I’m counting the Penguin Bay white wine from January 6th (which I later learned is not vegan) as my vegan fail #1 of the year, with some possible red wine fails along the way. This one is more shameful.
breakfast: Joe’s O’s with rice milk; coffee
lunch: 2 roti pouches with potatoes ($2 each) and 2 vegan drumsticks ($1.50 each) from NY Dosas food cart
snack: pita bread with hearts of palm marinade
dinner (at potluck): wild rice salad that I brought (click for the recipe), chips and salsa, seitan curry, Blue Moon beer, and, here it comes, carrots and peas (not vegan*)
sideIngredients:
- 6 cups water
- 2 cups wild rice
- olive oil (a couple T total)
- red pepper flakes, salt, pepper
- sage (1-2 T total if from dry or fresh leaves; if powder I bet you need less)
- 6 cloves garlic cut into big chunks
- 3-4 shallots, chopped fine
- 1/2 c pine nuts
- dash soy sauce
- lemon juice (to taste; I used about 1-2T Goya and I bet with fresh lemon you need less)
- vinegar (to taste; I used about 2-3T. preferably use a flavor lighter than regular balsamic; I used pear-infused balsamic)
- dash of hot sauce/sriracha (optional)
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
- 3-4 scallions, chopped
Boil water. Once boiling, add wild rice, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper, a dash of olive oil, and most of the sage (I had dry sage leaves that I crumbled; fresh would be best). Stir and then cover, reducing heat to medium-low. Ten minutes before the wild rice is finished cooking, add garlic.
Meanwhile, saute shallots in olive oil (also with sage, salt, and pepper) until clear. Also, dry roast (either in a stovetop pan or in the oven at ~350F, shaking frequently) pine nuts until they are just turning brown (DON’T BURN THEY ARE EXPENSIVE; with frequent turning they should take less than 10 minutes)
When the wild rice is done cooking, mix in the shallots and pine nuts, and let cool.
Once cool, add a dash of soy sauce (you don’t want to actually taste soy sauce; it just helped round out the flavor), lemon juice until you can just taste it, vinegar to taste, sriracha or hot sauce to taste (optional), cherry tomatoes, and scallions.
*I feel very stupid about this. I think I have become spoiled from hanging out with people who are aware of my veganism. Even at the holiday party for my job, they set up a chart of who was bringing vegan items, a separate vegan table, etc. It’s still always important to ask, and I don’t know why I didn’t today; I think it partly had to do with not knowing anyone at this potluck and feeling a bit uncomfortable calling attention to myself. Anyway, after putting my wild rice dish on the table alongside several obviously non-vegan items, there was a bowl of carrots and peas, and I assumed it was vegan. It’s funny, because I would never assume this at a restaurant; particularly at a “country-kitchen”-type restaurant, I would assume that most vegetable sides have butter. Later, after asking if the seitan curry dish was vegan (it was), the girl who brought the peas and carrots told me they had butter. It sucks because she was vegetarian and felt particularly bad about it, even though it was entirely my fault. VEGAN FAIL.
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