The Best Vegan Brunch Buffet in LA

OK, to be fair, this is the only vegan brunch buffet that I have ever heard of in Los Angeles. However, if you haven't been out to Silverlake to try the Meet Market, I highly suggest going one Saturday or Sunday morning. They have pancakes, french toast, tempeh bacon, tofu scramble, breakfast potatoes, fruit, and unlimited coffee and orange juice. This is all for the ridiculously low price of $10 (that's less than 2 soy lattes at Urth Cafe for anyone who was counting).
A few weeks ago, I convinced my friend to make the brave trek to Silverlake for brunch. I am slowly becoming one of those "west side people" who never makes it to the other side of the 405, but I had read about this brunch and knew that I had to try it.

Quinoa Stuffed peppers

 Stuffed peppers are one of those Italian dishes that I always remember having around when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I refused to eat anything green, so I really missed out. Now that I'm older, I feel bad for my mom, because I was probably such a pain in the ass to feed. I'll try to do better with my kids, which I am not having for awhile, despite my sister passing on my mom's message to get to work on some grandkids. 
So, I grew up in New Jersey, and while my personal affiliations lean more towards Irish, sometimes I feel like I should get some sort of honorary "guidette" award. This is probably a good time to make some comments on MTV's Jersey Shore. I watched a few episodes, mostly because everyone I know kept asking me if New Jersey was really that bad. I will say this: I grew up at the Jersey Shore and 90% of the wintertime population was completely normal. However, in the summer a lot of tourists from Northern Jersey and New York come down to live in the summer rentals. They turn our quiet, classy town into Ed Hardy central and their bars start pumping house music at 180dB. It would be easy for me to rag on them, but I am grateful to the Italians for bringing such good food over to America. So, I salute you and your forefathers with my recipe for quinoa-stuffed peppers. This dish is a great way to use up vegetables that you might have on hand near the end of your grocery cycle, or to use some things that have been hanging out in the freezer. It's also a nifty use of quinoa, which is probably one of my favorite superfoods.

Doctor, Doctor

I am currently on my third day of the McDougall program. It’s a 12-day program focusing on starches, with fruits and vegetables playing important supporting roles. There are no meat or dairy products on the McDougall plan, so it’s very similar to veganism. However, the McDougall plan challenges us to make one major change in our lives: eliminating all oil.

Why do we hate on oil? Well for starters oil is fat. Pure fat. Your body loves to store fat. Personally, my body prefers my abdominal region, but maybe your body favors the derrier or thighs. Maybe you just have a fat face. We are all different in this regard. According to Dr. McDougall, fat deprives cells of oxygen and produces free radicals. Basically fat is causing damage to your body.

You may not buy into this, so let me spell it out very rationally. There are 120 calories in a tablespoon of oil. For 120 calories you could instead be eating:  17 cups of spinach, a small baked potato, over a cup of cornflakes, or 21 extra large strawberries. Out of these things, what is going to keep you full longer? What is going to be nutritionally dense enough to get your body the nutrition it needs? What is going to keep you from over-eating?

I’m 3 days into the plan, and I have been amazed at how full I have felt. I feel like I’ve been gorging myself on whole wheat pasta, vegetables, beans, whole grains, and fruit. The amazing thing is that I am losing weight again, and I have been on a pretty solid plateau for over a month. I’m still 9 pounds away from my ultimate goal, and I’m planning on McDougalling my way there.

The McDougall website has a lot of recipes on it, which I appreciate. My only gripe is that most of the recipes in the meal plan are pretty awful. It’s not that you can’t have delicious oil-free food, because you can. The cooking techniques, spices, and ingredient measures have been pretty off. Luckily, I’ve been able to catch most of them before or during cooking. Others I have had to suffer through. Check back often to see some of the things I’ve managed to come up with.

Strawberry Banana Pancakes

I think that it's really commendable that I am so good at beating a dead horse re-inventing this vegan pancake recipe. At this point in the game, I'm doing it just to challenge myself and see just how versatile of a little recipe this is. Future implementations will include granola, chocolate (not chocolate chip, actual chocolate), and coconut macadamia. Maybe I should open up my own vegan pancake restaurant. I suppose that I would need some savory pancakes to round out my menu. I would also need capital: lots of capital. I've been toying lately with the idea of writing my own book. The concept would be a guide to healthy living, a way of turning your life around, through improving your diet, exercise, and lots of delicious and nutritious recipes. I worry that no one would want to buy it, so feel free to post reassuring comments about how you would buy two if you had the chance.
The other day I ended up with a banana on the edge. You know what I'm talking about. The skin is starting to develop some brown splotches and you know that a matter of hours stand between you and a wasted quarter. I knew that I had to act fast. I really love bananas. The potassium in them is great for light-headedness, which I sometimes have a problem with. Some people argue that 100 calories for a piece of fruit is excessive. Those people are stupid, bananas are great, and here's a new recipe.

Friendship Cookies...Oops

So we took to the mean trails of Alta Dena with the LA Veggie Hikers. Always one to cause trouble, my boyfriend got into an minor altercation over a parking space. I will not comment on who was right or who was wrong.He pulled a U-turn to get into a parking space and someone in the car behind him pulled a U-turn to get into the same parking space. Looks were exchanged.
Obviously someone in this relationship didn't get a check next to "plays well with others".Luckily for the both of us,  I got a check mark next to "seeks validation."
Today I decided to bring along something delicious my favorite Los-Angeles based vegetarian hikers. I decided that cookies are hands down the best snack for the middle of a hike. Not only were they a great pick-me-up, they were also easy to carry in the rockin' backpack I got from work.
I got to thinking about what went in to a good trail mix. I knew that I needed dried fruit and nuts, and I almost used chocolate chips. However, at the last minute I decided on carob chips instead. I'm big on the carob chips lately, because they are lower in fat and calories than chocolate. They also pack in more nutrition, and in a cookie the taste is indiscernible. <tangent> Whole Foods sometimes carries carob chips in the bulk section, but I found out the other day that they usually only have them during the holidays. It wasn't a big loss, though, because I did end up with a perfect excuse to visit the co-op. They not only had carob chips, but I also went home with some cinnamon bread made from wheat berries. This is going to be very important, as I am planning on going on the McDougall plan this week </tangent>. More on that later.
I did not commit to a fruit/nut combination before going to the bulk section. Sometimes locking yourself in to a cookie filling can really backfire. So, I allowed the availability to be my guide and came up with some of the most delicious, moist, chewy vegan cookies I've ever had.

Healthy Fried Ice Cream?!?

I know what you're thinking right now: "What kind of drugs is she taking, or more importantly what kinds of drugs should she be taking?". I know it sounds crazy, because the term deep fried ice cream calls up visions of fatty frozen balls of ice cream rolled in a crunchy cinnamon mixture and deep fried in oil. I used to love me some deep fried ice cream, as you can see in this picture. You can also see my flabby arms and chubby little face. To channel my favorite vegan authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin would say: that is not the way to a sweet ass. Not only is that dessert as big as my head and following several margaritas, it's also a perfect storm of fat, milk (the intended purpose of which is to fatten baby cows), and tons and tons of sugar. However, it also tastes like heaven on earth, so I was in quite the conundrum the other day when I started craving it.
 Sometimes, part of being vegan is using a little ingenuity. I found a great recipe in a cookbook called College Vegetarian Cooking, which I picked up hoping to find some quick, easy, and tasty meal ideas. I was not disappointed, and they had a great recipe for what is essentially an ice cream cake with cornflakes on top of it. It was delicious, but their recipe still called for a bit more sugar than I would use and of course ice cream, so I made a few adjustments of my own and ended up with a delicious frozen treat.

Vamping on French Toast

Being vegan doesn't always have to mean being healthy. In fact, I have seen a number of people who are vegan, but continue to eat shitty diets full of carbs and oils. So, this conception that all vegans are rail thin with perfect skin is not something that is always true. Although, it is something that this particular vegan aspires to, and 95% of the time, I eat meals that further this goal. On the other hand, sometimes it's the morning of my birthday and I feel entitled so something just a little more special.
Before moving to West LA and becoming one of those people who needs to work up the motivation to journey east of La Cienega, I used to reside in uber-hip Los Feliz. Out of habit, I still go to the doctor over there every couple of months. I used to always round out the trip with a little visit to Fred 62, which used to be my favorite kitschy diner until I discovered Swingers' and her vegan pancakes.
Fred's is a great place, if you are willing to look past a less than stellar wait-staff and the fact that sometimes you have to wait an hour for a table. The food is absolutely delicious, and one of my favorites was always the Bearded Mr. Frenchy, a french toast coated in corn flakes and then deep fried. Even before I went vegan, I felt that the dish was a little heavy, which means that to someone with normal taste buds, it probably tasted like a lard parade. Anyway,I made this special occasion-only breakfast in April when I wanted something absolutely bananas for my birthday.

A joke I heard the other day.
How many vegans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer: Two. One to change the lightbulb and one to read the ingredients. Ba-dum-ba. Here's the recipe.