Adventures in Vegetables

In my continual quest to find new and interesting places to eat, my friend Laura and I recently tried Inn Season Cafe, a vegetarian/vegan restaurant in Royal Oak, Michigan. I had heard good things, but I knew we were in for a delicious dinner when we walked in and saw that there was a 30 minute wait - on a Wednesday night!

We went in with an adventurous spirit, reflected by the fact that we actually ordered the black bean quesadilla with *gasp* soy cheese (phenomenal, despite my sin against the dairy gods). I was a little thrown off by the lack of booze in this joint, but I suppose that's part of the whole "taking care of your body" thing. Fortunately, they had an extensive selection of natural sodas (made from real fruit juice and no added sugar), so we tried the black cherry and cranberry flavors, both excellent.

The adventure continued with an order of fajitas, made with seitan instead of beef. I had never tried seitan before and had no idea what to expect. My later research informed me that seitan is made from gluten, and is apparently a great low fat source of protein. Turns out it wasn't a bad substitute, although I think I'll be sticking with my all-beef version of fajitas.

My lesson learned: When eating vegetarian, eat vegetables. Meat substitutes just aren't the same as actual meat, and vegetarian chefs definately know what they are doing with their hearty entrees made without a "meat" centerpiece.

Oh, and soy cheese is not right. Period.

Breakfast Casserole Comparison

We have this great set up at work where we rotate who brings breakfast every Thursday morning. It used to be a consistent pattern of bagels each week, with the occasional donut to shake things up, but recently we have started taking breakfast to the next level. One person even brought in all the ingredients for everyone to make their own parfait. So when it came to my turn, I decided to bring in the tastiest, but least healthy breakfast... the breakfast casserole.

I love all casseroles, but the breakfast variety has a speacial place in my heart. Regardless of the specific variation, breakfast casseroles are always delicious, homey, and comforting. Kind of like the cozier version of a quiche. Unfortunately, all that wonderful usually comes at a cost: chlesterol, fat, excessive calories... etc. So I decided to do a comparison with my coworkers. First I brought in the original version of the breakfast casserole. It was wonderful, and most people took multiple servings. A few weeks later, I brought in the lightened version, replacing pork sausage with a leaner chicken and turkey sausage, reducing the amount of bread and whole eggs, and replacing whole milk with 2%. The lighter version got the same great reviews, and of course everyone felt a lot better about eating it! My next step is to start playing with this version... I already have an Italian twist to try, and then a Mexican one. I hope my coworkers are up to tasting a few more versions!