What we did (and ate) on our winter vacation ... part 2 / apple cake

Whenever we're in the Fort Lauderdale area, we always dine at the internationally known vegan restaurant, Sublime. In the past I've noted that Sublime tries very hard to appeal to non-vegetarians by simulating familiar meat-and-chicken-based dishes instead of focusing on the creative use of fresh vegetables, but as the only veg restaurant for miles around, I can understand their position. They've managed to be successful as a vegan restaurant in a steak and seafood world. And I really liked their new menu, which seemed to have more veggie-centered choices.

Sublime is a beautiful and calming space with very good food, and the waitstaff is friendly and helpful. Dining there is always enjoyable, and our latest visit was no exception, though we started the evening with a slight mishap. My sister-in-law had postcards (which were expiring the next day) offering $10 off two entrées, and we planned to use them to defray the high cost of eating at Sublime. As we arrived, my brother realized that he'd forgotten to bring the coupons. We went back and forth about whether to mention this to our server, but when the restaurant owner came to our table to greet us, we told her about the oversight. At first she seemed very pleased that her postcard had pulled us into the restaurant, and appeared to be considering what to do. Then she chirped, "I guess you'll just have to come back again tomorrow," and quickly took off. Oh well. It wouldn't have cost her very much to create a little seasonal good will but I guess we all make our choices.

For starters we shared an order of frito misto, shown at the top of the page. This is crispy cauliflower with sweet chili sauce, and it's addictively good. I've tried to duplicate this at home in the past and was very successful, but unfortunately I didn't write down the recipe so I'll have to try again.

For my entrée I chose the portobella stack with sautéed greens and mashed cauliflower. I'm a sucker for portobella dishes and, besides, this entrée came with the most vegetables. The smallish mushroom came layered with spinach, tomato, thinly sliced potato and a brown sauce. It was really good.

My husband chose a salad and the "four sides" entrée option, and he picked barbecued tofu, asparagus, coleslaw and mashed cauliflower. He enjoyed his dinner.

My brother and s-i-l shared a caesar salad and a "steak" sandwich with oven sweet potato fries. The salad came with several small pieces of fried artichoke hearts, which I thought was very clever. I think all four of us enjoyed this year's visit to Sublime (except for the coupon mishap) and will return again when we're back in the area. The food is organic and vegan, and all profits go towards animal welfare.

After dinner, we visited a street in Pompano Beach where every house on both sides of the street participates in extreme Christmas decorating excess. The pictures really don't do justice to the mind-boggling display of light and color.

All vacations must come to an end, so on New Year's Eve we left for the airport at 7:30 a.m. We were conscious of potentially increased security measures following the underwear-explosives incident on the airliner from Amsterdam. I packed very carefully, trying to minimize the chances of having myself or my luggage searched. Security was surprisingly fast and easy in spite of the fact I totally forgot to remove and display my one quart plastic zip-bag of personal explosives. No one called me out or even removed my empty stainless steel water bottle from my backpack pocket to shake it. This seemed rather slack considering the scrutiny I've encountered in the past.

Anyway, we got home in time to have a New Year's Eve dinner with our son, d-i-l, granddaughter and their friends. My daughter-in-law cooked a meal entirely from The Urban Vegan cookbook and it was delicious. Above you can see my plate with chickpea paprikash and spaetzle, snap peas in garlic and olive oil, and salad greens with croutons.

For a brunch at our kids' house on Sunday I made black-eyed-pea salsa (Texas caviar) from this recipe except I cooked the beans from scratch, and used parsley instead of cilantro to accommodate my favorite cilantro-hater.

No slivered almonds on or in my cake (cake #2)

I also made an apple cake from Bryanna Clark Grogan's wonderful blog but with several alterations — I always have to tinker. I'll give you the excellent original recipe (with permission), and then a second recipe with my changes. I ran out of sugar when I made it the first time so used cinnamon and a little agave for the topping, but that results in a pale-looking (but still delicious) cake. Sugar works much better. I also added dried cranberries with the apples, and no almonds on top due to my dislike for nuts in cake. The cake was delicious but tasted too sweet for my warped taste buds so I revised it a bit when I made it the second time. It still tastes sweet to me but everyone else loves it so I think I'll leave it alone for now.

Original recipe:
BRYANNA’S RUSTIC APPLE-ALMOND CAKE
makes 1/ 9x13" cake

Dry mix

• 1 and 3/4 cups wholewheat pastry flour PLUS 1/4 c. oat bran
• OR 2 cups wholewheat pastry flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 2 cups chopped apples (I don't peel them if they are organic)

Wet mix

• 1/3 cup smooth unsweetened applesauce
• 3 Tbs. oil
• 1 cup unbleached organic granulated sugar
• 7/8 cup nondairy milk

Topping

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 cup slivered, blanched almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x13" cake pan.

1. Whisk together the dry mix ingredients in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Stir in the apples.
3. In a blender, blend the wet mix ingredients until smooth.
4. Mix the Wet Mix into dry mix, stirring as briefly as possible.
5. Spread into prepared pan.
6. Mix the topping ingredients together in a small bowl. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the cake. Bake 35 minutes. Test for doneness.
7. Cool on a rack and serve right out of the pan, cut into squares.

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Apple-cranberry cake (adapted from Bryanna's rustic apple-almond cake)
This cake is so easy and delicious — wonderfully soft and moist — it's destined to become a new favorite at our house!

Dry mix

• 2 cups white wholewheat flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp spice mix* (or cinnamon) see note below
• 2+ cups apple, chopped into 1/2" pieces (Don't peel if organic) (I used two med.-lg. apples)
• 1 cup whole cranberries (mine were frozen), each berry cut in half or 1/2 cup dried

Wet mix

• 1/3 cup smooth unsweetened applesauce
• 3 Tbs. oil
• 2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup unbleached organic granulated sugar (evaporated cane juice) If using dried cranberries, the cake is very sweet. If you like cake less sweet, use 1/2 cup.
• 7/8 cup nondairy milk or amazake (Amazake gives great texture.)

Topping

• 1/4 cup evaporated cane juice
• 1 tsp. spice mix* (or cinnamon) see note below

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x13" cake pan.

1. Whisk together the dry mix ingredients in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Stir in the apples and cranberries.
3. In a blender, blend the wet mix ingredients until smooth. (I just beat them with a spoon.)
4. Fold the wet mix into dry mix, stirring as briefly as possible. The batter will be very thick.
5. Spread evenly into prepared pan.
6. Mix the topping ingredients together in a small bowl. Sprinkle half the topping evenly over the cake. Swirl in gently with a knife. (Don't knock yourself out with the swirling; the batter is too thick for real swirling.)
7. Sprinkle on the rest of the topping.
8. Bake 35 minutes. Test for doneness.
9. Cool on a rack and serve from the pan, cut into squares.

Note: *I used speculoos spice mix from Seitan is my motor (except mine has allspice instead of cloves, and extra coriander) to flavor the cake. (to make a batch: 1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. ground allspice, 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom, 1/4 tsp. ground coriander, 1/8 tsp. ground ginger, 1/4 tsp. fresh ground nutmeg) Follow this link to find out more. I had previously mixed a lot to keep handy with my other spices so it was right there waiting for me when I made the cake.

Traveling vegan (lots of eating-no cooking)

Since we were taking a four-day weekend to visit relatives in Florida and I couldn't do any cooking, I decided to document what a vegan might find to eat in Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the airports along the way. When we got to the Madison airport (where we could certainly find vegan food) we found our flight to Milwaukee had been cancelled, and we were to be bused to Milwaukee airport (MKE) in time to catch our flight to Ft. Lauderdale. As far as we knew, we'd be in Florida by 6 p.m. — in time for dinner.

When we got to MKE and went to our gate we saw that our flight was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. We also discovered that nearly all the food places and shops were on the other side of security. We'd brought some baked tofu slices and crackers with us as well as some nuts and Clif bars, but they were mainly supposed to be snacks and to tide us over until dinner. But, it became increasingly clear that we wouldn't be arriving at dinner time. If we didn't find some food, the snacks would be our lunch and dinner. We wanted something to take on the plane - assuming we would get on the plane. The only thing we could find in the gate area was a bottle of Dole smoothie and some under-ripe bananas. I passed them up. Even Starbucks, which usually has veggie wraps and salads in other airports, only had pastry.

With a sigh, we crossed back over the security line. We hung out for a while in the used book store (MKE actually has a good used book store with knowledgeable staff) and then set about searching for vegan vittles. Too bad for us. MKE is a meat-eatin' kind of place. The only thing I could find was a side dish of wild rice salad at a very crowded sit-down restaurant. Duh. And it had ingredients that I wouldn't really want to eat. We went back through security empty handed and bought the smoothie and banana. I had the smoothie, a banana and the Clif Bar for dinner. I can tell you that MKE is NOT vegan friendly. (The Detroit airport, on the other hand, has Japanese and Middle Eastern restaurants—but that's another story.) We finally landed in Ft. Lauderdale about 11 p.m. and went straight to our hotel and to sleep.

Our room package included breakfast and we went to the hotel restaurant the next morning quite starved.

The breakfast menu included a tofu scramble and it wasn't bad. It came with fresh squeezed oj, roasted potatoes, whole wheat toast and Tazo tea. Ate every bite. (The restaurant also had several vegan options for lunch and one for dinner but we didn't have time to try those.)

We spent the day with family, and that evening we all went out to a "Nouveau Thai" restaurant that was supposed to be fabulous and veg friendly. We ended up ordering an appetizer salad, a vegetable side dish and rice, because it was all we could find on the menu. And it actually took 1 1/2 hours before our table received food. Although I'm really not a big eater, I was still hungry. I wanted to photograph the extremely attractive food but it was too dark in the room. Each thing I had was tasty but small. And expensive.

The next morning at the hotel we opted for the stone-cut oatmeal with raisins, juice, toast and tea. I've never heard of stone-cut oats but it was delicious. (And it wasn't steel-cut oats. I know what that is.) It was huge and filling and we left feeling happy and healthy.




Early that afternoon my kind sister-in-law and brother served a large lunch with bagels and vegan cream cheese, mock chopped liver, eggplant salsa, and salad stuff for the vegans and fishy stuff for the non-vegans. Later in the day, when the Super Bowl came on, she put out a big tray of chips, veggies, hummus, tapenade and other stuff that we snacked on. They know how to treat their guests well! After stuffing myself and, not much into football, I went out for a while with my other sister-in-law and niece.

About 9 p.m., although not really very hungry, my husband and I decided to go to dinner at the renowned Ft.Lauderdale vegan restaurant, Sublime. I have mixed feelings about this restaurant but, on the other hand, it's such a relief to go to a restaurant where everything is vegan. I think they try too hard to make the food seem like it's not vegan rather than try to make delicious food from vegan ingredients. There are lots of meat substitutes and not enough creatively used vegetables. The manager once bragged to me that most of the people who eat there are not vegetarian. Maybe they have to take this direction to survive—and I hope they continue to find success.

That said, there are a couple of things I really like, even though I think they are too fattening. There's frito misto which is crispy, crusted, fried-I-guess cauliflower with sweet and sour sauce. It's so addictive. And I also like the portobella steak with spicy tomato confiture, whipped mashed potatoes and garlic spinach. It also comes with three, huge french-fried onion rings which I try to only eat one of (photo at top of post).  My husband got a cup of quinoa soup which was delicious, and a salad. The desserts are yummy but we couldn't possibly eat any more food so we declined.

We opted for the oatmeal again the next morning and set off for another unexpectedly long day of travel and food deprivation, but at least we'd been more than well-fed over the weekend.