vegan doughnuts and a baby!

First, I'd like to present you with the best thing I ever made:

A baby! His name is Ezra and he is exactly one month old today. My work schedule leading up to the end of pregnancy picked up more than I thought it would, so blogging didn't really happen much during my pregnancy, but it was an easy pregnancy overall. We've had no problems or pushback regarding our veganism from any of our healthcare professionals. And this baby is awesome!

He loves to eat, just like his mother, and has many strong opinions. (We don't know what the opinions are, since they all come out as wailing, but still.)

I am ambitiously hoping I will actually update more often now that I have a baby, in part because we spend a lot of time sitting down to nurse and/or nap, but also because I am done working! While I loved my job (teaching English at BFIT, a local college), I've always known that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mother, and (with years of saving and planning, mind you) I am able to realize that dream!

But let's talk about doughnuts. I love doughnuts! Growing up in Cooperstown NY, my favorite doughnuts were from Schneider's bakery. They make old fashioned doughnuts there: they're cake doughnuts, but still fried (as they should be) and have a dense inside with a crispy, barely sweet outside. You can get them glazed but then you don't get the same crispy outside. To me, these will always be the world's most perfect doughnuts. But they're not vegan.

It has, until recent years, been really hard to find vegan doughnuts... especially if you can't have potato starch (which is in most powdered egg replacers and is used in many vegan doughnuts, like DunWell doughnuts in NYC). I've been hoarding doughnut recipes to veganize for when I have the time and ambition to deep fry. But in the last year or so, Boston has kicked up its vegan doughnut scene!

For those who like cake doughnuts, Sabertooth Vegan Bakery, which operates out of Taco Party's (also vegan and delicious) restaurant location, has a staggering number of options. The flavor combinations are always on point--tasty and interesting: Matcha and Macadamia, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Cookies and Cream, etc. There are often at least a couple gluten-free (and I think soy free?) varieties as well.

The doughnuts are better than the picture quality would suggest.

 For me, there are a few down sides. First, they're baked, not fried. Which yes, is healthier, but I like traditional (fried) doughnuts. Second--this is minor--the base is the same to every doughnut. The flavors are all in the icing. It's a good, simple base, but if you get a sampling (like we did above) it is easy to get tired of it, Finally, for my taste, they're too sweet. The base is sweet, and the icing is almost entirely sugar. But I think most people go for that sort of thing when they want dessert anyway!

If I can't have vegan old fashioned doughnuts, I'll still happily eat yeasted (i.e., the Dunkin/Krispy Kreme type) doughnuts. Union Square Donuts has the best in town.

They used to only have vegan doughnuts on weekends, but now you can get them any day of the week. There are usually two kinds: cinnamon sugar and a seasonal flavor. Above, a coworker happened to hit the on a day when there were two seasonal flavors. They also have vegan doughnut holes!!! I hadn't realized I missed these until I was able to eat them again.

Obviously Union Square Donuts' doughnuts are heavy (because they are fried), but other than that, I have no complaints. They are delicious!

I don't have pictures, but Veggie Galaxy also has vegan doughnuts on Saturday (possibly also Sundays soon). They're the yeasted kind, with basic or chocolate icing. They sometimes do jelly-filled, too!

Have any of you tried making your own doughnuts at home? How did it go? What recipe(s) did you use?

Restaurant Thursday: Root (Now closed)

Edit: Root has closed since the writing of this post. Another vegan restaurant has opened in its place, but I have not yet been there.

Root is an all-vegan restaurant in Allston, a Boston neighborhood that is very close to my heart (and used to be close to my home, when I first moved out to Boston). It had big shoes to fill when it opened: its location was previously home to Peace o'Pie and before that, to TJ Scallywaggles, both vegan pizza places that almost all of us Boston vegans were sorry to see go.

Root has healthy, surprisingly inexpensive meals with a cafe feel. Kevin and I have been for dinner twice and brunch once. Dinner there was great!

Kevin got the sweet corn and jalapeno hush puppies with the Thai peanut salad (in the back), and I went with the sweet potato quesadillas and warm kale salad. The employees were transparent and accommodating when it came to my unusual food allergies.

While we were underwhelmed by the brunch (not a lot of flavor in the tofu scramble or the breakfast burrito), we'd be willing to try again, considering how good (and enormous) the pancakes looked.

A couple notes: for lunches/dinners, you order at the counter and choose your own seat, but brunch is a be-seated-and-waited-on affair. Also, Root doesn't offer desserts, but is conveniently located two doors down from Fomu, Boston's vegan ice cream shop. (The two businesses even share a bathroom.) If you don't want something as upscale as True Bistro, but want something a little less dingy than Grasshopper, I strongly recommend Root.

True Bistro, my favorite vegan place in Boston

Back in my (now out of date, I know) "Vegan Eating in Boston" post, I wrote this about True Bistro:

Tasty upscale vegan food, and they offer vegan cocktails and wine pairings. While there aren’t a lot of nightshade free options, they do have some, and the waitstaff has been really helpful when it comes figuring out what I could have. Dinners are quite pricy, but they charge average prices for lunch and brunch. (Website here.)

True Bistro is one of my favorite restaurants in Boston, and definitely my favorite veg*n place. The servers are really friendly (though there are always, at MOST, 2, so if things get busy, service can be slow), and the food is consistently great. Kevin and I have been there dozens of times, and of all those times, only once were we not impressed with the food (and it was stuff we'd had before and liked, so it must have been a rare off day for them).

They are incredibly helpful about food allergies, and list gluten- and nut-free menus on their website. As I said above, dinners are pricy, but not overpriced. I don't normally like to order salads when I go out, but I've loved every salad I've had here, which makes me inclined to order them more often!

But my absolute favorite thing to eat at True Bistro is the Cornmeal-crusted oyster mushrooms. I actually think that of the dozens of times I've been here, there have only been one or two dinners where I didn't order these.

They come with a chipotle sauce that is usually on the plate, but because I am allergic, we ask for it on the side so Kevin can still enjoy it. The other sauce is a horseradish-dill aioli that I sometimes just want to eat with a spoon. The mushrooms are always perfectly fried, never overly greasy. They remind me of fried clams, which was my favorite seafood dish as a kid.

The entrees can be a little limited if you're allergic to nightshades, but there is always an option. The menu changes by season, but there are a few regulars like the mushrooms and the Vietnamese Crepe in the back of the picture below. (Gluten free, and nightshade free without the dipping sauce.)

The front dish is a pasta dish with spring peas that I had last spring.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of their desserts for you, but the desserts are great. I especially love the Napoleon with white chocolate mousse. I've always loved white chocolate, and haven't found a satisfying replacement in all my years as a vegan; their mousse is the best vegan white chocolate I've had.

Have you been to True Bistro? If you've been to the Boston area, what's your favorite veg*n restaurant around here?

vegan chocolate from Bees Knees Supply Co.

Bees Knees Supply Co. is a gourmet grocery store and deli that opened up right underneath my office this summer, so I had to check them out. I never went through their deli counters, but it looks like they have some sandwiches that could be made vegan, and some snacks that already are there. Their fridges and freezers have some vegan (non-hydrogenated!) puff pastry and canned cinnamon rolls, as well as some vegan pates and such.

But the REAL reason I would go down to Bees Knees during the work day was their CAFE/CHOCOLATE BAR. They have a great selection of teas, coffee, and juice, soy milk (and possibly almond milk?) available for all drinks, and at least one freshly-made vegan chocolate of the day.

LIKE THIS LUCKY CAT CHOCOLATE! It is filled with a raw chocolate ganache. (In addition to the prettier chocolates I'm showing here, they also have raw chocolate truffles with coconut oil rolled in hemp seeds, coconut, or sometimes chia seeds.)

Look at this little chocolate mouse! He's all shimmery! They do such a nice job of making the chocolates pretty there.

This one was called a "peace mouse."

It was delicious.

Vegan Mofo Begins! ...a camping post!

It's the first day of VeganMofo, the Vegan Month of Food! In honor of Vegan Mofo, I'll be posting every day this week with some pictures of, links to, and/or recipes for delicious vegan food.

Check out VeganMofo.com for more information, or to look at blog rolls and check out events and giveaways throughout the month of September.

Just an hour ago, I got home from a weekend camping trip on Lovells Island, one of the Boston Harbor Islands. Kevin and I have been to a few of the islands on day trips, but not to Lovells, one of the more secluded islands. So we chose that one for camping!

Lovells Island was used as an outpost in the Civil War,  WWI, and WWII, then was just abandoned until the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation acquired it in the 1950s (it would otherwise have become either a landfill, a fuel outpost, or a nuclear waste depository). The ruins of Fort Standish and various gun batteries are still here, though mostly overgrown.

 ...And you're totally allowed to explore them!

 (Bear with me, pictures of food are coming soon, I just wanted to post some of the cooler things from the island!)

 

 All this hiking and exploring worked up quite an appetite!

 This was our campsite. We did have a fire in the grill at one point, but we didn't do any cooking this time around.

These St. Dalfour "Gourmet on the Go" meals were awesome camp food! There are 4 different types, but only 3 are vegan, and only 2 are nightshade free: Couscous with Veggies, and Three Bean with Sweet Corn (the 3-bean one is also gluten free). We packed two of each, and alternated the ones we ate for dinner one day and lunch the next. This was the first time we'd tried them, and they're really good for canned meals! They come with a packet of "gourmet culinary sauce," which is basically oil, vinegar, and pineapple juice (kind of weird, but not bad).

Our second dinner was the spinach dal Tasty Bite (for Kevin, obviously) and New Harvest Kitchen's teriyaki mix (for both of us) over kelp noodles; no heating or prep required! This was the first time I had the New Harvest Kitchen stuff; it's a little pricy ~$8 a pack, but I ate less than half and was REALLY FULL. It's soy based (I think the little soy nuggets are supposed to resemble beef chunks?) and gluten free.  Pretty salty on its own, but it would be good with a bunch of veggies added.

Breakfasts were apples and Clif Bars, but I was too sleepy to remember to take pictures in the mornings.

We hung our garbage from a tree branch and jokingly called it our "bunny bag" instead of bear bag. (Lovells was, for a while, a rabbit run, and when later abandoned, was covered in rabbits. The hawk population increased in the last few years... so bunnies are fewer and farther between now.) There are no bears on the island, but there are some rats, so we figured our garbage shouldn't just be lying around.

That concludes my first entry of VeganMofo!  I'll see you all tomorrow with more posts about vegan food... and I'll leave you now with a few shots of the view from our campsite--the Boston skyline!

staying safe in boston

It's been a while since I've posted, and I was writing up a big post for this week, but all of the events of the week in Boston have just put me off of the idea of posting about cake icing or gardening.

I moved to Boston fresh out of college in 2007. I made friends right away, I went out to dinner and to shows and to dance nights all the time, and in less than a year of being here, I met and fell in love with the man who would later become my husband. I've worked several jobs here, went to grad school here, made huge life decisions here. I recently bought a home in a suburb of Boston. I don't know whether it's more apt to say that I adopted Boston or that it adopted me, but either way, in the last six years, Boston has become as dear to me as family member. My thoughts and prayers are with all the people struggling and hurting in our country right now (the explosion in Texas, flooding in Chicago), but I can't help but be partial to my city, where my heart is, in more ways than one.

Everyone deals with strife or fear or terrible news differently. Some people reach out to others, and some people turn in. In the last week I've discovered about myself that I am one of the people who turn in. After receiving bad news, I like best keeping my thoughts and feelings to myself, to my very close family, at home. This morning my suburb (and later most of the Greater Boston area) went into lockdown as the manhunt for the suspected marathon bomber continues, so we were literally all forced to "turn in." I can see from friends' blogs and facebook pages that this is a problem for the people who turn to others in times of strife, but this is exactly how I would choose to spend a day like this. So I'm sorry for the relative silence, and though I was about to pick up blogging again this week, bear with me while I get my footing again. I need to turn in a little.

To end on a nicer note, we woke up to find that the orchid a coworker had given me as a housewarming present last summer had bloomed again overnight. It was a really beautiful contrast to all of the dire news this morning.

I'm literally a fair-weather blogger, and now that the warm weather is back, so am I, so expect future entries on the before-mentioned icing and gardening, as well as nightshade-free Tex-Mex cooking (I promised a reader I'd write an entry on that months ago!). In the meantime, please stay safe, everyone, and love each other as much as you can.

Saturday Snack: Fomu: Boston's tastiest vegan ice cream

Fomu is a vegan ice cream parlor that has been open in Boston since this summer, but I haven't been able to get there until this month. They have a wide variety of flavors available as scoops or in pint containers. You can have your ice cream in a bowl, in cones, or IN VEGAN WAFFLE CONES (even gluten-free ones!), and they have a large selection of vegan toppings, from fudge sauce to gummi bears.

Most of the ice cream is made with a coconut base (but tastes less coconutty than the Purely Decadent brand ice cream), though they have a few flavors made with nut bases. When I was there, of all the possible flavors, only 2 (cake batter and cookies and cream) contained wheat-the rest were gluten-free! The employees are friendly and will let you try a tiny bit of any flavor if you're torn between options.

This is a "single scoop" of cookies and cream and was actually too much ice cream for me. In the best possible way.

I also got pints of Strawberry (because it's tied with cookies and cream for my favorite ice cream flavor), Salted Caramel (because when the lady behind the counter let me try it, I knew I HAD to bring some home for Kevin), and Bourbon Maple Walnut (for my mother's birthday, not pictured).

Fomu is in Allston, two doors down from Peace O' Pie, Boston's vegan pizza parlor. It's also just down the street from Grasshopper, a vegan Chinese restaurant, AND a short walk from Genki Ya, our favorite, organic, not-vegan-but-very-vegan-friendly sushi restaurant, so heading out to this neighborhood means you can eat a great vegan meal and have a fantastic vegan dessert afterwards.

more end-of-summer stuff... and vegan mofo!

October is coming quickly! This is a little stressful for me, but also really great, because we're getting married next month! And going on a honeymoon! And I'm still signing on for the Vegan Month of Food, aka Vegan MoFo!

For those of you who are new to the idea of Vegan MoFo, bloggers sign up to post as much as they can throughout the designated month. For a lot of us, that means we're going to try to post every day! I'm already a little overwhelmed at the thought, but I've been a slacker with blogging since the start of summer, so it'll be good to have a reason to force myself to update more.

Summer got away without me ever doing a hot-weather-snacks post. I was obsessed with popsicles this year, and have a few to write about. I guess popsicles can be an any-time-of-year food, right, as long as you eat them indoors? Another thing I think of as a warm-weather snack, but something that could really be enjoyed year-round is bubble tea!

I've already written about Dado, our favorite Boston (Cambridge) bubble tea place, in my post on vegan eating in Boston. It's our favorite bubble tea place! They have soy milk available instead of milk, or you can have it with no "milk," and they let you specify no sugar. The fiance likes Thai tea (on the right) or black tea; I usually mix it up. Their matcha-mint tea is good, as is jasmine (which will ALWAYS be my favorite tea flavor), and Earl Grey seems well-suited for bubble tea. Yum!

Annnnd since summer's really over, I'm almost out of flower pictures to show you, especially with the first frost on its way. But I still have a couple bouquets left to report on from my flower share! This is one big bouquet:

There were too many flowers to fit in my vase, so like last week, I had to divide it up.

Those gladioli were SO gorgeous. And long-lasting, too!

Whatever that red flower is, it is NOT long-lasting. Or maybe it just didn't last long because the cats kept trying to attack it?

Sigh. I'll miss you around the house, fresh flowers.

The Way of All Flesh: Pretzel Rolls

I love food and I love to read. As a result, each month, I combine these two interests in a post about food from literature. I'll mostly be sticking with books from classic literature, so you're likely to know the storylines anyway, but just in case you don't: warning: there may be spoilers ahead.

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The calendar may say it's spring, but we got hit with snow this week. Fortunately, most of it has melted, but I've been yearning for spring for so long that this cold, gray weather is making me grumpy. So what perfect timing to introduce a book that takes place in a cold, gray world: Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh.

Having previously published some essays and the then-popular Erewhon, Butler was already an established author when he began to write The Way of All Flesh in the 1870s. The book spans four generations of the men in the Pontifex family, and is semi-autobiographical; the Pontifexes are basically the Butlers. It was for this reason that Butler did not want publish until after his death; he knew that his frank and brutal depictions of the Pontifex family, with their faults, foibles, and petty piousness would reflect badly on the family members who survived him. (The book was published posthumously in 1903.)

There are few Pontifexes who escape the narrative unscathed--not just by the narrative, but by their surroundings. The Way of All Flesh is a harsh invective against Victorian society and morality, showing the hypocrisy and cruelty in the supposedly refined, well-mannered middle class, and it shows us all of this through its characters. The earliest Pontifex, “Old Mr. Pontifex,” is a poor but happy renaissance man, content with his simple life. It is the advancement into the Victorian era and into enough money to make them middle class that turns the Pontifex family sour. Each generation takes out its unhappiness on the next, in a vicious cycle of cruelty and repression. Butler attacks middle-class Victorian family structures and religious beliefs and shows that the only way to free oneself from this cycle is by completely cutting off communication with those who participate in it. The book has a bit of a happy ending, but none of it is especially cheerful.

Guys, I have to confess: I did not make the food item I'll be talking about in relation to the book this week; I bought it. But reading about the cold, gray world of Victorian England and living in the cold, gray early spring of Boston was seriously making me miss warmth. And sun. And flowers. And farmer’s markets. And the food I present to you is my favorite non-plant item to get at the summer farmer’s market: PRETZEL ROLLS!

Pictured here with a tofu stir fry, which is topped with micro greens from my container garden—and garnished with a nasturtium from said garden! I took this picture last summer. I miss plants. And I miss these rolls! They are made fresh daily at a Swiss bakery in Reading, MA called, appropriately enough, swissbakers. They come out to Boston-area farmers markets and sell their breads… which include pretzel rolls, pretzel baguettes, and of course, pretzels.

I know I’m going to have trouble conveying the amazingness that is swissbakers' Pretzel Rolls. My guess is that to make them, you make dough as if you are making pretzels, but instead of making pretzels... you make rolls. Delicious, pretty little rolls. The process may be basic (I mean, "basic" for people who make pretzels. I’m a klutz and am always a little worried about any process that involves dropping things into a large pot of boiling water, so it doesn’t sound too basic to me), but the result is AMAZING. The crust is shiny, smooth, and a little salty. The inside dough is soft and fluffy. And amazing.

Okay, sorry, I was depressing myself so much with the description of The Way of All Flesh that I stopped talking about it before I could mention how the rolls relate. One of the few joys young Ernest experiences at the boarding school to which his parents send him is sneaking with other boys to buy hot rolls from Mrs. Cross, a shopkeeper who likes providing food to the boys. Unfortunately, since they’re on tight budgets, the boys often buy the rolls on credit. Over Ernest's winter holiday, his parents find out about this "terrible" behavior (the sneaking and the debts, which, mind you, the boys pay off), they promptly notify the headmaster, and the boys are all cut off from any more hot rolls. Poor kids! I feel like them, cut off, for the winter, from delicious rolls...

Have any of you ever made a form of pretzel bread? How did it go?

Are you missing warm weather as much as I am? I'll close with a picture of marigolds from my garden last year. I'm thinking of doing marigolds again, but I'm not sure--maybe I'll stick with mostly herbs instead...?

Vegan Eating in Boston

I love the idea of going out to eat. It is such a treat to have a meal I didn't make myself, and I'm always intrigued to see what dishes professionals come up with. I don’t even think eating out while vegan is all that difficult, especially not in Boston. But the nightshade allergies make going out to restaurants really tricky; if it isn’t a vegan restaurant, non-vegan chefs and servers are dumbfounded by all my limitations (much more so than if I were "just" vegan) and at vegan restaurants, sauces, spice mixes, egg replacers, and fake meats/cheeses are still problematic. I’m always anxious about accidentally being poisoned because I wasn’t clear enough or because the server forgot to show my list to the cook or because the cook forgot that paprika comes from red peppers.

BUT because I like going out to eat in theory, and because the boyfriend likes it both in theory and in practice, we go out at least a couple times a month. I have two entries devoted to vegan, nightshade-free dining in NYC, but none for Boston, so I think it’s about time to do justice to my fair city.

There are plenty of great Asian, Ethiopian, Mexican, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian places in Boston that are great for vegans, and this list contains almost none of them; it’s just some personal highlights and lowlights. Each category is in approximate order of my favorite to least favorite.

All Vegan:

• True Bistro--Tasty upscale vegan food, and they offer vegan cocktails and wine pairings. While there aren’t a lot of nightshade free options, they do have some, and the waitstaff has been really helpful when it comes figuring out what I could have. Dinners are quite pricy, but they charge average prices for lunch and brunch. (Website here.)
• Pulse Cafe--Medium-range pricing for hearty, home-style food. The Pulse Café sources as many organic ingredients as possible. They used to change their menu every couple of weeks, but they’ve settled into a diner-style menu that’s been up for about 3 months now. The boyfriend and I considered this "our place" for a while--we were there when they first opened in their old location, there when they first opened in this new location, and for a while there we went almost once a week. But the new diner menu doesn’t have very many nightshade-free options. They used to be really accommodating with their old menus; they would customize almost everything--for example, they were able to make the nachos nightshade free and awesome. With their new menu, a lot of the ingredients are prepared in advance, and most of them have nightshades. Nightshade-free eaters are pretty much reduced to salad and grilled cheese, and there’s only so many times a person can eat a huge chunk of Daiya before her intestines start to hate her (TMI?). I like supporting this place, but we’re taking a break until the menu changes. If you can eat nightshades and like comfort food, it’s great. (Website here)
• My Thai--Vegan Thai food in Chinatown. It’s okay. Their fake meats are apparently good, but I'm too wary of fake meats' ingredients to try--so much processing has to mean nightshades somewhere, right? They have some good basics, and I especially like the appetizers. The food is greasy, but the portions are large and the prices are low. Also, the desserts are AMAZING. (They may use powdered egg replacer, which is not nightshade free; I never asked and never had a reaction, but I haven't eaten any desserts there since a couple years ago, when I had a slightly higher tolerance.) (Menu here.)
• Peace o' Pie--Boston’s best vegan pizza. If you can eat nightshades, I recommend Peace o' Pie. If you can't eat nightshades, they do have a white pizza, and they do allow you to build your own pizzas and calzones, but most of their yummier-sounding toppings have nightshades, and it would be cheaper to make a white veggie pizza at home. I also had a problem once with contamination; even though I made it very clear that I am allergic to tomatoes, they used a tomato-sauce-covered pizza cutter to cut my white pizza... which meant every piece had tomato sauce on the edges. (Website here.)
• Grasshopper--Greasy vegan Chinese food. It's cheap, and the portions are enormous. They have some delicious signature dishes, but unfortunately most of them feature their sweet and sour sauce, which is not nightshade free. Nightshade free eaters are limited to simpler entrees, which are mostly stir-fried vegetables, so it's not that exciting a destination for me. Their appetizers are greasy, delicious, and mostly nightshade free, though. (Website here.)

Vegetarian:

• Life Alive--Healthy, mostly macrobiotic salads, bowls, wraps, and smoothies. I find them a little pricy for their portions, but the food is always good, and GOOD NEWS: because they keep things macrobiotic, there are (almost) no nightshades! The only nightshades in the whole place are sun-dried tomatoes, which are in one dish, clearly labeled, and a jar of hot sauce on the condiment stand. I feel very safe here. Website here.
• Veggie Planet--Flatbread pizzas, tasty salads, good brunch options. Everything on the menu can be made vegan. The food is good and the prices are reasonable, but it's really hard for someone with food allergies; they have a tiny kitchen and cross-contamination seems almost unavoidable. I've had tiny chunks of tomato in dishes that aren’t even supposed to contain tomato, drizzles of sauce on the edge of my plate from where they were putting sauce on someone else's plate, etc. If you can eat nightshades, it is a great place for lunch; if you can't, proceed with caution. (Website here.)
• Red Lentil--I have heard good things about this place, but the two times I went were bad, so I don't like it. If you are nightshade free, you are going to have some problems. The first time we went was a couple weeks after they opened, and our server recommended a seitan appetizer that, while delicious, turned out not to be nightshade free (I only found this out later, when I had a reaction to it). At the time there was nothing nightshade free there but salad, but the server said I could customize one of the entrees. So I did that; when my entree came out, it had red pepper sauce on it. The server took it back to have another one made for me. The second one came back with tomato sauce on it, but I couldn’t return it because our server never returned. She was there, in the restaurant, but she ignored us. We sat for an hour, me unable to eat my entree, with a stomachache that I thought was from nerves but turned out to be from the appetizer, until we finally flagged another waitress to bring us the check. It was a disaster. We figured it was just bad luck, so we tried again a couple months later. I called ahead of time and spoke to the chef, who said he’d make something special for me. He made vegan nightshade-free quesadillas and grilled some vegetables for me for dinner, which was fine but not exciting. Later that night both the boyfriend and I had terrible, awful stomachaches. And the boyfriend doesn't even have weird food allergies! I am never going back. (Website here.)

Omni restaurants with good vegan options:

• Genki Ya--Organic sushi! They have some of the most interesting veggie rolls I’ve ever seen, including a tasty "fruit roll:" banana, mango, avocado. Some of their veggie rolls have cream cheese, but I assure you they are all still incredibly tasty if you ask to leave the cream cheese out. You can sub in brown or multi-grain rice on any roll. Omnivore friends we've brought here say that the non-veggie sushi is good, too, so this is a good place to go if you’re eating with one of those people who can't have a fleshless meal. (Website here.)
• Elephant Walk--Upscale Cambodian/French cuisine. They have a very limited number of vegan options, and the nightshade-free options are even more limited (you're pretty much stuck with the lemongrass tofu entree), but the food is so good it doesn’t really matter. (Website here.)
• The Middle East--A great music venue, an okay restaurant, and a cruddy bar, wrapped up in one. All the vegetarian options here are vegan. (Some have a side of yogurt, which you can request to leave off or replace with tahini sauce.) Their whipped garlic is seriously addicting; it's so good you won’t mind having the longest-lasting garlic breath of your life. Also, I have two words for you: vegan baklava. (Website here.
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• Koreana--Good Korean food. Specify that you don't eat fish, because some of the condiments can have fish flakes. The Tofu Bi Bim Bop here is great, and the ginger-persimmon-cinnamon tea that they give you at the end of each meal is THE BEST. (Website here.)
• Chinatown--Okay, so "Chinatown" isn't unto itself a restaurant, but Boston’s Chinatown has a fantastic selection of surprisingly vegan-friendly places. The only caveat is that at basically every place you have to let them know before you order or while you're ordering that you’re vegetarian and don't eat fish. There’s a fantastic shabu place called Shabu-Zen, where they only have one veggie plate but it’s humungous and they will make any of their broths vegan if you specify no fish broth, a Korean place called Suishaya that has great food and service, a couple good Vietnamese places, and I hear there's a sandwich shop on Washington that offers vegan banh mi. Also My Thai, which I mentioned above, is here.
• The Other Side--Decent prices, decent food, loud music, hipster crowd. Everyone there knows what "vegan" is. The boyfriend and I like to head down there for brunch on summer weekends, because our place is too hot to cook and they have nice outdoor seating. You can get $50 in gift cards for this place for only $25 through the Weekly Dig's Dig Deals. (Website here.)
• Moody's Falafel Palace-- Moody's is open until 3am on weekends and has the best falafel sandwich I've ever had. They also have hummus and a platter of middle-easterny things, but a lot of those things aren’t nightshade free. The men who work there are awesome; super efficient when it's really busy, and apt to joke around with you if there's no one there. Once the boyfriend and I went on a slow afternoon and they gave us extra falafel because they liked us. Nightshade-free people: you have to specify no tomatoes, and I think they change up the recipe sometimes, because once in a while I have a reaction to the falafel. But it’s maaaaybe 1/3 times I go, and I love the falafel so much and we go so rarely that for me it’s worth the risk. (Website here.)
• Dado Tea--Vegan Bubble Tea! Everyone always praises My Thai's bubble tea, but that kind is blended flavor powder, coconut milk, and ice, so it's really rich and thick and cloying. At Dado, almost all of their bubble tea flavors are from house-made ice tea, not from powders (except their cucumber and taro teas), and you can opt for straight bubble tea or bubble tea with soymilk. I also like that you can specify not to add sugar. I’ve never actually eaten here, but they have some pre-made vegan salads and sandwiches behind the counter; I don’t know if they’re nightshade free. (Website here.)
• Picco--"PICCO" stands for "Pizza and Ice Cream CO." It does not SOUND like it would be vegan-friendly, I know, but you can build your own pizzas or calzones, and they have high-quality ingredients. If you get roasted garlic, for example, it is mashed up to a creamy cheese-like texture that works well inside calzones. Their homemade sorbets are all vegan, including the dark chocolate sorbet, which is the best ice cream I have had since going vegan. A warning for nightshade free people: they use one big oven for their baking, so cross-contamination can happen. For example, I once found some tomato sauce baked onto the bottom of my calzone. I scraped it off and it was fine, but be warned. (Website here.)
• Cafe Pamplona--This place looks like a cramped hole in the wall, but has fantastic coffee and teas, always has soymilk as an option, and has vegan-friendly sandwiches, entrees and snacks. It's Spanish food, though, which means none of it is nightshade free. Still, the iced soy lattes alone are worth going for. (Wikipedia page here.)
• The Friendly Toast-- All-day brunch, with kitschy thrift-store figurines and paintings everywhere. I wanted to like this place, but the vegan options are limited to tofu scramble and bagels (none of their famous homemade bread is vegan), both of which are pretty lackluster. Also, when we went there, I told my server that I am allergic to potatoes, so please leave off the hash browns (they are a standard side). When my plate came, a couple bites into my meal I discovered that someone had originally put hash browns on my plate and scraped them off, then tried to cover up the tiny leftover pieces of potato with the tofu. Which meant my entire tofu scrambled was touching potato scrapings. Poisoned! That’s enough to stop me from going back, but the food also wasn’t worth giving them a second chance. (Website here.)

Just Outside of Boston:

• Julian's--(Providence, RI). We’ve been here twice for brunch, but they have a bunch of different vegan brunch options, and appear to be vegan-friendly for all other meals. Prices were decent, food was tasty, and our servers have been really nice about talking with the kitchen to figure out what I can't have. (Website here.)
• Rawbert's Organic Garden--(Beverly, MA). Not 100% raw, as they also serve hot soups, teas, and hot cocoa/carob (I am an avowed chocolate lover, but their hot carob is so good!). They do raw comfort food really well; their "pasta" dishes and sprouted pizzas are great. It's a little expensive, but you will leave totally stuffed. Go with a group so you can try everyone's food. I've been three times and found them really allergy-aware and attentive/nice about finding things you can eat if you have weird allergies. (Website here.)
• Garden Grille--(Pawtucket, RI). This is the boyfriend's favorite restaurant; he’s been going there since it was a hippy juice bar like ten years ago. It's vegetarian, mid-to-high-priced food, and it's pretty good quality. This is one of the few restaurants where I actually like ordering salads; they do a great job with them. There are one or two dinner/lunch entrees that are nightshade-free at any given time (I recommend the Buddha Bowl), but if you can't eat nightshades, you’re out of luck for brunch. The desserts are fantastic. They use egg replacer in some of them, so be sure to ask. (Website here.)
• Wildflour Bakery--(Pawtucket, RI). All vegan bakery. When I went, the workers there knew that some of the products contained egg replacer (nightshades), but didn’t know which ones. It always bothers me when employees at an eatery don’t know the ingredients in their products. They did know that the raw foods were safe, so I ended up with a raw chocolate tart that was FANTASTIC. They have large cases full of tasty-looking baked goods. (Website here.)