gets a thumbs up from me for their service and their linguine with tomato basil sauce, and it wasn’t too expensive either.

Saturday was just as tasty, but only included one quasi-meal and one huge snack after starving all day long. I spent my day manning a booth and giving a horrible talk at hybridfest (you can read a bit about it here), and forgetting to either buy food or eat. That night I was invited out to a blue grass thing down on the University of Wisconsin campus, so I got to take a nighttime spin on my bike, a first ever for me in a bike friendly city like Madison. The point of this story is to comment on my midnight stop at a nameless grocery story, where I was able to pick up some Peanut Butter Zig-Zag, Amy’s burritoish complete meal thing, and some sort of vegan buffalo wings.

You’ll have to excuse my descriptions, but I was too caught up in the deliciousness to take pictures or remember what I was eating. What I do remember, however, is the great vegan meal that Eric, the HybridFest coordinator, had made of up more. Mushroom quinoa, they said. Best $10 meal I’ve ever had (and I still need to pay him for that!).

Anyway, sorry for the endless ranting. Now that I’m on the farm for a bit, I’ll git some good recipes or say something meaningful to actually keep ya’ll interested, :).

Well, WordPress deleted my first post (and all the heart and soul I poured into it, so hopefully this one works and I don’t forget anything, though I may be a bit briefer.

Anyway, I’m on the road again, but this time as a representative for my site, EcoModder.com. This weekend in Madison, WI, there is a get together called HybridFest, which is pretty simply a convention for people who care about green automotive tech.

I’m ooking forward to exploring some of the vegan options around town in Madison, but I’ll give you a quick rundown of what I’ve (not) accomplished so far:

• The day before leaving (wednesday) I ate nothing but frozen french fries and Dr. Pepper (I’m not kidding)
• On Thursday I had a burrito for lunch and some ice cream before leaving
• I left at about 3 pm and before my first rest stop at 11:30 pm I’d managed to eat nothing and drink 3 sodas
• At the Burger King rest stop in Ohio I ate a King Size order of onion rings and another King Size order of fries, and got a Mountain Dew Code Red
• Feeling sick, I stopped at 4 am in Indiana an had some Burger King hash browns (eww) and slept in my car until 5:30 am.
• After that refreshing nap, I plowed onward and made it to this Panera in Madison at 9:30 am, where I had two orders of what you see in the picture and totally stuff myself.

I definitely felt lucky to find a Panera so close to my hotel, but I wish I hadn’t eaten so much! However, I’ve got plenty of good tips about vegan food in Madison so hopefully I’ll be able to turn it around, ^_^.

Just the other day I posted about how, since I’ve been home from college, I’ve lost interest in what I’m eating. I really should post more often, but I first wanted to thank you for all of your comments, and then note that I am at least a little bit back on track.

I was a little distracted in my quest, at first, by a trip I made back to Dartmouth in order to sock in some good cycling with my new bike over the weekend. If there is one thing I can say that both cycling and veganism have taught me, it’s that you have to love what you’re doing to really be able to do it. I won’t bore you with pictures of my bike or stories of afternoons spent cycling, but it’s really interesting how quickly you can get bored of it when you shoes suck and make your feet hurt. Veganism, I feel, is the same way. If I were eating gruel I would probably not last very long as a vegan.

Anyway, at Dartmouth I didn’t have my usual fare, and rediscovered both eating out and eating dinners of chips and salsa. Coming home I felt a little refreshed, and decided to mix it up at little bit, at least with some burritos and at least not eating the same thing two meals in a row.

The thing I love about burritos is that they can be as simple or as complicated as you like. I usually keep it simple, with just rice and refried beans, though sometimes I will toss in some potatoes, carrots, peas, vegan cheese, or whatever else that’s sitting around and looks like it can cook itself easily enough. Does anyone else have solutions like that?

Well, nothing much exciting, but at least an update that I’m not dead. Hopefully I’ll have a good recipe for you in a day or two!

Having not spent a term home from school since I started (last summer I was in Japan), I never really got used to being vegan and always having to cook for myself.  Sure, cooking for myself is easy, but at the frequency of two meals a day it can get a little troublesome trying to find new things. My solution during break was always the same thing: cook pasta for lunch and pasta for dinner. Usually the same kind and always in the same way.

Well, since I’m home for good (3 months) this time, that’s just not going to work out. Especially now that I’m cycling, it’s become rather boring and nutritionally unsatisfactory to eat nothing but pasta day in and day out. Every so often I’ll mix it up with things like gnocchi, but at the base of it, I’m not really escaping the problem. In fact, the oven right now is full of baking tater tots, which, along with unsweetened ice tea, will suffice for my 2pm lunch.

Now that I’m “becoming” an “adult,” I’m faced with those terribly important problems of shopping for groceries and cooking with variety. I certainly can’t cook my favorite recipes every day because there will be repitition, but on the other hand, I’ll have to know what I want to cook so I’m not going to the store to buy ingredients every day. What is a boy to do?

Anyway, starting today I’m going to work on getting my nutrition back on track, and I hope to share that with you folks. Mehbe it’ll work out fine and I’ll no longer be bored to death with what I’m eating, and mehbe it won’t, but that remains to be seen! Does anyone have advice for a fledgling adult like myself?