Italiano!

Last night, the wonderful Ellery and Grace led a delicious Italian Vegheads meal! We feasted on a lentil/red potato/cous cous mesclun salad, roasted garlic on toast, a seriously incredible eggplant and mushroom vegan lasagna, and a banana-berry sorbetto. And as usual, everything made from scratch! Thanks for a fantastic dinner, everyone!

Next week's theme: Farmers Market! All that's fresh, local, seasonal, and organic is fair game!

A little taste of Southern hospitality...

Vegheads came back in full force this week with our first (official) dinner of the semester: Southern Comfort food! We were partly inspired by a recent lecture at Oxy by the documentarian Byron Hurt about his newest film Soul Food Junkies, which examines the sociocultural ties and health threats of soul food. At the talk, he discussed the connections between food access, cultural bonds, food security, nutrition, and disease, saying that in order to stymie the declining health of our nation, we will need to re-examine our food system. Hear, hear! He also mentioned that there are plenty of healthy southern foods, but they are often forgotten. So our project this week was to dig up some forgotten southern gems.

Our menu:
Sweet tea
Collard greens, apple, red wine vinegar salad
Cornbread
Cajun spiced dirty rice with black eyed peas
Vegan okra gumbo
Traditional apple pie

End result? Seriously delicious, vegan, healthy, southern food. Hallelujah! 

First dinner of spring semester!

Since everyone's still settling into the semester, we kept it low key for our first dinner of the semester. No theme, no price, no advertising, no recipes. Just some food with some friends. We dug into a lovely spinach & avocado salad, spiced sweet potatoes, chickpea and tomato soup, seeded raisin bread, chocolate and cacao pudding, and an apple pear crisp. And those who had room in their stomachs finished the night with a field trip to Pasadena's KindKreme, a raw, organic, vegan ice cream parlor with several L.A. locations! Om nom nom!

 Superfood ice cream tastes like rocky road!

Coming up next: after a fascinating lecture by documentarian Byron Hurt on the sociocultural ties and health implications of soul food, Vegheads will be doing our own take on Southern comfort food! Get ready for sweet tea, veggie gumbo, dirty rice, collard greens salad, baked potatoes, cornbread, and sweet potato pie.