Karina Celebrates a Sunbursting Vegan Roast....

Working at a restaurant that feeds me organic, delicious food everyday (The Plant Cafe) obviously has its perks and I save a lot of money, but it makes finding opportunities to cook exciting meals at home for myself that much more difficult. I had a rare evening off last week and decided to walk down to my favorite Haight Street Market and find what fresh local ingredients I could get my hands on to make, what I considered, a well-deserved feast.

The first thing my eyes jumped to was a huge pile of gorgeous, organic sunburst squash. I had never cooked with them before so I jumped at the opportunity.

I also was tempted to splurge and buy one of my favorite fake meat products on the market: Vegan Field Roast's Celebration Roast. If you are not familiar with Field Roast's products, by all means click on that link and find out where you can get them! Their "meat" is dense and delicious and has no hard-to-digest soy like so many veg options out there, but rather grains and vegetables. I usually go with the sausages (my fav is the apple sage) but every blue moon I splurge and go for the squash, mushroom and apple stuffed celebration roast.


I decided to keep it simple and roast my squash in the oven with some olive oil, onions and garlic. I did this at 350* until they were cooked through and starting to golden, but not get completely limp. I spiced with lemon, pepper, and cayenne while roasting and splashed some brags and lemon on them at the end.



I sauteed some more onions and garlic in olive oil with a handful of sliced crimini mushrooms and spiced with salt, pepper, lemon and oregano.




I sliced a few inch-thick pieces of my celebration roast, layered on my mushroom mix, and threw it in the oven for about 10-15 minutes to heat it up and make it almost crispy on the edges.





I also bought a bunch of fresh, organic fixings (butter lettuce, broccoli sprouts, an apple, an avocado, and some tamari-roasted almonds from the bulk bins) and tossed them with lemon, olive oil and brags for a killer salad to go with the meal.




This was so simple and quick, but made me feel like royalty to sit down to with a crisp glass of Gruner Veltliner.




I'll celebrate with this vegan roast any day!