Cooking at home

I recently had the honor of speaking with a writer for a national veg magazine about how vegan friendly the Denver-metro are is. By the time I got done telling her about all of my favorite places to eat, I was salivating for a good vegan meal. While walking over to Garbanzo's to get a Laffa filled with hummus and grilled portabello mushrooms, I had other thoughts about the conversation: that none of the places Mike and I go out to eat at are all veg and that as much as we like to go out to eat, we are in bliss when cooking a meal at home just for us or for us and friends.

Although there are a couple of veg-only restaurants in Denver, I haven't been to either one of them in years. Mike and I frequent a couple of places owned by the same guy, Linger and Root Down. I have written about them in the past and they truly serve some of the best vegan food we have ever eaten in an environment that is welcoming and friendly. As we have added other places to our "favorites" list, it's clear to me that when restaurant owners are approached in a friendly manner about the possibility of adding delish vegan food to the menu, great things can happen for you and them.

Mike and I have had success with many restaurant owners in the Lakewood area, a great western suburb of Denver where we live and prefer to dine when going out. Some of them even now have vegan sections of the menus, and others offer mock meats. It's great to watch them get excited about creating new vegan dishes for a clientele that to them did not used to exist.

Yet a perfect meal to both of us is one created in our own home, and enjoyed with just us (and the furries looking on) and other times with friends. Mike loves cooking and I love tasting and together we just have an amazing time. Cooking together or just being together in the kitchen does wonders for a relationship, and a quiet, relaxed meal at home will bring you to a bliss that is not always common in today's busy and rushed world.

If you don't have a few vegan cookbooks to look at for meal choices there are a ton of vegan food blogs that offer incredibly tasty recipes, many of them linked from our blog. Try a meal at home. Relax. Create something tasty and enjoy quiet time with your partner, spouse, friend, or room mate.

And next time you are at a non-veg restaurant and love a dish they serve, chat with the owner or manager about the possibility of a further vegan-friendly menu.

Now I'm hungry again!

Thanks for reading!