Adventures in Pad Thai

Who knew that something so annoying and completely metal would push me to finally teach myself to make vegan pad thai. Most of the Asian food markets in Chicago are way north all the way in uptown...which is a huge pain in the ass. After doing some sleuthing, I discovered JoongBoo Market (AKA Chicago Food Corporation) on Kimball, conveniently somewhat near my apartment. I am proud to say that I've officially found my Asian market. Has anyone else always had their go-to Asian market wherever they have lived? Well I have. And it's taken me a year to find one in Chicago...but it was worth the wait.

Here is a shot of all the amazing stuff I got at JoongBoo: concentrated cooking tamarind, roasted peanuts, firm tofu, silken tofu, rice noodles, green onion, cilantro, bean sprouts, red cabbage, sweet chili sauce, and anko & taro mochi.

Eat shit, vegan metal chef. I'm better than you.

I mainly used this recipe as a base, but changed a whole lot of things. I didn't put in carrot, broccoli, or shallots and added fried tofu. I also doubled the tamarind sauce, added about 1/3 c. more soy sauce and agave nectar. I found that it was really bland without the additions.

Making pad thai is easy!! Now I'm going to save boku bucks instead of ordering it all the time from Penny's.

Birthdays!!

April 24th was my birthday, and I received two of the most wonderful cakes in the world! The first is from my mom:

This is a vegan lemon cake with a lemon curd filling and a lemon buttercream. This was the first vegan dish/dessert that my mom has ever made me...and I was so appreciative...but it was so terrible! It's ok. The whole family was laughing and I would have never wanted any other cake. The cake was extremely dense, the lemon curd didn't set, and the buttercream separated and was really runny. We kept dunking the dense cake in soupy lemon curd and I got a tummy ache from laughing and consuming so much sugar. I have the best mom in the whole world.

The second cake was made by Stephanie Schreuich - a strawberry cake with strawberry buttercream and chocolate ganache...in the shape of a cupcake!! It was so so so fucking good. I had 3 pieces, ate a ton of candy from my pinata, had a ton of tofu dogs, and shot off a bunch of fireworks. It was the best birthday ever, but I've had a tummy ache for the last week from all the sugar and the laughing.