If I were writing copy for some sort of fancy restaurant menu, I would describe this dish as something like, "Portobello mushrooms topped with onion and a Balsamic Vinegar-Almond sauce, nestled on a bed of brown rice." But I'm not, so I'm going to say this instead "This sauce is like some sort of olive oil and Braggs Liquid Aminos based crack cocaine." (
Braggs, for those of you not down with the wacky veggie food, is approximately equal to soy sauce.) It consists of olive oil, Braggs, balsamic vinegar, ground up almonds, rosemary and oregano, and it tastes amazing.
The recipe is supposed to be for 4 big portobellos, but Trader Joe's was out, so I bought these medium sized guys and doubled the sauce recipe. My plan is to have the leftovers on sandwiches for lunch.
The salad is spinach, red bell pepper, carrot, golden raisins, and pecans, with Amy's Shiitake-Sesame dressing. In short, everything I had in my fridge/pantry that looked like it should go in a salad. Rooting around to find things for this caused me to look in my crisper, which then caused me to throw out everything in my crisper while going "Ewww! Oh god, ewwww!" There's a reason I never look in there. The salad is also part of my new mission to actually eat five servings of fruits & vegetables a day. I think maybe I did it today? I'm not actually sure how big a serving of veggies is, which makes things more confusing.
Potatoes from Vegan with a Vengeance, Tofu from The Garden of Vegan
I love me some potatoes on the side of my tofu scramble whenever we go out for breakfast, but for some reason I never make them myself. Well, this weekend I changed that by whipping up some potatoes from VwaV, and they were super easy all cut-stuff-up-and-stick-it-in-the-oven style, and delicious on top of that. I even took the super lazy option and subbed dried herbs for fresh, and they were still good. The tofu is the fried-egg style tofu from Garden of Vegan, and it's really easy and also tasty and perfect for weekend brunch. This is definitely what I order when we go out for breakfast on the weekends - potatoes and eggy-style tofu.
And to make it a complete meal, I added a smoothie. I just threw three pears, a frozen banana and some soymilk into the blender, and it came out delicious and made me feel like I was all healthy and getting the right number of servings of fruit.
Local: Tofu, pears 
Inspired by 
My mom took me to Costco as part of my Christmas present, and I ended up with five hugantic portobello mushrooms. I immediately thought of this recipe from The Garden of Vegan. I rarely make the same recipe twice, but this is sooo good. The sauce is ground almonds (I used almond meal from Trader Joe's, cause I had it.), braggs, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and herbs, and it is so freaking good. I had these over quinoa, with edamame (also from Costco) on the side. I imagine these would also be delicious in a sandwich, but I am all out of sandwich bread. 
Loosely based on the recipe from The Garden of Vegan. I used broccoli & cauliflower instead of zucchini, and changed the amounts of everything involved, and used half chili black bean sauce and half garlic black bean sauce. Turned out yummy, and was done in less than twenty minutes.
(Also, I own chili black bean sauce, garlic black bean sauce, garlic chili sauce, regular chili sauce, Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce with ginger, and Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce with garlic. I, um, might be insane.) 
So the day after I made VwaV pesto with meatballs, I made Garden of Vegan pesto with weird fake chicken from the asian market. I know, poor planning. But, um, it made sense at the time. Anyway, I was really excited about this, because olives + pesto sounds awesome, right? But I made it, and I tasted it and I thought, "This has all my favorite things in it, why doesn't it taste good?" It was just kind of boring. I added more olives and some nutritional yeast, and it made it okay, but not great. I think if I want to continue the olive pesto quest, I should start with the awesome VwaV pesto, and try adding olives to it. Or just throw olives into the pasta and put pesto on them. 
I don't know about you guys, but around here hot sauce + rice vinegar + soy sauce + sesame oil = LOVE. One of my favorite trashy quick lunches when I lived in my little apartment in Philly was ramen noodles (without the flavor pack), with cayenne pepper, rice vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil. This totally classes that up a bit - I used udon noodles from Trader Joe's, there's tofu and carrots and sugar peas, and some peanut butter in the sauce. This just reminded me of how much I love that particular flavor combo, and how I should use it more often.
It also reminded me how much I dig the Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce from the Asian market. I use Flying Goose Brand. It comes in about a thousand sub flavors - usually I go with Ginger, but I just bought some Extra Garlic that I'm pretty excited about. 
This was surprisingly easy to make, probably because I cheated and used tomato sauce from a jar. Still, the result was delicious lasagna! Although, that soy cheese said "It melts!" right on the package, and as you can see, the melting - not so much. Maybe I should have put it in the broiler for a minute or two.