More than a few weeks ago I was in Illinois for a house-sitting job and to visit with family and friends. While there I had quite a few opportunities to see exactly what I could eat that was plant-based (vegan) while out socializing at local but suburban restaurants. Having lived in Portland for 2 full years now, I can say that I am spoiled rotten with vegan and heavy produce options when dining out for there is almost always a labeled vegan option on the menu (spoiled and lucky).  I was surprised by my former home area and how many options there were available. I would like to share my experiences and tips in this mini-series of mid-west restaurant recaps.

Today I wanted to share my trip to Sushi Station in Elgin, Illinois just north of I-90. Elgin has a population of a little over 109k people with no veg*n (vegan or vegetarian) restaurants to count. Looking over sites like UrbanSpoon and Happy Cow there were only a few options that are known to be veg friendly. My guess is there are way more options available than we know but the channels haven’t been filled in with reviews/updates.

Enter Sushi Station. We arrived around dinner time on a Friday night and only waited about 20 minutes to be seated. Between talking and checking ‘in’ on our phones that time flew by.

Photo courtesy of Sushi Station facebook page.

I did not take a great overview shot of the restaurant but this conveyor belt of heaven snakes throughout the dining area with tables or bar type seating all along the route. The plates are different colors and each color represents a price. Easy. Then there is a little door/window that slides over allowing you to grab a plate. Each type of plate is grouped together with 3-4 more plates of the same. It is preceded by a sign saying what it is and what is in it. If you have more questions, servers are available to help.

I arrived thinking I would have to order off the menu or ask for special veg-only rolls to be made, which I did, but as it turned out I didn’t need to. There were plenty of veg options available going around the ‘station’.

I first ordered an avocado roll. As you might guess the avocado roll is just avocado wrapped in nori, rice and a smattering of sesame seeds.

While I delighted on this fresh and tasty roll I also had time to watch the conveyor and take note on what I would grab next.

I had planned on just eating 2 rolls.  That seemed reasonable, right? Never. Sushi is light and fresh and once I knew there were exciting other options, I felt the need to indulge on a few more, while considering that I could always take leftovers home.

I grabbed a seaweed salad off the belt, following my friend’s lead. I’ll be honest, I don’t love seaweed salad. The only seaweed I love is nori and kelp noodles BUT seaweed salad is something that I’m always willing to try and like because it is pure chlorophyll green goodness which translates to vitamins and minerals. I make it more to my taste by mixing in pickled ginger and some low-sodium soy sauce.

Meet the Fiesta Roll. If my memory with help of the photo serves correctly, these were avocado, tomato, cilantro, cucumber, and jalapeño. Squeeze a little bit of fresh lime over the top and take your first bite of heaven. Another reason it was okay to indulge in a few extra rolls is because the conveyor ones had 4 pieces vs the 6-8 in a standard restaurant.

Next up, we have Spicy Garden Crunch. If you love spicy like I do, you will love this roll. It is avocado, jalapeño, and topping of sriracha. Delicious! and yes I still ate this with a ton of wasabi. Bring on the pain.

And the always available Vegetable Roll. This love is comprised of avocado, carrots, and cucumber. If you haven’t noticed avocados make the world go round especially in sushi. This is a standard but also very tasty roll.

No I could not take a good photo of stuff while it was on the belt but I should get points for trying. Feeling like dessert? They had bowls of pineapple and mandarin oranges. A perfect sweet treat to enjoy at any point during your meal. Also, for an appetizer, the cold edamame were amazing.

This was the first time I’d had sushi in months. I’m not sure why but we just haven’t gone out for it much in Portland. I left with a happy but not overly stuffed belly. Every roll was fresh and flavorful.

If you’re interested in checking out the plant-based options (or traditional sushi) at Sushi Station, they are located at 2486 N. Randall Road, Elgin IL 60123.

When was the first time you tried sushi? What are your favorite rolls? I first tried sushi on a date when I was about 18 or 19. I had never heard of it so it was quite a new experience. I was skeptical and wouldn’t try a raw fish roll for a few years but loved the California roll straight off. When I finally mustered up the courage to try fish rolls and sashimi I loved those too (tuna, salmon, etc). I’m content with the vegetable options available and if you’re scared of raw fish those are good options for you too.

xoxo

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Banana cream pie was never my favorite dessert but my Great-Grandma could whip up a fantastic one with the best homemade crust around.

This dessert is actually one of my Dad’s favorites and while he preferred his Grandma’s pie to a restaurant bought, after she passed he made sure one was ordered from Baker’s Square – for every single – holiday gathering. He also likes French Silk but let us not go there yet today.

I decided to let these memories inspire a very different sort of banana cream treat. A banana cream pie green smoothie.

This smoothie is sweetly delicious and you might feel the teeniest pangs of guilt while enjoying it. Tasty. It’s made from good fantastic whole foods though so relish every bite, slurp, and swallow.

Share below some of your favorite holiday pies. xoxo

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It doesn’t matter what you want to call it, what matters is it’s tasty. So tasty.

If you’ve been making your own nut and seed butters in the Blendtec Twister Jar this will come super easy to you, all you have to add is sesame seeds and away you go.

Prior to making this sesame seed butter, I had last ordered a bulk shipment (I had ordered 2) that has taken me 2 years to go through. I used every last drop. While that tahini was super tasty, it was incredibly (read: impossible) to stir. You could try but it would never quite mix leaving oil on top and hard sesame paste on the bottom.

Enter homemade sesame seed butter. It’s been a week since I’ve made mine and it hasn’t separated. It’s still super soft, almost whipped, and incredibly easy to grab out a knife or spoonful.

As with many of these kinds of staples, I ordered the sesame seeds bulk through Amazon for free shipping and have kept them in the fridge or freezer. I don’t see this particular brand anymore but they have other varieties available.

This will be loud but still worth it. After the first go-round only the bottom quarter had turned into paste. I think I filled the blender too full. Yes. There is such a thing. Keep at it (about 3-5 minutes total) and it will go from the paste on the right up above to the creamy looking heaven you see below.

This is as fresh as it gets unless you can grow your own sesame seeds. Homemade sesame seed butter should last a long time in the fridge (up to a year).

But don’t let it take you that long to use it up, so get inspired to use it new ways. Innovations below.

Other Feed Your Skull recipes using tahini:

• Creamy Tropical Carrot Slaw
• Tahini Molasses Dip
• Tahini Kale Chips

What is your favorite way to use tahini? Feed Your Skull facebook page chimed in with many great ideas! Lately I’ve used mine on Ezekiel raisin toast with a little honey, in Megan Elizabeth’s In Your Face Mustard Dressing, and in stir-fries with a little water.

xoxo

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The ever wonderful strawberry is in season. The batch we picked up proved to be just as succulent and juicy as ever! Full of flavor, color, vitamins and antioxidants.

So. It might just mean that you should go buy some so you can make these delicious peanut butter stuffed chocolate covered strawberries. A mouthful for a mouthful.

This dessert is super easy to whip up and even easier to devour.

Warm the chocolate. You could also make these raw by using equal parts coconut oil, agave/maple syrup, and raw cacao (just blend ingredients in a personal blender or whisk with a fork. I would use about 1 tablespoon each – once strawberries are topped, place in the freezer – coconut oil hardens at cold temps).

Load up your strawberries and spread ‘em out.

If you end up with extra chocolate – find other things to cover!

What is your favorite berry? 

I personally love all berries but strawberries and blueberries are probably my favorite. I like blackberry and raspberries but sometimes those seeds are just too much.

xoxo

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I recently decided I had other stuff besides food that I am excited to talk about with you. Welcome to my first post in the ‘Bloggy Stuff’ category. In fact, I’ve created a few other categories that I will be adding to from here on out, like: Reviews (books, movies, products), my journey to writing an e-book, my journey learning code, and travel stories. I look forward to these new installments and hearing from you. As always, thank you so much for stopping by. xoxo

Some time over the last 6 months I began subscribing to MomComm, a bloggy writing tip/advice site. I found her site while searching for a problem I was having with Pinterest. Funny enough it was about Pinterest’s searching functionality or lack thereof.

The helpful post was, Pinterest Search: Why It Sucks and How You Can Improve It. I haven’t really tried any harder with Pinterest but her post relieved the angst I was having at the time so I subscribed.

As it often happens, I have great intentions when I subscribe to a blog. I will read the email.  I will read the email. I will read the email. But then something happens – maybe laziness – and I don’t read the emails. Many emails went by, with only cursory glances but then I opened one titled, Seven Mistakes Even Nice-Looking Blogs Make. It just reaffirmed why I subscribed in the first place – great advice.

The one that stood out the most was her tip regarding sharing buttons – which most bloggers have – it’s a fab ‘word of mouth’ tool.

“If you want people to share your blog posts, by all means make it easy to do so! Most people have a way to share and tweet a post, but Pinterest is still often left out. As someone who works for a brand, many companies will NOT pin a post of yours unless you have a PinIt button of some sort. Having this implies permission to pin so companies feel like it’s less of a risk to run into copyright issues. Also, if you use a Tweet button of some sort, include your Twitter handle in the tweet it creates!”

Which brings me to ‘Include Your Twitter Handle in the Tweet it Creates’. Feed Your Skull is powered by WordPress and I do have the Simple Social Buttons plug-in, but did I have my handle in there? No.

I should though and it was super easy to do. Simply go to the plug-in and right there at the very bottom, add in your twitter handle.

Then next time someone shares a post using the share buttons, it will look like this. Letting you know, so you can reply, favorite, or retweet.

Easy! P.s. You don’t need to be a mom to subscribe to MomComm

If you are a WordPress blogger, what social button plug-in do you use?

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Well, last night I was making a recipe that called for 2 peppers and I decided instead to use 8-10 mini peppers, as that’s what we had on hand. I started by removing the stem, cutting long thin slices, stacking them up and making cuts. Oh. My. Goodness. It seemed to take forever just to get 2 very mini peppers done and I was fighting the clock because I had already started water sautéing the onions and the time was rapidly approaching where I needed to add the peppers to the party.

Then I realized I could use the same trick I do with onions and pepper-ply it. Apply it to peppers that is. And the great thing about mini peppers besides cuteness is they have hardly any seeds, so another step saved because there’s no seeds to remove.

Start by making approximately 3 long cuts on the wide side of the pepper all the way through to the other side. The width of the cuts will depend on if you want large or small chopped/diced pieces.

Flip the pepper on it’s side and make 1-2 long cuts all the way through. They should be looking like jelly fish right about now.

Stack them up and proceed with dicing, chopping, or mincing. Thanks to the stem, all the little ‘legs’ stay together and well stacked, making for quick, easy, and uniform chopping.

Ready to be scooped into your dish.

So next time you see that clutch of beautifully colored peppers, snatch it up! They make great snacking vessels and are even perfect for munching on while watching tv. And now thanks to this trick, I will even use them in recipes.

Let’s not forget I wanted to mention Seinfeld, a show I greatly under-appreciated while it was on the air (I was young) and didn’t watch until it was in the beloved 6pm and 10pm rerun time slots on FOX.  So much hilariousness that I know some day I will have to watch the series all the way through.

Yesterday I was working on my ‘final’ project for an online x/html class I’m taking. Our project is to create a 5-8 page website from scratch (!) and of course mine is about fruit and vegetables. I was looking for a quote about mangos in order to practice using the code for block quotes. Instead, I came across this page of Seinfeld quotes. It looked so interesting that I searched google to see if I could find a clip of the episode to watch.

This clip is from the episode, The Mango, and is about when Kramer tries to return a ‘bad’ peach to his favorite city fruit stand, get’s banned from the store and so on. Trust me. Hilarious. They’ve disabled embedding the video, but please follow the link to youtube and watch it there. I promise you will laugh and maybe even cry while laughing. I definitely laughed out loud. Never found my mango quote but that’s okay.

Did you watch Seinfeld? What was your favorite episode? xoxo

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Today’s smoothie is probably one of the ‘go-to’-est smoothies around, a banana mango kale smoothie. The perfect trifecta of favorite fruits and greens.

It wasn’t long after I tried green smoothies with spinach that I next moved onto kale. In fact, the first time I bought or tried kale in my life wasn’t until the last 4 years (at 26). Believe me when I say, I am making up for lost time (kale chips).

Kale is hearty, full of vitamins and minerals, protein, calcium, fiber and just an all around gorgeous plant to eat and if you haven’t had kale in a smoothie – I highly recommend it.

The other night while out with friends, we took them up on an offer to pick some of their kale. Here we are in the middle of February in Portland and harvesting kale (which is a cold weather friendly veg). Awesome.

I felt greedy loading the bag with so many absolutely perfect leaves but don’t worry I was able to control myself and not take all of it. They even made a smoothie and tweeted the picture – probably by the time we made it home. Thank you for the kale!

Enjoy! xoxo

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