when i was a vegetarian, pizza was my favorite food. at least once a week, i’d treat myself to a piping hot slice (or 10) of cheesy pie. even then i was pretty picky, and finding a truly awesome pizza (in my mind) was rare. as you can imagine, now that i’m a vegan, it’s damn near impossible.

luckily for me, tomato joe’s has made it possible for me to eat exceptional pizza that can please vegans, vegetarians and omnivores alike. all i have to do is pay a visit to my home town, santa clarita. i first heard about tomato joe’s from scvegan.com, and being both a vegan and a pizza lover, i knew i had to check it out. plus, it gave me the perfect excuse to drop by and surprise my parents with a meatless dinner.

large pizza with vegan mozz, mushrooms, tomatoes and chopped garlic on micro-brew crust. $21.39

dude, i can’t even tell you how good this pizza was. if i lived in santa clarita, i would be eating this every other day…and now that i found it, i KNOW mom & dad will be getting sick of me pretty quick. i’ve been on the vegan pizza hunt for quite some time. i’ve tried eating out, cooking countless recipes at home, buying it from the store, and it’s never been quite right…until now. tomato joe’s pizza is perfect. they even use follow your heart cheese, which i have never been a great fan of, and it STILL tastes just right. they get it melty and everything!

i can tell they use only the best ingredients at tomato joe’s—the toppings are fresh, the sauce is delectable, and the crust is off the chain. i can’t speak highly enough of the soft on the inside and crispy on the outside micro-brew option. it is unbelievable. the menu describes it as “hand tossed dough flavored with a locally brewed hefeweizen. puffy edge and thick center.” this crust was so delicious, i think if this pizza were cheeseless and toppingless, it would still be some of the best out there. the menu goes on to specify that the micro-brew crust is entirely vegan and only offered in 16″ (large). i just LOVE it when restaurants know what “vegan” means, and mark items that i can eat clearly on their menu. this is not the small town santa clarita that i remember from when i was growing up! i also love that this scrumptious crust only comes in large…it just forces me to get more pizza. damn. 😉

best. pizza. ever.

my parents, on the other hand, opted for the garden combo pizza with a thin crust. they assured me that it was absolutely delicious. i still refused to go near it, though, ’cause it was covered in bell peppers (which i hate).

medium garden combo pizza: vegan mozz, white shrooms, red onions, fresh tomatoes, artichokes, green peppers and black olives. $14.99

one trick i did pull, was to not tell my mom that she was eating vegan cheese. when she said the pizza was wonderful, i let her know that it was dairy-free. she was astonished. if this vegan pizza could fool my southern, meat-eatin’ mama, it must be pretty damn good!

vegan mozz in all its glory

the crust on this one looked yummy as well. my parents loved it, and my dad told me it was just as good as the micro-brew, which he also tried. the menu describes the thin crust as “slightly more crispy dough flavored with garlic and extra virgin olive oil,” and also vegan. mmm mmm mmm.

so as you can probably tell, tomato joe’s was a great find. i am gonna make it a point to go there as often as possible, and my parents have vowed to switch over from pizza hut. so great to find a vegan-friendly pizza place with genuinely great food.

so all you vegan LAers, next time you go to magic mountain, YOU NEED TO CHECK THIS PLACE OUT.

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who has time to cook breakfast during the week? we sure don’t. and since we don’t want to be forced into skipping it entirely or microwaving a frozen boca burger each morning, we make one huge tofu scramble on sunday, and eat it all week long. this week’s tofu scramble was (and still is, there’s so much of it!) awesome. probably because we based it on the kick-ass ppk recipe for scrambled tofu.

scrambled tofu (adapted from the ppk recipe!) with field roast sausages, tomatoes and sour supreme.

now i’ve eaten a lot (and i mean a lot!) of tofu scrambles in my time, and this was actually one of the best. i make them constantly at home, either with mix out of a box, using recipes online, or simply by throwing everything from my cupboard and fridge into a pan with some tofu…and this was the first one that can hold its own with breakfast from my favorite restaurants. the tofu was spot on, firm and not mulchy at all, and the spices were blended perfectly, enhancing but not overpowering. 

each morning the scrambly mixture just needs to be spooned out and microwaved for 1 minute to be the perfect breakfast again and again. we also cut up some fresh tomatoes each morning and split a chipotle field roast sausage, both fresh off the grill. and of course i cover mine with the hottest of hot sauces and garnish it with a goop of sour supreme every time, i just can’t help it. 

all hail the ppk—they rule and so does this scramble. it has been a great sunday and monday breakfast so far, so i know it will help get me out of bed and get me through the rest of the week.

adapted ingredients and more after the jump.
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it’s true—that was me you read about on laist.com the other day, when i broke the news of the accident at pure luck.

sorry i have been a too busy to answer your countless emails recently—i’ve been overwhelmed fielding all the offers like book deals, celebrity appearances and free food. not sure what my next move will be, now that i’ve “made it”. if you want to re-live all the excitement of my major media mention, you can catch my laist feature here. and i will post the article below as well….for your sake.

JULY 22, 2008

Truck Crashes into Pure Luck Restaurant

Around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning as staff at Pure Luck were closing the Bicycle District/HelMel vegan restaurant down, a truck rammed through a window. Local vegan blogger, quarrygirl, visited for a meal later on Saturday only to find the restaurant closed. “Why does this shit have to strike at the best vegan restaurant in town. boooooo,” she blogged. According to one server, as luck would have it, no one was hurt and the restaurant is still open for business during regular hours as they work to fix the window and damage.

thanks laist, for the recognition. i know i deserve it, but it still feels great. and for all you trying to reach me to congratulate me, don’t give up! 🙂

sometimes i just want greasy, oily mexican food that makes me remember what it was like to be a vegetarian. unfortunately, i can’t trust the stuff at conventional mex restaurants, and a lot of the veganized establishments offer dishes that are a bit too healthy-tasting. so i’ve decided to take matters into my own hands and create a masterpiece of junk food with no redeeming qualities except for a few tomatoes, and the fact it tastes ridiculously fine. vegan homemade nachos! so yummy, despite the fact that all i had on hand was follow your heart cheese.

now, imho, what sets these apart from the countless vegan nachos in everywhere else you’ve ever eaten, is that these include homemade chips. most restaurants smother store-bought corn varieties (from the bag) in vegan cheddar and all the fixins, leaving people like me 10 minutes and 1,000 calories short of satisfaction. now, while cool places like pure luck have the homemade chip thing down, they don’t even provide a nachos options. wtf! that’s where quarrygirl comes in: care-free, greasy, unforgivable homemade nachos…from the chip to the guacamole.

recipe, pix, and more. all after the jump.

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so before you go on reading about how much i loved my breakfast at this place, you should probably know about the very low “C” grade it received after a recent health inspection. a reader wrote in to quarrygirl.com with a link from TMZ, of all places.

the gossip rag reports:

We got hold of the inspection report. Among other things, the city found mold inside the ice machine. Glasses on the bar had gnats that went in for a landing. Some of the shelves were dirty. The waiters’ counter had paint chipping off. And restaurant workers were placing cut watermelon in the sink.

As for the fridge — problems with potatoes, feta cheese and the meat drawers.

that’s fucking gross. let’s hope they get their act together and pull that grade up stat. i think they are actually closed right now for “renovations”, attempting to fix the problem. in the meantime, i suggest you check out the interim cafe in santa monica…which was started by the same peeps, who i don’t believe still have anything to do with the robertson newsroom location.

that’s it. thought you should know. below is our original post, as published on june 25th. vegans, be careful out there.
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follow your heart? of course, they are the ones who make the awesome fake mayonnaise and the vegan cheese that doesn’t melt! yeah, and they have that supermarket in the valley with all neat healthy stuff. but did you know they also have a restaurant? i don’t know why it never occurred to me until recently to try their café (maybe eating in the back of a grocery store didn’t sound very appealing), but now i’m sure glad i did. the food was spectacular, and the atmosphere was just fine—i forgot that the bustling health food market on the other side of the wall even existed.

breakfast burrito: scrambled tofu, black beans and vegetarian ‘chorizo’, wrapped in an oversized whole wheat tortilla. served with spanish rice, guacamole and vegan sour cream. $7.95

follow your heart burger: burger pattie with vegan cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, vegenaise and thousand island dressing, on a toasted whole wheat bun. $7.95

before i even say that the food tastes good, check out those huge portions they give you for under $8! with the economy plummeting and food prices soaring, i challenge you to find a healthy vegan meal in a sit-down restaurant at a better value. on top of that, everything tasted incredible. the burrito was stuffed with the finest of fake meat, and the sour cream & guac garnishes were delicious. the burger was also tasty and hearty—the follow your heart cheese was even melted. how on earth did they accomplish that?

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as the summer rapidly approaches, it’s handy to have an arsenal of cool, refreshing meals that can be whipped up in less than 15 minutes. enter veganomicon and pete’s tofu to go.

veganomicon’s corn & edamame sesame salad, atop spinach leaves with asian dressing

pete’s tofu 2 go ready made tofu, with mango wasabi sauce (and we added in some chili garlic sauce as well)

so simple to make and ready in minutes, this was the perfect meal for a scorching hot evening spent sitting on the couch with a bottle of wine. there was just enough to satisfy without leaving us full, bloated and feeling guilty.

more pix after the jump…

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so i finally got around to making a meal from the much raved about cookbook, veganomicon. i picked what appeared to be the easiest recipe in the book (i cannot cook), did some ingredient hunting at the local health food store, and i was in business. special thanks to your vegan mom for pointing me in the direction of nature mart for their bulk bins of vital wheat gluten.

veganomicon’s black bean burger with sautéed mushrooms, sprouts, tomato, onion, avocado, vegenaise and colman’s english mustard.

in the end, these burgers turned out great…although i was a little worried during the process. after i had done all my fancy ingredient shopping at nature mart and whole foods, while in ralphs i realized i’d forgotten to buy bread crumbs. argh!!—all the varieties they offered contained whey, nonfat dry milk, or (shudder) egg whites. i decided it wasn’t worth the trip in la traffic to the nearest health food store just for one ingredient, so i used crumbled up hamburger buns instead. i think this resulted in my patties falling apart a little bit, but i just kept cooking them (longer than the recipe suggested) and they turned out just dandy.

more pix after the jump.

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One of the glorious things about pasta is that it’s really quick and easy to cook. It takes a lot of practice to get amazing pasta, but you have to try almost as hard to screw it up completely (overcooking it is about the only sin). One of our favorites is extremely fast to prepare and can be adapted in a multitude of different ways. Like most Italian recipes it’s simple and leaves little scope for error.

Tastes even better than it looks!

The key is to prepare everything separately, and then bring it together into a tremendous crescendo of flavor and texture right at the last minute. In that way you’ll keep the sausages crispy, the pasta firm and the sauce just tangy enough.

Yummy pasta in a bowl!

This is so simple to cook, you could do it with your eyes shut, but I don’t suggest you try that in case you get burned. That’s not good.

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On occasion, I spend the night on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. It is the only ‘thing’ in the USA that actually truly evokes Great Britain. Yeah, there are edifices like London Bridge in Lake Havasu and fake English Pubs in every city but Queen Mary is the only thing built in Great Britain, storied with direct history from Great Britain (Winston Churchill, Laurel and Hardy, several monarchs, movie stars etc.), and sold to the oil-rich Long Beach Americans by Britain in 1969. Hell, it’s even had 75 people croak on it since it was launched back in 1933.

In 2003, the ship had actually spent more time crippled and mummified in Long Beach harbor than it did sailing to and fro across the Atlantic for decades before. One of the most special places on the ship is the Observation Bar on the promenade deck, which is surprisingly well preserved from the original 1920s construction, and is one of the very few parts of the ship which retains its original function intact, as well as most of its interior fixtures and fittings.

The Observation Bar, 1934

Sitting at one of the tables, it’s possible to imagine the bar just as it would have been 40, 50 or even 60 years ago with tuxedoed barmen (always men in those days) polishing silver Martini olive spoons (500 gallons of gin were loaded up before each transatlantic sailing), before serving the perfectly shaken and stirred cocktails to the elite of America and Europe as they travelled on this five-day long party.

The Observation Bar, 2008

You can see from the pictures above just how well the physical presentation of the bar has survived through nearly 3/4 of a century, but the clientele have changed somewhat over the last 70 years…. 

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(and a belated happy bday to mr. meaner, whose birthday was yesterday!)

morrissey turns 49 today. best wishes to such a kick ass vegetarian.

long beach is great place to hang out in the spring. it’s got pleasant weather, tons of cool bars, a historic transatlantic relic, and now (i’ve finally found) the zephyr vegetarian cafe.

mf burger: homemade patty, tofutti cheese, sprouts, tomato, onion, romaine, mushrooms, avocado & vegan mayo

grilled tofu sandwich: tofu, grilled onion & mushrooms on toasted bread with vegan mayo $5

zephyr cafe is a funky little vegan paradise tucked in between the busy streets of downtown long beach.

the inexpensive fare, serene atmosphere, and all together tastyness of the food make zephyr a must on the list of places for vegans to hit-up when visiting the LBC.

i, myself, was very reticent to even try out the zephyr cafe. the immediate association with a red hot chili peppers song was enough to turn me off…not to mention the hippie vibes and lack of burritos on the menu. however, being in long beach overnight surrounded by chain restaurants and fish joints was enough to make me swallow my pride and give zephyr a chance…and boy, i’m sure glad i did!

i’ve heard a lot of complaints on reviewy type websites about the parking difficulties at zephyr cafe. well, i know from personal experience that those problems can be avoided by parking in the lot next to the rock bottom brewery just a short walk away. not only will you be able to park in downtown long beach for free, you’ll have time for a nice pint of cask ale before heading over to the organic-bottled-beer-only zephyr cafe. (i prefer to get my drinking done at a real bar and letting the nice vegan food soak up my drunkenness…rather than eating tons of lovely food with tasteless “healthy” beer—but suit yourself!)

now, more about the amazing food.

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Usually, when somebody says they’ve hit “rock bottom” it’s not a good sign. when I hit Rock Bottom, though, Holy Mother of God it’s a GOOD sign!

Rock Bottom is a chain of 32 breweries from Seattle to San Diego to Boston that offer so much more than a glass of Bud Lite when it’s “that time” of the day. I’ve had the privilege of eating and drinking in outlets in Bellevue and Seattle, WA as well as Denver and Colorado Springs, CO and Long Beach and San Diego, CA.

I can honestly say that the consistency of the on-premise breweries are spot on. The only vegan food at Rock Bottom is french fries or a “ball park pretzel” – both of which have sufficient carbohydrates and/or salt/fat to soak up some of the amazing beer.

Only last weekend, I was fortunate enough to be in Long Beach where I visited the Rock Bottom and enjoyed several pints of Dry Hopped Red straight from the cask, pulled expertly from one of two beer engines, the other of which contained Vanilla Stout.

The ale had all the constituents necessary for a perfect palate. From the initial hoppy aroma through the sumptuous gulps of smooth malty goodness rounded off by a slap in the face of dry hops as an aftertaste I was completely hooked. This beer can be better than stuff back home in England (not always, but sometimes!), and I can highly recommend it.

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at quarrygirl.com, we are always looking for new vegetarian restaurants to hit up, and last weekend we got lucky with the spot.

savory garden burrito: with garden veggies, cheese and savory sauce (all non-dairy): $8.95

guacamole burger: a homemade burger patty served on a wheat bun with guacamole and a side of almond rice: $8.95

as many of my fellow imbibers know, the hermosa/redondo/manhattan/whatever beach areas are great places to find breweries and specialty beers. what i DIDN’T know until last weekend, is they are also great places to find uncharted vegan fare.

after planning a day of drinking in hermosa beach, i decided to research some food options on the internet. one spot, a vegetarian restaurant, kept gaining my attention and outshining all the other restaurants with its glowing reviews. so of course, we had to give it a try…
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because i have a traditional english husband, i decided to cook him a traditional english dinner…vegan style!

cornish pasty: a baked savoury pastry case filled with diced fake meat, potato, onion and peas.

the pasties came out wonderful. i’d never had one before, but my husband assured me they tasted authentic, as good as anything he’d had back home.

recipe after the jump.
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