40th birthday dinner at Shojin

Hello all! Yesterday was my 40th birthday and we went to our fave vegan Japanese restaurant Shojin. I love this place.

Descriptions of the rolls from the website.

Appetizer was the pumpkin croquettes.

My husband had the pumpkin soup.

Then came the Crunchy Tiger roll.

Green Forest roll. My fave.

Ladies Who Crunch roll. So yummy.

For dessert: The ultimate pumpkin pudding which was amazing! I could eat this all day!

Sushi Craving.

Got a sushi craving last night and with minimal ingredients (sushi rice, nori, cucumber, orange bell pepper and scallions), I was able to whip this up in no time! So good!

Sushi and Tempura craving.

Filled with carrot, cucumber, green onion, green bean and avocado. Yummmmmm....

Topped with spicy mayo (vegenaise, sriricha, sesame oil and rice vinegar)

For dinner, I was craving tempura veg so I made it. I followed the tempura batter recipe in River Cottage Veg Cookbook.

Bangers & Mash and Inari Sushi!

Tofurky "Chicken Apple" sausage is pretty good. I like it with HP sauce. The gravy is St. Huberts.

Homemade inari sushi. My fave. I get the fried tofu pouches from Mitsua Market.

Served with salad, kimchee and curry croquette.

Inari Sushi.

I love inari sushi. I've always wanted to make my own and I figured it would be easy as it's just sushi rice stuffed in a tofu pouch! I went to my local japanese grocery and picked up a packet of the tofu pouch (aburaage). I cooked up some sushi rice and grated some carrot into it for color and stuffed the pouches. Then all we had to do was dip into soy sauce (mixed with hot mustard or wasabi) and eat! Three of these was plenty for me. I packed some for lunch tomorrow.

Here's a basic recipe online.

Tempeh & Veggie Rolls

Delicious tempeh and veggie rolls (recipe from Veganomicon) that I will serve to my in-laws and husband for supper. The filling is tempeh chunks coated in vegan mayo with a little sesame oil and chili sauce, carrots, cucumber and scallion.


A mountain of rolls in celebration of my two days off tomorrow and Friday!

Spicy Tempeh Nori Rolls

These never fail to please. One of the first recipes I tried from Veganomicon. Really yummy! The tempeh chunks are coated in creamy Vegenaise and hot sesame oil which make them nice and spicy too. Have a great weekend!

Detox Week 1, Day 4

Last night husband and I were talking about our cravings. I kept saying the word "cake" and he kept repeating "pizza". Oh dear, it's only day 4...

But today's foods were awesome.

Breakfast: Strawberry-Dates-Banana-Collard Greens Smoothie (no picture sorry!)

To make up for the missing breakfast picture, I'll show you what I got at the local health food store today. I was supposed to just go to the post office but when I passed by, I couldn't help but pull into their parking lot.


Salt-free brown rice cakes, brown rice syrup, salt-free peanut butter, ACV, and some bulk items from L to R: aduki beans, raisins, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and whole wheat flour (for the healthy pizza I'm making next week!).


I had to make a mid-morning snack with some of this stuff! I spread a little peanut butter on a rice cake and drizzled it with brown rice syrup and sprinkled sesame seeds on top. Yum! I haven't had a rice cake since high school when I used to yo-yo diet. I will continue to buy them, they're so nice!


I wanted to have a large chopped salad for lunch and needed a good salad dressing. I found this easy, delicious Goddess dressing at oneweekraw.com (Scroll down to Day 5 to get the recipe.)


For lunch: chopped salad with green leaf, spinach, red peppers and cucumber. And a sprinkling of flax seeds. To make it lower in fat, I diluted about a TB of dressing with some lemon juice. Worked very well and gave my salad a lot of flavor!


For dinner we had vegetable sushi rolls. The rolls had brown rice, red peppers, carrots, cucumber and avocado. They were delicious. We didn't eat all of these! I ate about 6. My husband ate a lot. The rest are for lunch tomorrow.


I served the rolls with Crunchy Walnut Coleslaw with sesame miso dressing. Recipes from You Are What You Eat Cookbook.

Tofu Vegetable Rolls + Salad

I made these beautiful sushi last night but forgot to photograph them all! So I took the leftovers (Marc's lunch today), arranged them on a plate and snapped a quick photo before he left for work. The one in the middle is wrapped in spring roll wrapper instead of nori. They are really good. Inside is baked tofu, cucumber, carrot and yellow bell pepper.


I used the leftover filling to make this spinach salad that I ate for breakfast drizzled with peanut dressing.

I love ethnic foods.

I am a big fan of cuisine from different cultures. It's kind of like armchair travel in a way. You get to taste the exciting flavors of specific countries and for me anyway, it's like being transported to that place. Well, sort of. I'd rather get on a plane and actually travel to these countries but this will have to be my best option for now.

Let's start with indian food. I've never been to India but man do I love their food! I am a curry-holic. It must have something to do with my Thai background (we Thais like our curries too!). I think I make curry more often than anything else. It's one of the easiest things to cook too. Just throw a bunch of garlic, onions, veggies, spices, water and tomatoes in a pot, let it simmer and throw on some rice for a spicy delicious dinner. My favorite indian curry is Aloo Chana Masala which is basically a potato and chickpea curry.

This curry is perfection. I add peas to mine for some color. Recipe can be found here. It has step by step instruction which you will find delightful.


I also crave Pav Bhaji at least once a month. This is a spicy mashed vegetable curry served with buttered rolls. I used this recipe and substituted Earth Balance margarine for the butter. It is soooo good.


Ah, Morocco! How I would do anything to travel there! I might be idealizing but it seems like such an exotic, colorful desert paradise. The food always looks amazing too. I recently purchased a vegetarian cookbook called Olive Trees & Honey where I found a recipe for this vegetable stew which has sweet potatoes, squash, chickpeas and carrots topped with an onion-cinnamon concoction. It was gorgeous on top of couscous.


Lebanese food is really simple and fresh. It is considered one of the healthiest of cuisines. It relies on an assortment of fresh vegetables and salads, lemon juice and copious amounts of olive oil and garlic. I am a huge fan of this type of cooking. This eggplant stew recipe which is from the Tables of Lebanon cookbook is a delicious and healthy meal served on top of rice. (Sorry about the dark photo.)


And from the same cookbook, hummus along side za'atar spice in olive oil and pita bread for dipping.


When you think of japanese food, do you think of sushi first? I do. I never ate sushi before going vegan because I hated seaweed and seafood. I went online to do some research and I found a way to make vegan sushi without using nori (the seaweed wrapper around sushi rolls). Spring roll wrappers make a perfect roll. When I make sushi, I usually use both nori (for my husband) and spring roll wrappers for mine. Check it out.




I'll end this post with some thai food. I grew up eating lots of it and unfortunately most of it was meat based. Here in Los Angeles, you will find a plethora of vegan Thai restaurants that serve delicious and tantalizing thai favorites like Pad Thai, Pad See You and Tom Yum Kai using mock meats and fresh vegetables. It's actually quite good! I go every now and then if I don't feel like cooking my own. When I do cook thai food, it's usually curry. Here is a karee curry with coconut milk, tofu and vegetables served on top of rice with a side of purple slaw. Mmm. mmm. mmm.

Feel free to comment if you want any of these recipes. I'd be happy to share them with you via email.