Monday, September 2, 2013

Vegan NoGo

So, I signed up for Vegan Mofo this year but for some reason my name didn't appear on the list.  and instead of feeling disappointment...i felt relief.  I was pretty excited and had a couple neat ideas but i also just started my newest online accounting class and it was leaving me feeling quite a bit anxious about getting all the work done PLUS blogging regularly PLUS cooking more homemade meals than i'm unfortunately used to.

so i still want to do it but i guess this is not the year, and that's okay with me.

but i did have a few things already in mind to post about so i still will.  first was eating vegan in michigan on our trip back out east to see the families.  i was quite surprised when my parents told me that they go to the downtown farmington farmer's market every weekend and that there is always a vegan food truck there!  specifically a vegan slider truck.  it's called Shimmy Shack and it's based out of South Lyon but apparently makes it out to the market every saturday.  my parents had already tried it and liked it so i thought i'd give it a go as well.  they have four sliders--the classic, the southwest, the falafel and the reuben-esque, which is a raw reuben.  i wanted something warm so the reuben was out, and i was nervous about the falafel because i have seriously high falafel standards.  so i got the southwest.  i believe it was pretty good but mostly i just tasted guacamole, which was fine.  they also do shakes.  my dad got banana and i got strawberry but you really couldn't tell the difference...instead of a soy or almond or even coconut ice cream base it was a banana base.  which is great for smoothies!  but not for shakes.  i had one sip of mine, detected banana, and gave it to my dad.  he was pretty excited to have two shakes.

my favorite part was the french fries.  we got sweet potato fries.  they were the usual run-of-the-mill SP fries but what made them awesome was the dips!  they had a self-serve dipping sauce bar and i filled up on all three varieties and it was pretty difficult to pick a favorite out of garlic sauce, shimmy sauce (a ketchup and mayo concoction) and curry mayo.  i guess if a gun was to my head i'd say the curry was the best.

so nice job, michigan, for stepping it up on the food cart AND the vegan front!

i got four out of five of my favorite michigan foods: buddy's pizza, superman ice cream, new york bagels and dunkin donuts.  we didn't have time to go to slow's BBQ in detroit to get their amazing vegetarian chicken BBQ sandwich and mac and cheese.  but now i have a new favorite: neehee's in plymouth.  meghan lives there and turned me on to this tiny and very popular spot that serves vegetarian indian street food.  incredible!!!  we shared four things and it was too much but so good:

samosa ragda, which was samosas covered in some sort of gravy with ramen noodles on top (i swear there are two samosas under there!).



paneer chili, which was paneer in a chili (duh) with a sweet (tamarind?) sauce.

chole bature,  asweet and savory chickpea curry served with two incredibly huge fried bature breads (my favorite dish)

chili mili pa,  a dosa filled with paneer (but also grilled peppers...no thanks)

i also went to the blue nile with patty, my favorite ethiopian place ever.  when we got there, the charming young waiter came to our table and asked if we were hungry.  when we answered "famished," he asked if we liked meat or veggies (meat for patty, veggies for me) and then said he'd be right back.  he showed up with a sample of everything.  it was amazing.  so delicious.  we stuffed ourselves silly.  i've been to quite a few places in california but blue nile is still my first and best true love.

nice job metro detroit, on stepping it up in the veggie area!!!

1 comment:

  1. Hey Princess Tofu - you won the giveaway on my blog (Vegan Eats & Treats) for a copy of Miyoko's newest book "The Homemade Vegan Pantry"!! Congrats! Send me an email with your mailing address and I'll pass it along to the publishers. :) ameyfm (at) yahoo (dot) com yay!

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