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Moving out into the world is difficult. Being vegan adds another challenge to overcome. Your mother shopping for you anymore. If you were lucky the matriarch left you a few tips on coupon clipping, how to tell if produce is ripe, and how to feed an army of teenagers while still meeting your food budget. Moving out also means you're going to experience a much wider variety of foods than you've ever seen before, if you're willing. Restaurants with foods stemming from all parts of the world are closer than you'd imagine. Thai, Ethiopian, Greek, and Indian restaurants have wide selections for the vegan palette.

A Whole New World

Graduation night, I packed my bags and moved to Pasadena, leaving the conservative, sheltered life in Santa Clarita. Web site design paid the bills, which I shared with my Eric in a tiny studio apartment. Together we explored Pasadena, rooting out the best places to shop, eat, and relax.

Perhaps one of the best places for an aspiring vegan to live, Pasadena burgeons with stores catered to the health conscious individual. Whole foods, Wild Oats, and multiple Trader Joes markets coalesce with the palm landscapes, offering a surprising variety of vegan food.

Walking past the rancid smelling cheese section of Whole Foods, I arrive at the clean packages of vegan cheeses. However, not all vegetarian cheeses are created equal. Most cheese alternatives still contain casein, a milk protein derivative. However, Soymage, a sub-brand of  Galaxy foods, makes cheddar, mozzarella, parmesan, cream cheese, and sour cream alternatives that are spectacular. For macaroni and cheese fans, Road's End Organics makes Macaroni and ChReese, a non-dairy version using nutritional yeast and mustard for flavoring. However, for those of us who cannot always afford the fancy boxed foods, I do have a Recipe for Mac & Cheese with the same flavorings and similar taste.

About this time, I invested in a 3-cup rice cooker. One of my favorite and most filling recipes is my recipe for Vegetable Fried Rice. My original inspiration for this recipe came from an ancient Yan Can Cook book. However, the proportions of ingredients have greatly changed since then. His recipe contained eggs, which by now disgusted me. I found that as I added more vegetables to the fried rice recipe, I had to increase the amount of soy sauce. This recipe was a big hit when I attended a Los Angeles vegetarian club pot luck. Everyone loved my fried rice.

Until late November 1999, money was fairly tight, and I couldn't really afford to go out to eat very often. However, when I started my job as a student lab technician at the local community college I am attending, I started scouting new vegetarian restaurants in the Los Angeles, Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Hermosa Beach.

Restaurant Roving
Part I: The Los Angeles Area

Perhaps I should've saved my money instead of dining my dollars away, but I started living on the saying, "These are good times."

Chameli, although slightly expensive, always teases my palette with delicious Indian cuisine. For appetizer, I have mulligatawny, a light soup with exquisite flavor reminiscent of tomatoes and curry. Although the soup is great, I really dislike the taste of the cilantro, sprinkled on top. Some of my favorite dishes at Chameli include Bhindi, a fried okra dish, Bhartha, a curried eggplant and tomato dish, and the curried cauliflower and potatoes, whose Indian name eludes me for now. Always accompanying my meal are several layers of naan, or garlic naan bread, a wonderful scorched flat bread in a tear-drop shape perfect for wiping the last bits of those fantastic Indian sauces off the plate. Furthermore, the atmosphere of Chameli is quite inspiring, with vast sloping skylights, live Indian music, and a large trickling fountain. However, Chameli is not a vegan restaurant, serving many meat and dairy dishes, so be careful, and know what you're ordering. Unfortunately, I can't afford to eat that rich all the time, but if you visit Chameli, be sure to say hi to Goldie, the waiter, for me.

Hearty filling meals at good prices, that's how I'd describe The Spot in Hermosa Beach. I tend to order the Bubba's special from the "Inflation Busters" corner of the menu. Beans, steamed mustard greens, brown rice, corn bread, and loads of savory sauce, the Bubba's special is a warm filling meal for around five dollars.

Certainly an expensive treat, Real Food Daily in both Santa Monica and Hollywood, entertains the taste buds with a rotating menu, changing the specials daily to include such things as lasagna and fajitas. Furthermore, Real Food Daily provides a tantalizing dessert tray including fudge cake, tofu cheesecake, and apple cobbler. However, a large portion of the menu changes weekly, catering to seasonal and holiday foods. Although the food was good, I thought the lasagna and tofu cheesecake tended to be bland, lacking sufficient spices. It was probably my luck of the draw.

However, I've never had a bad experience choosing my meal at Nyala, an Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles on Fairfax. Honestly, Ethiopian food is one of my favorite cuisines. Usually I order the large sampler plate, Thali with the almost ceremonial strong Ethiopian coffee blend afterwards. The Thali is a large stainless steel plate first covered with Ethiopian sourdough bread, a flat spongy bread about 1/8 of an inch thick. Atop the porous bread, several groupings of various lentil, greens, and other Ethiopian dishes are placed. The food is light, and never oily and there is always plenty of the sourdough bread on the side to scoop up your food with, since there is no silverware. Once all of the groupings of food are eaten, one peals the sourdough bread off the plate and devours that. Once the meal is over, the coffee is served. A taste of the coffee reveals a world of flavor including the definite presence of cloves. I've spent several fond evenings at that restaurant dining with my closest friends, and hope to spend many more there in the future.

However, I can't drive out to Hollywood and Santa Monica every time I eat out. Thankfully, there are plenty of great restaurants in the Pasadena area.

Part II: The Pasadena Area

Closer to my area, New Delhi Palace provides quality Indian food at decent prices. Unfortunately, the service there is not spectacular. One time I was going to treat a couple friends to dinner, but we were refused service since it was a little over a half an hour before closing time. Thus, I would NOT recommend New Delhi Palace due to their lack of courtesy. I've never been treated so rudely. The owner of Tiparo's, a vegan-friendly Thai restaurant, once told us that even if we came at ten o'clock, closing time, she would serve us. Please, support your friendly family-owned restaurants in your area. Fortunately, my area is diverse enough that I still have many more options at which to dine.

On the other side of the price spectrum, Orean Express in Pasadena is the fast food alternative for the vegan on the run. From vegan burgers to breakfast, burritos to enchiladas, the food is quick and tasty.

A recent arrival to the city of San Gabriel, Tea Shaker & Vegetarian Food at southeast corner of Rosemead Blvd. and Huntington Dr., is currently my favorite restaurant. Although the meals tend to be about ten dollars a person, which equates to a main dish, a mixed tea drink, and tip, the quality of their food is spectacular, and 99% vegan, save the option for milk in some mixed drinks. My favorite dishes at Tea Shaker are Chicken Roll, Chicken steak, vegetarian nuggets, and tea salad usually accompanied by a coconut black tea with soy milk.

South of Pasadena, in the cities of Alhambra, Rosemead, and Monterey Park, there are several vegan Chinese restaurants. Happy Family III, a very popular restaurant on the weekends, serves very high quality vegan food at $10 for all you can eat. My favorite dishes include fried green beans, chicken with cashews, and sweet and sour pork, all of which are completely vegan.

Similarly, Vegetarian Wok, hidden inside the restaurant called Corya, I believe, serves many of the same dishes as Happy Family. However, Vegetarian Wok serves a very nice dish of Pineapple fried rice with a splendid ham alternative. Unfortunately, the last time I was in the area, the entire restaurant was closed for renovations.

Unfortunately, I was laid off from my job as lab technician in late May 2000 after the dean of physical sciences at Pasadena Community College, Dr. Bruce Carter, claimed they could no longer afford to pay me since the faculty lab technician was hired. Although I could've taken a cut in my hourly rate down to $5.47 an hour, which yes is below the legal minimum wage of $5.75 in CA, I chose to walk, salvaging my pride. My restaurant roving was over, I needed to learn to eat cheap again.

Ingredient Scouting

Eating cheap means cooking at home, and buying less prepared preprocessed food. Sure, its great to get out and let someone else do the cooking, but that must be done with moderation when one is on a limited budget.

A chef is only as good as his ingredients. Thus, one must have a well stocked kitchen with all the herbs and accouterments of a true chef. Three tips for shopping are: buy from bulk, buy organic, buy from farmers markets.

Although I'd love to own those beautifully bottled spices in supermarkets, they're beauty comes with a hefty price tag ranging from three to seven dollars. Any well stocked health food store should have a bulk herb section as well as bulk flours, and cereals. My kitchen is literally littered with dozens of baggies of spices, most unlabeled. I leave it to my olfactory senses to tell me what is in each bag.

Before I make a mad dash to Whole Foods to stock up the spice cabinet, I peruse dozens of recipes that I might be interested in cooking in the future. Although tonight I may want to make a Rich Lentil Soup, requiring marjoram, I must consider that in the next few days I may want to make Spicy Shake'n Bake Tofu requiring paprika. Thus, not only do I gain an appreciation for what types of spices I'll need, but also an understanding of how much spices are used.

However, there's sometime teasing about having a spice that hasn't been used. Every time I see an unused spice in my cupboard, it gnaws at my memory, until I finally seek a recipe to fulfill that craving. Similarly, I sometimes buy some weird exotic vegetable or fruit in one of my hunger shopping trips. Thus, when I get home, I need to desperately find a recipe before it goes bad. Fortunately, realizing my wasteful habits, I've tried to shop responsibly.

Organic produce tend to be sweeter, and more colorful. However, that higher quality tends to bring a high price tag as well. Thus, for people on a limited budget I'd recommend buying organic produce that isn't unreasonably priced. I'd buy organic produce over conventional if there was around a maximum of a 50 cent difference in price per pound. Avocados and berries are some of the most delicious and expensive treats, but I've seen organic avocados sell for around $2.50, and raspberries for up to $5 out of season. However, I'm investing in an avocado tree and a boysenberry bush instead.

One of my best discoveries to eating cheap is finding the local farmers markets. Friendly farmers and bakers sell their wares ranging from baskets of fresh raspberries, tomatoes, green beans to grapes, guacamole, and bread. Although first hearing about the farmers markets came from word of mouth, quick research resulted in finding The California Certified Farmers Market website listing all certified farmers markets in the state of California. The Pasadena area markets are listed under the South Coast section for some reason.

Now that the kitchen is all stocked up, its time to get cooking!