Today on my day off from being surrounded by carnivores at my job, I thought “HMmm, I think I will try something different today.”  My first venture in deep frying resulted in some very yummy shallots for a very yummy green bean casserole.  But, also a very, very smokey house and a not happy Mr. Nashveggie.  Today I decided to try homemade vegan doughnuts. After consulting my King Arthur Flour Bakers Companion and a few websites, I finally decided to try a combination of the recipes from those websites and King Arthur.

Unfortunately, today was not the day for rising in my house.  The first rise was fine, but the second, after little Nashveggie and I cut them out, was slow.  I finally got impatient and began heating a whole quart of oil in my lovely Le Creuset 3 1/2 dutch oven. This step took about 30 minutes to reach the suggested 370 degrees.  Once I got started, it was a ton of fun, even if I did have to keep a four year old out of my way.  I had baking soda and the lid to the pot handy just in case anything went awry in this foray.  The result… well, I don’t know how long it has been since you have a had a warm Krispy Kreme doughnut straight off the assembly line, but this…this was heaven.  It took me back to the day when Mr. Nashveggie and I would go to the Krispy Kreme across from Baptist Hospital to wait for the hot doughnut sign and eat a whole dozen, he with milk and I with OJ.  No OJ today, just a little taste of a fond memory and sweet goodness.

Pre-Fried Vegan Doughnuts

Hot Vegan Doughnuts Now!

Away from this site for the past week at least.  I have been taking care of things outside with the garden and preparing an herb garden.  Those tasks just take time away from the little things.  We have peppers, tomatoes, okra and squash growing in the garden so far.  The herb garden is taking a little longer as we need fill dirt and some more boundary rocks before it is planting time.  Two loads of mulch later the yard is looking much better.  A large maple tree was cut down this week in the front yard as it had died on one side and was threatening to fall onto our house.  I hated to cut down a huge tree, especially since it gave much needed shade in the afternoon sun but I also didn’t want to repair a roof.   Now we are looking for fast-growing shade replacement for that area.  Hybrid poplars and weeping willows are being considered.

In the cooking department I haven’t created anything earth-shaking lately.  The past week has consited of spaghetti marinara and tempeh sausage.   Red beans and rice,  roasted corn and macaroni and “cheese” and the usual veggie burgers (Amy’s are the best).   My wife did make coconut-lime cupcakes, those are always earth-shaking.   I owe someone a recipe and/or batch of eggless cornbread.  I’ll get to that one soon.

Other than those small things nothing much going on.

We do have fresh kittens, more on that later.

Back from vacation, unpacking and trying to get back into the groove of things at home.   Our vacation was very much needed and relaxing and an opportunity for me to go without any sort of attachment to a computer.   I took no laptop with me, used no public access and stayed Internet-free for a week, quite the accomplishment.  Most of the veggie blogs, or food blogs, post pictures of their eats along the way.  I am not a big food photographer while sitting in a restaurant.   I did manage one picture while in Atlanta, but I will get to that later.

We started our vacation in St. Augustine, Florida.  My wife went to college there and I/we have visited countless times.  There was one vegetarian restaurant in town that we knew of, Manatee Cafe, but we found another while driving around.  The Present Moment Cafe is a raw food restaurant with a small deli located next door.  We visited the deli and looked at the menu of the restaurant but decided to pass.  Prices seemed a little high and it was “pretty food”.   Not to take anything away from The Present Moment Cafe or anyone who enjoys eating artsy food, but I am not into trying to figure out why a chef used this color or that texture to accent my collard greens.   Make the food tasty, put it on a plate and make it enough so that I leave your restaurant full.   Putting a sliver of whatever on a plate, dancing some dribbley sauce around it and sprinkling some fluff about does not dinner make.

Our first eating out was The Manatee Cafe. This is a basic vegetarian restaurant with a menu of sandwiches, wraps and salads.  They have a great tofu reuben which I have had previously but this morning I wasn’t extremely hungry and went very basic with hash browns and grits.   The hash browns here are actually very chunky-cut potatoes fried crispy with Spike seasoning, nothing special but very tasty.  My wife had the veggie wrap (Tofutti, hummus, carrots, sprouts, mushrooms, sweet potatoes and avocados) with hash browns.   Everything was great and as expected.   No pictures,  it is the “Hey, I like to take a picture of my food so I can remember what I ate.” thing that I can’t get to.

If you ever visit St. Augustine you will go to St. George Street.  With it being the oldest permanently settled city in the US there are many old houses and buildings to be seen and many are along St. George Street, though they have been transformed into modern gift shops and trinket stores.  The oldest school house is on St. George Street but more importantly so is The Spanish Bakery.  No where else can you get some of the best soup a big loaf of fresh baked bread and three VEGAN lemon, cinnamon or almond cookies for $5.   The bakery is a small hut with just enough room for a row of cookies on display and three pots of soup.  Table are outside under large shade trees which are handy on hot, sunny days.  In the summer they have a very good gazpacho, however, they only had a vegetable soup on our visit which was still excellent.

View sitting outside of The Spanish Bakery on St. George Street.

Our fix for sweet stuff was found at Rita’s, an Italian Ice place on St. Augustine Beach.  Rita’s is a chain located mostly on the east coast but this is the only one we have ever visited, and we do each time we go to St. Augustine.  The have Gelati and custard ice but we always get the vegan Italian Ice option.  Flavors range from tropical punch, black cherry, vanilla, chocolate, pina colada, lemonade and mango.   I think of the three times we went there I had six or seven large ices, I lost count, but the best was the mango.   Cold, sweet and with little bits of mango.  I just looked at their website and noticed locations are coming to Hermitage and Mt. Juliet.

Most of our time in St. Augustine was planned to be spent on the beach and it was.  Six hours in one day allowed for plenty of digging in the sand and burning of our skin.  While walking around in a few places the smell of shrimp boil hit me.  Not the smell of the shrimp but the combination of spices used to boil the shrimp.   I love the smell and it instantly made me want to boil something in those spices to munch on.  Since getting back I have gotten together all of those spices along with some corn and potatoes that will be boiled and enjoyed on the patio one evening, a post about that will come later.

Mean people not allowed on St. George Street

Each trip to St. Augustine also gets us to go to a local nursery to pick out some plants that are a bit uncommon here.   I am a bit of a tropical plant enthusiast so you shouldn’t be surprised to see my fruit-bearing orange trees and palms.   I managed to find a Green Saw Palmetto and a Washingtonian Palm that were small enough to fit in the car for the ride back.  We also found a Madagascar Palm and a Longleaf Pine, both which are less uncommon here, for the ride back to be added to our plant family.

Washingtonian Palm and Green Saw Palmetto

So, to summarize, St. Augustine, good.  Pretty food, bad.  The Manatee Cafe, good.  The Spanish Bakery, good.  Beach, GOOD.

Lesley over at MCB has been catching up here since her return from out west and noticed the post I did last week regarding unsavory food additives.  She also pointed out another post on cracked.com regarding the tasty delicacy Casu Marzu.

Casu Marzu is a cheese from Sardinia, Italy that is infested with larve and is more commonly known locally as “maggot cheese”  It doesn’t stop there.  These larve are capable of jumping…while you EAT this stuff.  These larve survive the digestive process (if they can take that smell then what can’t they take?) and setup shop in the intestines, boring into the lining causing bloody diarrhea, vomiting and nausea.

Ready for lunch?  I know I am!  Watch this:

If you have read other posts here you know I regularly check my server statistics for search terms that lead visitors to this site.  I have noticed “Publix veggie burgers and vegan burgers pulled from shelves” or some variant a few times in the past weeks.  I noticed the last time I was at Publix that the vegan patties we get each week were on clearance.  This I found alarming as they are some of the best, unless you count Amy’s burgers at $4.50 a pack.   We took what few packs were left and asked the manager about the clearance and if they were discontinued.  He told me Publix does not clearance a Greenwise product unless they are going to be discontinued and directed me to contact corporate and let them know I wanted them to keep the product on the shelf.

After emailing Publix’s corporate office this is the reply I received:

Thank you for your email. We appreciate our customers taking the time to contact us.

The plant used by the manufacturer of our Publix Green Wise Frozen items has been sold.
We are currently sourcing a new supplier and have every desire to return these items to the shelf as quickly as possible; but we will be out of stock for an undetermined amount of time.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact us. If we can be of any further assistance regarding this matter, please either call our Consumer Relations toll-free number at 1-800-242-1227, write us at the Publix Super Markets Corporate Office, PO Box 407, Lakeland, FL 33802, ATTN: Consumer Relations, or contact us at our website, publix.com

So, if you are looking for your Publix Greenwise Vegan or Veggie patties and/or burgers and can’t find them, they will return!