"Nacho night" and Trumpet mushroom and tofu sauté with asparagus

It's week 15 and I have returned from abroad! No pictures of my Isa recipes this week, but I really did make them. As a substitute, there are very pretty pictures of meals I had on vacation at the bottom of this post which are better than any food styling I could do.

Here's what I made:

• "Nacho night"

• Trumpet mushroom and tofu sauté with asparagus

Also a special shout out to the tofu glaze featured in this "off-Isa" Lazy Kat Kitchen recipe for sushi bowls. It is exactly the kind of sweet/sour/spicy flavor I am looking for in a tofu glaze. You just coat your tofu cutlets in cornstarch and fry, then pour this into the hot pan to cook up into a glaze. Easy!

And a quick shout out to an Isa recipe leftover, the amazing curried peanut sauce. I froze this in tiny disks after I made the curried peanut tofu bowls and have been heating it up to use as a dipping sauce for cucumbers and snap peas and it is perfection.

"Nacho night"

• Am I going to make nachos again? Yes. Will I follow this recipe exactly? Probably not.

• I made 1 substitution

• Nachos are not for freezing, but you could potentially freeze the queso?

For the nachos, the only component I really made from scratch was the queso, but I love having a homemade cheese option! This recipe was for very much your standard cashew cheese, but that was kind of nice.

It did lead me down the rabbit hole of this reddit thread about vegan nacho cheese. The absolute best store-bought vegan nacho cheese was at Trader Joes (which reddit user dj-moon-toe agrees with), but they discontinued it and it is very sad. Perhaps I'll do an at-home nacho cheese taste testing party sometime this summer. I must find a good one!

My substitution in this recipe was just using regular beans instead of cooking lentils in a spice mix.

I like scoops chips for my nachos and while at the store ran into a woman also buying chips and we got on the topic of how crunchy is too crunchy. She likes the "cantina" style of some brands because they are thinner and crispier, but the drawback is that they're not great at picking up a lot of dip! I love random and specific food conversations with strangers.

Trumpet mushroom and tofu sauté with asparagus

• I would maybe make this again

• I made 1 substitution

• I don't think this would freeze well

This recipe (like a handful in this book) prominently features thyme and specifically calls for it to be fresh. However, it doesn't say why, and after dealing with weirdly stem-y thyme in a previous recipe, I just used dried in this and I think it was fine.

The recipe also offers portobellos as a substitute for trumpet mushrooms, but they really are different in a lot of ways. I found trumpets but it was about $10 for two containers to get the amount I needed for this recipe which feels a bit pricey.

I do love asparagus, but the "Beefy asparagus stir fry with fresh herbs" better satisfies that craving for me than this recipe. You also need to cook a starch to serve this with. Isa recommends mashed potatoes but since it's a bit warm in Asheville for that, I made some bowtie pasta.

Weekly reflection (Special vacation edition)

The top meals on my trip to England and Scotland were both very vegetable-forward. This may seem like a silly thing to say as a vegan, but now that there are so many faux meat options it can sometimes be (dare I say it) a bit difficult to find whole foods-style vegan cooking.

In London, we found a delicious tasting menu at Tendril - A (Mostly) Vegan Kitchen and Bar.

Our first course at Tendril

The first course was a butter bean dip with homemade pita (we could have used a few more...) along with a pickle plate (who knew pickled fennel was so good?!) and charred eggplant with grilled zucchini (aka aubergine and courgettes).

There was not a scrap of anything left on our plates. The second course featured grilled celeriac and it was so subtle yet delicious.

For dessert, we had a banoffee pie, and I just LOVE bananas with cream-based desserts so this was a real winner.

Another highlight of London food was our double-decker bus tour with afternoon tea from Brigit's Bakery.

In Scotland, I found my way to Henderson's on my last day and it did not disappoint! Walking through the city I passed the campus of The University of Edinburgh and was greeted with a field of students out soaking in the sun and lighting up joints. It was like I was back in San Francisco, except there were no hills and all the buildings around me were impossibly old. I took a rest on a bench to read some of my book and then moseyed over to the restaurant.

I hadn't had any Scottish whisky up to this point, so I got a cocktail that featured Laphroaig whisky. It was smoky and smooth, fantastic! Then I had to try the dish that featured the vegetable of the trip - eggplant. Henderson's was cooked to perfection with miso and the addition of the pickled radishes and slightly sweet sweet potato maple puree was a great pairing. For dessert I had their apple tarte Tatin with house made vegan ice cream that was quite possibly the best dessert of the trip.

Side note: As many of my friends know, I used to love Ben and Jerry's vegan ice cream but they are dead to me since switching to oat milk, which I think has a terrible mouthfeel and no flavor (or fat). I am still searching for a new go-to ice cream and I wish that Henderson's would package this up and set up shop in the US so we could all have it here. Not too much to ask, right?!