a veg life

Restaurant Review: Crossroads Kitchen When Rick and I first read about Crossroads in our LA Magazine , we immediately knew it was on our short list of new restaurants to try. After checking out the menu, we realized it would be the perfect place to celebrate our marriage with a special meal to ourselves. It took a few weeks for us to get there, since we needed to have a reservation on an evening we had free, and Saturday night was the finally the perfect night! Dinner was late, with our reservation scheduled for 8:30. We did not use the restaurant's valet parking and ended up finding a spot in the neighborhood. Even looking through the windows of the restaurant, we were immediately blown away by the decor and beautiful exposed bulb chandeliers throughout the restaurant space. We had to wait a few minutes, but passed the time by celeb watching as Tisha Campell-Martin 's birthday party got underway. You know a restaurant must be good if Don Cheadle is there! Once seated,...

Delicious either way! Sometimes, you just have to bake. There are times where I just get the craving to put something in the oven and try something new! In absence of pumpkin to add to my latest endeavor, I decided I'd try out a potential Thanksgiving breakfast idea. My Aunt Sue and cousins Ryan and Lindsey got us some awesome doughnut pans for the wedding. I've only used them once before, and when I was digging around for a muffin tin, these bad boys where on top. So, I figured, why not give them a try? We bought a few bags of fresh cranberries at Whole Foods around Christmas time last year--at 99 cents a piece, they were a steal! I tossed them in our freezer, and pull them out occasionally. I found a recipe online to use as a base--typically, I enjoy adjusting a changing a recipe to make it more my own, but I try not to mess around too much with baked goods, as there is so much chemistry involved.  Lately I've noticed that the things I bake come out very moist--alm...

A Brand New Recipe! I don't know about you, but I find cooking to be one of the most relaxing things I can do. Chopping, prepping, mixing, and sautéing everything to create a meal is therapeutic and rewarding to me. I had spent the weekend facilitating a leadership workshop for middle school girls and while we had an awesome time, I was totally ready to get home and get into the kitchen. One can only deal with some much One Direction obsession... :)  This is a recipe I created, after having seen a similar idea floating around on facebook. Just in case you haven't noticed, squash season is in full swing. I've made a little mental goal to try and eat some sort of squash at least two times a week while everything is in season. My chili recipe is a great way to incorporate squash into a fall favorite! Three Bean Pumpkin Chili A Barclay Original I like to see ingredients along with steps in a recipe, but I promise to put the full ingredients list at the end of...

Did you know today is a holiday?! I mean, it's not a holiday that immediately springs to mind, but any day we can celebrate a leafy green vegetable is a great day to me!  source We've been on a number of kale adventures lately, while experimenting with new kale chip recipes. We had registered for a dehydrator as a wedding gift, and ended up buying it for ourselves the day after the wedding. It is going to become even more crucial as we decide on which flavors to offer as a part of our new side business, REfoods. Rick and I always find so much gratification in making and sharing healthy food with others that we've decided to make it official! There are so many products we use/eat--kale chips, almond milk, veggie stock--that are unnecessarily expensive when purchased at the store. We hope to provide our friends and family with more affordable, high-quality options.  The idea for the business began when a friend of mine from work wanted to go on a juice cleanse,...

A few recent favorites A new goal for our blog is to try and share something with you everyday during the week--whether it be a recipe we love, a food prep tip, a restaurant review, or a quick photo or two, we're doing our best to bring more vegan food into your life!  Today's post is bringing you some of the recipes popping up in our house lately!  source On Sunday, I made a batch of spaghetti squash with creamy roasted red pepper sauce . The only adaptation I made to the recipe was roasting 6 tomatoes to use in place of the canned tomatoes called for in the original. I also prefer to cook spaghetti squash upside down in a casserole dish, with some veggie broth covering the bottom inch or so, like this .  It has kept really well in the fridge, and has made for some great lunches at school this week! Over the summer, I received a ton of great recipes at my bridal shower. Attendees were asked to bring a favorite recipe that could easily be modified for...

And have we got something good for you! It's true confessions time:       - True Confession: It has been way too long since we posted      - True Confession: I can't even count how many recipes have been         photographed to post  on here, and now those photos are just         sitting on the camera.      - True Confession: We're really going to try our best to be better.  With all of that out of the way, I thought we'd celebrate the end of our hiatus with a very special restaurant review. As many of you know, we love Sage Vegan Bistro in Echo Park. It is our go-to restaurant for birthdays , brunch, and special occasions.  True Confession: Once we found out Sage was opening a new location in Culver City, I started stalking them via every form of social media I could. Were they open? Were they not? How was VegansOfIG able to plan a meet-up there when...

From a place that we love! There is one particular restaurant that will always be extremely special to us. Though we haven’t been to visit in a while, I wanted to be sure to tell you all about it. But first, a little background info—Rick and I met teaching drum corps in the summer of 2010. The group we were working with at the time is called The Academy and is based in Tempe, AZ. While spending the summer in Arizona, we had the chance to do some sightseeing and hiking in Sedona , which is about a two-hour drive from Tempe/Phoenix. That summer, I was still a cheese-loving, ice cream-eating omnivore, so living with a number of vegans and vegetarians at our staff house was an eye opening experience. When Rick and I planned our trip to Sedona, he was adamant about visiting a local vegan/raw restaurant— Chocolatree .  I will readily admit that I was nervous about the upcoming food experience. I had never had food from a dedicated vegan/vegetarian restaurant before, an...