Pre-GWAR Dinner at Taj Restaurant: Binghamton, NY

Me and Ellen went to see GWAR awhile ago and we wanted to get food before we went, so we found this Indian place on the internet. Indian is pretty much always a safe bet for vegetarian if not vegan food. We pulled up and it was this tiny little place that sold some Indian food and some Mediterranean food and there was this guy in the dining area watching Indian talent shows on the TV and clapping and laughing loudly. I liked that guy a lot.

We ordered two veggie curries which were pretty much our only option, but then the waiter was like, “Want us to make two different curries and then you can share?” Thanks, guy. That’s awesome.

So, let me put this out there. The food was really inexpensive and it was good. It wasn’t the greatest ever but I’m used to paying twice as much as I did for a curry. The food was a little buttery and so it made Ellen sick because she doesn’t really eat stuff with butter. Umm maybe she can write about what she thought because I don’t want to speak for her.

But I really liked the place. The one curry kind of tasted like Campbell’s vegetable soup but the spinach curry they made was really good and you could get samosas for super inexpensive. It was basically cheap but pretty tasty Indian food.

-Bret

Ellen’s Birthday Pizza at Antipasto’s

So I heard some good things about this Antipasto’s place from Ellen and now I see why. It’s pretty rare to find an honest to goodness vegetarian restaurant outside of NYC. Ithaca has two so seeing what Albany had to offer was sweet, and man – Italian. They have vegan raviolis and a totally sweet wine list and pizza. I wanted pizza. So we got pizza.

After a whole lot of agonizing over toppings we went with veggie sausage, whole garlic cloves, oil-cured olives, and… I can’t remember. Mushrooms?

Not the best picture but it was dark. My only complaint, and this is not even a big deal, is that their soy cheese contains casein. Oh well. They have plenty of other things I can eat on their pizza, and man was it good pizza.

-Bret

It was super nice of Bret to take me out for a birthday dinner after he had already made me a birthday pie. But I mean, we had to do something while the pie cooled down.

Brian was our waiter again and that guy is just so happy. He was patient while we mulled over topping choices (the fourth one was hot peppers!). It was a bit of a bummer that their soy cheese isn’t vegan, but I really like pizza without any sort of cheese substance so it was a-okay. Antipasto’s makes me want to learn how to make a really good pizza dough because theirs is so good.

Antipasto’s and Bret make for total awesomeness. Yay!

- Ellen

Dexcon Journey Foods!

Me and Ellen went to Dexcon together and hung out with all sorts of fun geeks and played games. Also, we ate food. We ate food while we were driving and we ate food while we were there, and Ellen was smart and brought some food to eat with her but I am not smart and I am also really good at making excuses for why I should eat out or order delivery.

Just to start things off, we stopped at Waffle House in Scranton. Ellen ate a waffle. I think it had pecans in it!

So I got to taste some of it and I’m pretty sure that the Waffle House makes their waffles out of ground-up ice cream cones. It was really good and really sweet, especially compared to the waffles I make myself which are basically flour and soymilk.

Ellen’s Notes: Yeah! This was a good waffle, but really different from the ones I’m used to. It was thin and sweet and even the pecans tasted like they had sugar on them. The sweetness confused me because it seems like you’re meant to order a waffle and eggs and a side of the various kinds of meats that they offer all together, but it just tasted like dessert. But I like sugar a whole bunch and they had good coffee and cute mugs! See above!

I wasn’t in the mood for waffles, though, so my options were meat… meat… meat… and HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THOSE HASBHROWNS!!!

So much like a pizza, Waffle House hashbrowns come with a variety of toppings. I basically picked every veggie on the menu and ended up with onions and tomatoes and jalapeñoes and I need to make all my hashbrowns this way forever. Is hashbrowns one word or two? Anyway, I ordered a double order of hashbrowns because I was hungry and I figured a single would be a side order. I doubted Waffle House, and it sealed my fate. There was so much hashbrown. So much.

Oh and the food was wicked cheap! And waitresses were nice and there one was an old lady with a nose piercing.

So when we got to Dexcon, I went out to eat with some of my favorite friends and they took me and Ellen to Bien Hoa which was this nice little Vietnamese place. I’ve never had Vietnamese before. It was good!

That was the steamed tofu rolls after i’d given them a good working over with sriracha. I thought it was interesting that even though they were steamed rolls, it was all divided into pieces. Maybe were supposed to wrap it up using the big noodly things. I don’t know.

Ellen’s Notes: Oh jeepers, maybe that’s what we were supposed to do. That never crossed my mind. It was a strange dish, but all the pieces make sense if you were to wrap them up instead of just tearing everything apart with chopsticks.

This was the noodly tofu thing we got that I don’t remember the name of. Maybe Ellen will. They both were really good and on top of that I got to hang out with a bunch of people that I like the most. It was nice.

Ellen says: I don’t remember the name of this either, but it was tasty. I like sharing food with Bret and it was pretty super getting to sit around with the people that he likes the most because he has good taste in people.

Then me and Ellen ordered in for ourselves one night. We had baaad luck with takeout orders getting delivered on time but they were always delicious. I’m sure you’ve seen Chinese take-out before, but veggie dumplings? They were the yummiest of yum.

Okay, I think Ellen’s going to write now because I’m done writing!

-Bret

Ellen: Veggie dumplings are super good, and I probably could have made a meal just out of those, but there was an order minimum to get it delivered. It’s made me think that I need to make my own dumplings.

Even if we hadn’t eaten a bunch of really good food, Dexcon would have been a super fun time. The foods just made it even nicer.

Birthday Dinner at Antipasto’s – Clifton Park, NY

There are a handful of decent vegetarian restaurants in the Albany/Saratoga area, and a lot of places where you can get food that’s suitable for vegetarians and vegans without having to eat a plate of lettuce. But there is one restaurant that makes me happier than anything because they have a huge menu of mostly Italian type foods that are vegetarian or vegan or vegetarian and can be made vegan just by asking. I believe they also offer some meaty things if you’re averse to eating things other than meat but I’ve never been there with a person that’s ordered meat.

Oh yeah, this restaurant is called Antipasto’s, and it’s in Clifton Park, NY. It’s a teeny tiny place that’s hidden by a Price Chopper and a Pizza Hut.

I’ve been going there for my birthday for a few years now, and this year my mommy took me there because she likes their food a whole bunch too. It’s not somewhere I go a lot because the food is a little on the pricey side. But for special things it’s just fine, and they have a great wine list too.

We drove through a crazy thunderstorm to get to the restaurant, but it stopped when we got there. Brian was our server and he’s waited on me there before. He’s a really happy guy, so I was glad to see him. He informed us that the soup of the day was a chilled cantaloupe and peach soup with mango and mint. My jaw dropped. I asked him if there was cream in it and he said no but went in the back to make sure it was vegan. It was, so I ordered a cup of it.

It was really sweet and really fruity and I imagined eating it with waffles.  It’s now my goal to make a chilled canteloupe soup and eat lots of it.

Antipasto’s has a menu of appetizers, salads, vegetarian dishes, pasta dishes with a load of different sauces, and a pizza menu.  I don’t eat pizza very often, unless I’m making it myself.  However, I need some pizza dough practice before my own pizza gets unleashed on the public.  This restaurant knows how to make a cheeseless pizza.  I ordered a four cut Ultimate Cheeseless pizza, which consists of their pizza base, a tomato sauce, roasted eggplant, artichoke hearts, broccoli, white beans, and whole cloves of roasted garlic.

It was dark in there, another storm was coming while we ate.  Of course it held off until we got back into the car, though.

But the pizza.  Gorgeous.  One slice was more than enough for me, and I shared some with my mom and took the rest home with me.  They have a huge list of possible toppings for their pizza, and I would like to try something with eggplant and pine nuts sometime.  Mm!

Revisiting my birthday dinner makes me want to go back there now.  Right now!

- Ellen

Black Bean Noodles at Aja Noodles: Fairport, NY

So, pretty regularly I wish I lived in a city or country were there were noodle carts everywhere. I blame all the Chinese and Japanese cinema I watch. Oh, and Blade Runner. So when I drove past this place looking for a restaurant to eat at, I had to go. Had to. Had to. Had to.

The menu was limited but that wasn’t bad. It was what I think they call “Asian fusion” so there were Thai basil noodles and Japanese miso noodles and Chinese black bean noodles (which is what I got) and there were soups and some rice dishes but who goes to a noodle place and doesn’t eat noodles? Sick people. Crazy people!

For eight bucks I got this huge bowl! And they had sriracha at the table so I could spicy it up. It was totally the best.

So the vegetarian and vegan options were kind of limited here. Some dishes just straight-up had fish oil in them and there was no getting it out, and more than a few had egg, but since it was a small menu in the first place and there were still 2-3 noodle dishes to pick from and they all sounded fantastic I wasn’t disappointed.

I’d like to go there when me and Ellen and Molby go to Rochester to see the Melvins which is sooon. I’m order tickets today! Yeah!

-Bret

Fried Eggplant Wrap at Otto Tomotto’s: Victor, NY

For lunch one day me and all the other people I was training with went to Otto Tomotto’s which was this really nice little Italian place. So I wanted to eat vegan so I ordered it without cheese, but I forgot that since the eggplant was fried and breaded there was probably egg in there.

It was really tasty. Fresh green stuff and tomatos and eggplant is always awesome. The dressing was a really simple, tasty balsamic vinaigrette. It hit the spot. Oh and they served it with pasta instead of potato chips! What a great idea!

-Bret

Vegetable Vindaloo at India House: Victor, NY

I’m back from a week of traveling, and boy is my stomach tired. I ate a lot. So much, in fact, that I should maybe lose some weight. I’ve started exercising and paying attention to how much I eat and maybe someday I’ll be skinny again. But anyways, this isn’t a weight loss blog!

When I was in Rochester for a business trip, I found this place called India House near my hotel in Victor. I went there and it was really nice. The dining area was wide open, and get this – the menu had vegetable vindaloo on it. I have only ever seen vindaloo with meat chunks, so I got really excited and ordered it with some guava juice and chapati.

It was mostly cauliflower with some other stuff. Potatoes I think. Anyway, I need to find a recipe for vegetable vindaloo since it had never even occurred to me and I like it so much.

The guava juice was also really, really good. It tasted kind of metallic like it came out of a can, but since I’ve never had guava juice I couldn’t tell you if it’s supposed to taste like that. That wasn’t bad at all, though. It was still tasty.

So yeah, if you know of any good vegetable vindaloo recipes let me know!

-Bret

Bret and Ellen Eat a Bunch: Saturday Edition!

So Bret came to visit last weekend, and we planned to have a super time. We were successful. There was plenty of garage sales and scrabble and accordions and movies and awesome times. And of course, food. We love food.

Bret came on Friday night and we made hazelnut scones from Vegan with a Vengeance so we would have breakfast to eat before we went out to garage sales. Bret took a picture of the scones he took home with him. I was too busy eating the ones that I kept.

Mm mm scones!

I assure you that they are one more reason to buy this cookbook. Bret’s been cooking things out of it starting from the beginning, and since I want to make everything in it too, I’m thinking of starting at the back and going forward. Which means dessert first! One of the things I like best about being an adult is that I can eat dessert first if I want to. Sometimes I want to.

Our mid-morning snack was ice cream. On the way back towards Saratoga we stopped at The Ice Cream Man. If this place was a bit closer to me, I would eat ice cream there all the time. It’s slightly better than Farmer’s Daughter, but Farmer’s Daughter is closer. Bret took a picture of his ice cream, but I was too busy eating mine. I had the grasshopper brownie, and the girl scooping was very generous. The brownie pieces were real brownie pieces, like you could tell they were baked in a pan and cut into chunks to be put in the ice cream. Mm!

For dinner that night, I suggested we go to Shalimar, which is my favorite Indian restaurant in the area and one that Bret’s friends had also said was pretty awesome. It didn’t live up to his expectations, but it was a good meal even though the waitress didn’t wrap up our leftovers. Sure, we probably should have specified, but we had a lot of food left and well.. oh, it’s okay. I’ll get over it.

I got us lost getting to the restaurant, so by the time we got there Bret was hungry and cranky. I get cranky when my belly’s empty, too. But the place was pretty empty so we got our food quickly.

We shared the vegetable pakora to start. So greasy, so good.

I ordered the baingan burtha because I love me some eggplants and chickpeas. No bread, and no, that’s not weird. It tasted like butter, but I’m not sure if that was because the eggplant was cooked so long that it got really creamy, or if there was a ton of butter in it. Maybe both. Either way, I was satisfied with it. No matter how unimpressed Bret was, Shalimar still remains a favorite.

We washed down a day of food with a bottle of Spanish wine back at my apartment and listened to our belly’s make the noises that they make when Indian food is put into them.

(I’m gonna let Bret add stuff or edit stuff if he wants because I can’t concentrate)

-Ellen

Okay! I can’t really concentrate either but that’s okay! I’m going to try to make this easy on me and make it, like, a list.

Chickpeas and chutney: When I got there Ellen had cooked some chickpeas up with some chutney and man was that a good idea. It was really tasty and maybe Ellen should do all the cooking from now on whenever we hang out. I’ll just lay around and play Katamari and shout, “Ellen! Ellen! I’m hungry! I’m hungry, Ellen!”

Hazelnut scones: These were tasty, but not the tastiest scones that I’ve made yet. They actually turned out kind of bitter. But that’s okay! Scones can be anything you want them to be. I should tell you sometime about the habanero scones I made.

Ice cream: The cone they gave me at the Ice Cream Man made me crap my pants. Look at the size of this thing!

I ordered two scoops. Does that look like two scoops to you? Holy wow! Anyway, I got malt and cherry cheesecake, which is a funny combination but it was really good.

Shalimar’s: I got palak aloo which is spinach and potatoes for those of you who don’t know the lingo.

It was pretty good. I’ve had friends telling me for years that Shalimar’s was the best Indian in the history of the world ever, so I think I had a skewed perspective that made me not appreciate it as much as I would have otherwise. But I got to eat tasty pakoras and they had a decent bathroom. I think someday I need to take Ellen to Samrat which is my favorite Indian place. I’m not going to make it out to be the best Indian ever but it’s my favorite place. I used to go to Syracuse all the time, and it got to the point where the people there recognized me when I came in. They don’t anymore, though.

I just wrote a whole bunch about Sunday and then realized that this is the SATURDAY EDITION of Bret and Ellen eat a bunch. Even though it’s Friday now. Whoops. I hope we finish these posts before she visits next weekend or otherwise we’re going to be way confused.

At one point over the weekend I fell asleep on Ellen’s knees. That was like the nicest thing. Ok. That has nothing to do with food. I’m going to post this now. I hope Ellen was done writing!

-Bret

Moosewood!

So way back when me and Ellen were first getting to know each other she said she wanted to go to the the Moosewood which is like a semi-famous vegetarian restaurant that makes a buttload of vegetarian cookbooks. It’s right in Ithaca which is where I live so I’ve eaten there a bunch, and as soon as Ellen expressed enthusiasm I was all over poo-pooing it!

“Yeah, Moosewood’s okay. It’s not great or anything.”

But I wanted her to make up her own mind so when she came to visit over the weekend it was on The Agenda with watching bad 80’s horror movies and playing Scrabble. We went for lunch because that’s when it’s cheapest. I really haven’t noticed a huge difference in the quality of the food between lunch and dinner, but there is a $5-$8 difference in price.

So I’m going to lay it all out on the table here. I usually think the Moosewood is way overrated and that their food is bland. I like their salad dressings and their desserts and I’ve had a few really good cocktails there too, but the entrees just don’t get me that excited which would be fine if the food was cheaper. But it’s not, so… yeah. When friends of mine visit from far away I say, “I can take you out to eat at the famous restaurant, or the good restaurant.” I’m being kind of harsh, here, but every time I go to the Moosewood I walk away wondering why I went there when I know better. Well, this time I went there because I wanted to see if Ellen liked it and thought I was crazy.

Hey this is what I ate:

It was some eggplant stuff. I can’t even remember the name anymore. It was eggplant and peppers and whatnot over polenta. It was pretty good. Ten bucks good? Ehh. Not really. But it did make me think that I need to do a lot more with polenta.

Pfft. Moosewood. But hey hanging out with Ellen was awesome.

-Bret

Bret’s not crazy.  Well, he is, but he’s not crazy for thinking that the Moosewood is kind of overrated.  The only things that really impressed me was Bret’s salad dressing.  Japanese carrot, I think?  I want the recipe.  Maybe it’s in one of their books.

So the Moosewood is kind of overrated.  Based on a one-meal experience.  I tasted Bret’s eggplant scallopine (that’s what it was called!) and I had a bowl of Caribbean black bean soup and the French rice salad.  Here’s what the salad looked like:

It was tasty.  There was rice and all kinds of fresh herbs mixed with a vinaigrette and topped with pine nuts.  The cheese added nothing, but I do like me some cheese so I ate it.  It just tasted like something I could make at home.  The black bean soup also tasted like something I could make at home (only if I made it myself it would have been a lot more spicy).  I’m all for food that tastes like it was home cooked, but it could have been a little more exciting for the price.  Maybe if they threw in a few magic tricks to entertain us while we waited for our food.

So it’s a good restaurant.  And I’m glad I got to go and make up my own mind instead of just listening to Bret be a big downer.  The presentation is nice and the food is quite tasty, but I don’t feel like I need to go back.  Except maybe to try the vegan chocolate cake.

Next time, we’re going to one of these so-called “good” restaurants.  And I’m paying!

- Ellen

Aladdin’s Pignolia

So Friday night Brenna had a hankering for Aladdin’s and I had a hankering for pignolia. I haven’t had it in a long time but it’s this really tasty pasta that involves goat cheese, mushrooms, and pine nuts. It tends to be really, really salty though. I got it this time with lemon-pepper linguine and it was really good. The mushrooms are my favorite part of it. They’re marinaded in something and it makes them all full of yum. The cheese and the salt ended up doing me in, though, and made me a little sick but that’s because I don’t know when to stop eating. I ate the whole plate. Bad move, Bretster. Next time I need to show a litle restraint.

Oh and then we were waiting to pay for our check and apparently our server left and we sat there and sat there and sat there and then had to grab somebody. Oh! And we went on Slope Day which meant we were the only ones there who weren’t totally hammered. And then two guys in banana outfits walked by the window. Slope Day, in case you didn’t know which you probably didn’t, is Cornell’s pseudo-holiday where all the college students get totally hammered. On the drive there I saw two incredibly drunk guys carrying each other around. I was like, “What the eff? It’s like 5PM.” Then I remembered. “Oh. Slope Day.”

We didn’t see anybody puke anywhere but there were absurd conversations going around us. Most of them were, “Jason was SO TRASHED,” stories. One girl was talking about how weird it was that her friend wouldn’t have sex with boys, and at another table a girl’s cell phone kept ringing and she’d answer it and say loudly, several times, “I’m at ALADDIN’S.”

The end.

-Bret