Vegan MoFo: Food is pretty

Vegan MoFo 2010: Food in bar form

Did anyone else find particular resonance when Homer Simpson was going to climb that mountain and bought a kitchen gadget (that looked a little too much like a sausage grinder for comfort) that made food into bars. He dumped a plate of spaghetti and meatballs into it, and I laughed with the comfort of knowing that if I could, I might do that too.

I eat a lot of food in bar form because of a (likely perceived) lack of time to cook. I'd like to point out a couple bars you might not have heard of, though.



I just noticed Skout bars in the school canteen and the local crunchy food stores. They're locally made (Portland, OR represent!) and are like Clif bars in texture, but have an ingredient list more akin to a Larabar. They're date and grain (usually oat) based, sweetened with apple juice concentrate. They're pretty tasty, and don't have that greasiness that Larabars sometimes have.



Full disclosure: I know the founder of this company from back home. The Core Method replacement bars are HEAVY. Since I bike to hell and back, I'm okay with eating one of these hyper-caloric, mostly raw monsters, but I wouldn't recommend it as a snack for less active folks. It's decidedly a meal replacement. The raw cashew and cacao is good, I'm less crazy about the raisin one. ONLY the Defender bars are vegan. The Warrior bars contain whey. (Disappointing considering Corey, the founder, was the first vegan I ever met - I think he's well off the wagon.) In Portland, I've only found them at Whole Foods, but that suggests they're widely available.

Vegan MoFo: I'm a slacker edition

To be fair, I'm in law school, and it's robbed me of my cooking time. Even before I joined these hallowed halls of stress and arrogance, though, I was a pretty lousy blogger. to that end, some introductory, beginning-of-MoFo remarks about my eating habits which will explain my blogging habits.

I have class Monday - Friday, and it's across town. Riding my bike from my North Portland abode to Lewis and Clark takes an hour and five minutes each way. Needless to say, I am a bottomless pit.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are my long-haul days. I am on campus from 8-8, and get home a little after 9pm. These evenings, I do not cook anything more involved than miso or a handful of almonds.

At least once a week, usually Tuesday, I spend the night at my girlfriend's. She is also vegan, and she's an amazing cook. More often than not, she cooks on Tuesdays when I straggle in from class, tired and dazed.

Weekends and Mondays (when I get out of class at noon) are heavy cooking days because I tend to cook for the week then. Mondays are also the days on which I receive my CSA. Woo!

Anyway, I just made a tomatillo salsa that I'm pretty proud of - it's just roasted tomatilloes, a ton of cilantro, raw garlic, and raw jalapeño all blended together.

I do not have any chips for this salsa. That needs to change.