Tomato salad at Serendipity 3. Vegan! Photo by: John Katsilometes
Mango sorbet topped with raspberry sauce at Serendipity 3. Vegan! Photo by: John Katsilometes
If I spent as long between eating meals during my Viva Las Vegan experience as I have between writing about this experience, I would not be able to write. I would have starved to death weeks ago
But you would have to wrest my broccoli stalk from my cold, dead hands.
Most of my meals have consisted of some sort of mixed vegetable, fruit, bean, hummus, vegan-friendly pasta configuration. Grilled veggies, or veggie salads with balsamic dressing, like that. Snacks are almost always nuts (loving the almonds) and, on occasion, carrot sticks or diced fruit. I start the mornings like a house of fire but start to lag mid-afternoon. Keeping my protein up has been a challenge, which is nuts. I mean, why I eat nuts so often. Organic almond or peanut butter, too. I eat it like ice cream.
Hmmmm. Ice cream ...
Anyway, a favored eating spot, for dining in or eating out, remains Red Velvet Café on West Sahara and Buffalo. Go Raw is still reliably filing. Salads from Whole Foods, heavy with seasoned tofu, sprouts, couscous and garbanzos, are quite satisfying. I've lost 10-to-15 pounds and haven't aged a day.
I promised at the beginning of My Vegan Summer that I would disclose any deviation from the vegan path. A few weeks ago I ordered, intentionally, a bean-and-cheese enchilada at Casa Don Juan. I am also, still, taking fish oil vitamins and popping Altoids (with its demonic gelatin ingredient) for all the close-talking I do in my job. Altoids are the Cadillac of breath mints. Oh, and last night I had a mild slip, ordering a 20-ounce bone-in ribeye with a baked potato soaked with butter, sour cream and bacon bits with a 4-ounce shot of lamb blood from Golden Steer steak house.
I am kidding about that.
No, aside from those instances, I have not intentionally consumed any animal-derived foodstuff or digestible substance since starting this project June 22. I feel this is actually a remarkable display of restraint. My Vegan Summer was to end as the summer officially closes Sept. 21, but might well carry on. Lots to learn and experience, even after 2.5 months of this. What I can report is that eating for entertainment, at least for me, is rare. It's a challenge to eat out, and only infrequently have I found vegan offerings as satisfying as the meals I used to eat.
But there have been instances where I've been blown away. A big fan of burgers entering this process, I really like the Viva Vegan at Burger Bar at Mandalay Place, which I've written about already in my first Viva Las Vegan blog. A total surprise, that one.
Less of a surprise was the Very Veggie Burger at Serendipity 3 at Caesars Palace, which was one of the best meals I've had over the past 10 weeks or so. The crew there came off the menu to vegan-ize the burger, stripping it of its bun and sandwiching the veggie patty in lettuce. Egg is used in the batter for the bun in this burger, which as listed on the menu is vegetarian but not vegan. Also served was a tomato salad with basil and almonds topped with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. On the side was a strawberry, black raspberry, apple and banana fruit cup (I'm big on the fruit cup these days, and am also well-versed in oatmeal). Dessert was a mango sorbet topped with a fresh raspberry sauce that actually gave me chills. Amazing stuff.
It's an example of what is offered if you do a little homework, ask a few questions and even gaze at the waitress with soulful eyes while calling five audibles from the menu. The next frontier will be to make my own wildly imaginative vegan dishes at home. This might require using that room where the cats play with my tossed-away, plastic bottle caps.
The kitchen, I think it's called ...
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