Uncommon Ground

Greetings Vegecagoans. I'm pretty proud to say I've had an unusually productive Sunday. I did a bit of packing in anticipation for my move back to Lakeview, preceded by some Power Yoga with Rodney Yee on DVD and a brief encounter with the elliptical machine. This is what happens when one is powered by tofu (and half a pot of coffee).

On Super Bowl Sunday I had the absolute pleasure of going to brunch with Ali and Megan at Uncommon Ground in Wrigleyville. It was Ali's idea but I've been meaning to check this place out for a while. To put it briefly we LOVED Uncommon Ground. The restaurant, which has a second location in Edgewater, is a Stiletto Stoner's dream. The whole dining concept here is based on sustainable and organic ingredients whenever possible. They are committed to the community (from hosting local musicians to displaying local artists' work for sale around the restaurant) and a low carbon footprint. The Edgewater location even has beehives on its roof! I am mildly obsessed with bees and colony collapse disorder, so I'm always excited about local beekeepers.

Anyway, back to the brunch experience: when we first walked in we saddled up to the coffee bar to kill time while we waited to be seated. It made me feel like less of an addict that Ali and Megan were just as eager for coffee as I was. We sipped the delicious coffee and admired the work of a local graphic designer on the walls, the large fireplace and spacious lodge-inspired lounge area, where there were about one million babies waiting in strollers but miraculously none of them were crying. Not a peep. Is Uncommon Ground magic?

When we were seated, the waiter was very knowledgeable and helped me pick out a vegan veggie burger with sweet potato fries. I give this veggie burger a 10...this is exactly what they are supposed to taste like. I've never met a sweet potato I didn't like, so the fries get a 10 as well.

I took a bite of the burger before I remembered to snap a photo.

Hey Chicago it just started to snow!

Product of the Day: For you coffee fiends, please head straight to Caribou Coffee and get yourself a reusable coffee sleeve. I have the grey felt sleeve (pictured). Yes, it costs $4.99 but think about how self-righteous you can justifiably be when you are not using those disposable sleeves. Just a small warning: the people at Caribou are totally prepared for this and will gladly accomodate the use of your coffee sleeve, but at Starbucks they will just make fun of you. Learn from my mistakes.

Super Bowl!!!

Before I settle in with some vegan beer and guacamole this afternoon, I had to share my favorite commercial of all time:

Tubers are tubular

My cousin Alisa and I were discussing the merits of sweet potatoes last weekend, and I realized that I eat them far too infrequently considering how tubular they are. Nothing against good old Russet potatoes, but pretty much every traditional potato dish can be re-made deliciously with sweet potatoes: mashed, baked, French fries, even chips...you just can't go wrong with a sweet potato.

Caution: Vegecagoan is going to be a bit educational today.

For this post I did a little research on the nutritional value of Russet potatoes and sweet potatoes. Check out the comparison of some of my fave nutrients:

Source: Nutrition Data (www.nutritiondata.com) which apparently trademarked the term "Estimated Glycemic Load™" or "eGL." But I made this chart myself!!!

Contrary to popular belief, partly due to that crazy Atkins™ phase Americans went through around the millennium, Russet potatoes are not "bad" for you. It is true that sweet potatoes are stars when it comes to fiber, Vitamin A and Vitamin C, but other than that they are quite similar to their friend Russet.

I expected the eGL of the sweet potato to be lower than it is. Estimated Glycemic Load™ is Nutrition Data's take on the glycemic index. A higher number means that when you consume a certain food, your blood sugar spikes. This is not good. Ideally you want to keep your blood sugar levels consistent throughout the day, or at least on a smooth trajectory. This prevents a ton of bad outcomes, ranging from sleepiness (a mental "crash") to breakouts. As a reference point, a serving of tofu has a eGL of about 2. This is very good.

That's enough for today. Now please don't make fun of me if you witness me succumb to the temptation of regular white French fries.

Quick recipe that you can easily remember: Cut a sweet potato into slices. Lay the slices flat on a baking sheet and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and fresh pepper. You might also try a little paprika. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes.

Full disclosure: the tuber in the picture is actually a yam (and that's tempeh in the bottom left corner). It turns out that the yam is not the nutritional powerhouse that its döppelganger is, but I didn't know this when I was cooking earlier this week. Choose sweet potatoes...learn from my mistakes.

Product of the Day: Another Giovanni product...Giovanni Invigorating Conditioner - Tea Tree Triple Treat conditioner. I've been using this for about a week, in combination with semi-weekly treatments of NutraFix Hair Reconstructor. My bathroom is quickly filling up with Giovanni products. Great products, great prices, no critters.

Housing wanted: must be connected to a Flat Top Grill

I can't believe I haven't mentioned Flat Top Grill yet. This Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin chain is pretty much my dream come true: they let you pick out your favorite veggies, maybe throw in a few noodles, put a little sauce on it all and one of the cooks heats it up. The finished dish is brought to your table. I'm not sure why I don't do this for every meal. I'm currently searching for a new apartment and one of my new requirements is proximity to FTG.

For $8.99 I was able to put together a bowl of white noodles, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots*, mini corn, bean sprouts, spinach, peanuts, potato chunks, tofu and faux chicken meat, topped off with a combination mushroom sauce and lemongrass water. The restaurant is extremely vegan-friendly, and is great for people with allergies too. All the sauces are listed on a giant chalkboard detailing relevant nutritional information. Vegan sauces are marked with a "V." Could dining out BE any easier??

(Sorry for the lack of pictures...my camera is not getting along with Picasa at the moment.)

*Always stop eating bamboo shoots when you are about half-way full. I once ate an entire plate of bamboo shoots and later that night thought about giving myself a stomach-ectomy. I'm pretty sure these guys expand in your stomach.

Product of the Day: Giovanni Touch Body Butter. I got the idea to try this based on a blog post at The Girlie Girl Army and ordered the Lavender Vanilla Snow body butter. I've never been much into body butter but this stuff is affordable, cruelty-free and feels fantastic. Sometime in my late teens/early twenties I unknowingly trained my skin to hate cheap products. This means that I spend most of my disposable income at Sephora (no really, I have recently become a "V. I. B." at Sephora which, given my income, is probably not something I should be proud of). Giovanni also has several lines of natural and affordable hair care products, most available on Amazon.com, which I plan to try out one at a time. Good thing I have Amazon Prime...and a serious online shopping habit. Does anyone know where to find Giovanni in stores? In Chicago?

Compassion for Haiti

Veganism is all about compassion. I don't know why this particular disaster really got to me, but I am pretty worked up about the Haiti earthquake. I know you are probably overloaded on reports from Haiti, but there is a reason for that: the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere just suffered an enormous natural disaster that shattered their unbelievably inadequate infrastructure.

If you are able, please make a donation to the relief efforts.

Or visit the donation sites of the American Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity. Or Wyclef's organization Yele Haiti. I know I'm a little slow to to post this, and I'm sure my compassionate readers have already made some donations.

In a week or two, this disaster will fade from the headlines, but millions of Haitians will still be living a nightmare.

Some statistics via the Huffington Post:

Current death estimates: The Red Cross says 45,000 to 50,000 people have died. The Pan American Health Organization puts the number between 50,000 and 100,000.

Bodies collected for disposal so far: 9,000. An additional 7,000 corpses were reportedly placed in a mass grave.

People needing help: 3 million.

Percent of buildings damaged or destroyed: Up to 50 percent.

Hospitals or health facilities in Haiti damaged, forced to close: eight.

Patients treated by Doctors Without Borders initially: more than 1,500.

Search-and-rescue teams on ground or en route Friday: 38.

Homeless people in Port-au-Prince: at least 300,000.

Water needed daily: 6 to 12 million gallons (enough to fill 18 Olympic sized swimming pools a day).

Thanksgiving 2009

Happy belated Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a lovely time with family and friends.

I spent my Thanksgiving in Iowa for the first time since 2004. Our guest list was small, and the humans were outnumbered by the pets: my parents, brother, grandma and grandpa versus two dogs, six puppies and a 17-year-old cat. Here's what our meal looked like:



Can you tell which plate is vegan? The Tofurky gives it away, but in case you were wondering, the plate on the left is vegan. Clockwise from the Tofurky, there is stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes and in the middle we have a mashed sweet potato-banana combo. Bonus points to Mom for trying something new and crazy she saw on the Today Show! The plate on the right (my Mom's plate) has some green beans on it. I passed on these...don't even get me started on canned vegetables. That's a topic for another day.

As you can see, vegans don't suffer when it comes to food. That's probably the biggest misconception about being vegan. As long as you are not a total lazy bum, there is a way to make a vegan version of all of your favorite foods. Though I understand that Tofurky is not quite the same as actual turkey. But, my friends, check out two tiny carnivores who were sneaking bits of Tofurky from me:

Bonito and Lucky were begging for more Tofurky!

I must confess that my plate was not 100% vegan. This is one of the occasions where I step off my soap box (and in some ways step onto a totally different soap box). The seasoned croutons my mom used in making the stuffing had "2% or less" of whey. When anyone, especially my mother, goes to the trouble of making me special vegan dishes, and one of the ingredients of one of the dishes is 1/50 non-vegan, how on earth could I refuse? That would be incredibly rude and disrespectful of someone really trying to minimize the animal products in the food s/he was serving. So some vegans may say I'm making excuses, but I said my thanks for the cows who give us whey and dug into my "vegan" stuffing. In my book, sometimes it really is the thought that counts.

Carnivale came early this year

We're going back to basics for this post. What does a vegan do when going out for a nice dinner in Chicago with her meat-eating (yet totally fabulous) girlfriends?

Back in October, Ali and I won a gift certificate for $100 to Carnivale (702 W. Fulton Market), an upscale and totally hip restaurant with a Latin-themed menu. So last week we went out for dinner, and we brought our friend Kate B. (who is an extremely watchable actress, by the way) because she's just so much fun.

Kate was loving the Carnivale Margarita, Ali enjoyed the caipirinha, and I sampled the white sangria and Green City Market Caipirinha. The guacamole was absolutely delicious and the accompanying tortilla chips are that fat-laden kind you always hope the restaurant serves. (Ali and Kate shared the mixto ceviche...for you none-vegans I'm told it was absolutely delightful.)

After an hour of drinks and appetizers we finally opened our menus. The waitress was very knowledgeable about the menu and helped guide me to all the dishes that could be veganized. I settled on an entree called "Quinotto" that I had never seen before but makes so much sense. It's like risotto, my favorite Italian dish, but in place of arborio rice they used quinoa, a nutritious little South American grain. Also in the Quinotto were onions, Brussels sprouts, pine nuts, mushrooms and a chile sauce on the side. Behold:

Isn't it lovely? This dish was unbelievable. I of course requested this without the goat cheese that this Quinotto normally includes. The mushrooms gave it that extra dose of "umami" I've been hearing so much about lately.

After my experience I would highly recommend a night out at Carnivale if you are a vegan but have meat-craving dining companions. They have all kinds of seafood and the steak for which Latin America is famous. (Yum?)

I'm off to Iowa today for Thanksgiving festivities. I was planning to cook an elaborate vegan meal at my apartment for my parents and brother, but last week my brother's dog had a surprise litter of puppies. So I'm riding back to Sioux City tonight to see the six little puppies. In the words of my brother, prepare yourself for some pretty extreme cuteness:

I have been looking at this photo every 30 seconds for the past two days. I can assure you that it does not get old.

Product of the Day: Obviously I'm going with a vegan's best Thanksgiving weapon, the Tofurky. I can't wait to eat this tomorrow. If you're lucky enough to be in Sioux City, they have them at Hy-Vee on Hamilton Blvd. If you are not in the vicinity of a Hy-Vee, on the Tofurky website you can find a list of retailers so you can get your own spherical bundle of meatless joy.