Veggie Crumble Lettuce Wraps (Vegan)

1/2 bag of veggie crumbles (Gardein Groundless "Beef")

2 Stalks of a green onion slice thinly*

A little bit of oil or a non-stick pan

About 10 leaves of leafy green lettuce (I used home grown Black Seeded Simpson)

Sauce

1/4 cup orange juice (good quality is preferable)

2 TBS soy sauce (or more to taste)

1 tsp fresh grated ginger

1 clove garlic grated (carefully and will end up being less than a clove)

The first thing that you want to do is to make the sauce.   Start with the orange juice and soy sauce.   I like to just grate the ginger and garlic directly into the sauce using a small hand grater.  Give the sauce a stir.   

Heat your pan and add oil if needed on medium low heat (3-5).   As you can see below I did not use oil, as I used a non-stick pan.   Pour the sauce in first.   Then add the crumbles and then the green onions.   This all cooks pretty quickly on medium heat in less than 10 minutes.   

Cooking in the pan

Timing needs to be right on this recipe because veggie crumbles don't hold well once they get cold.   On the other hand you don't want to put the veggie crumbles in the lettuce too early either because it can cook the lettuce.   So you want to give it a few minutes to cool and then serve it right away. 

Many of my recipes can be easily doubled, however this one works better as is or cooked in batches because you need to have everything coat the pan in one layer to get the flavor in the veggie crumbles.

*I grow my own green onion.   If you are growing your own you don't need to pull up the plant.   You can get numerous (and I mean numerous) harvests just from cutting of a stalk and leaving a least 2 or even just one other stalk.    Keeps growing bigger stalks too!     

Other Recipes:

Cinnamon Apple Bread

Paprika Hummus

Tomato stew with carrot tops

                                      

List of vegan foods for school parties (nut-free)

With the help of the wonderful parents at the facebook group How Vegan Children Thrive, I came up with this list of vegan nut-free party foods. In other words foods that are good for school parties, as nuts are now banned at most grade-schools and preschools.

*Foods that are starred may not be appropriate for children below a certain age, especially below age 4 due to the risk of choking.  

Animal Crackers

Annie’s Bunny Cookies

Annie’s Fruit Snacks (other brands might not be vegan)

Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks (other brands might not be vegan)

Blow pops*

Boom Chica Pop*

Cracker Jacks*

Dollar Tree Chocolate Covered Graham Crackers (most graham crackers aren’t) and Sandwich Cookies

Dots*

Dum Dum pops*

Duncan Hines Chewy Fudge Brownie Mix if made without added milk or eggs (only this flavor)-some subs for milk would be soy or oat milk and banana or applesauce for eggs.  

Earth Balance Vegan “Cheddar” Squares or “Cheese” chips

Enjoy Life Cookies and other snacks (Any)

Fritos

Fruit by the Foot
Fruit (fresh)

Fruit Platter without dip (dip most likely will be dairy)

Guac (most and not mixed with other stuff such as in multilayer dip)

Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup (Regular Flavor)

Hippeas

Hummus (regular) with pita

Jolly Rancher*

Kettle Brand Potato chips (Sea salt, vinegar,jalapeño, or Sriracha flavors only)

Kinnikinnick K-Toos

Laffy Taffy*

Lays Potato chips (Classic or Limon only)

Made Good Bars and Granola Bites

Mary Jane

Motts Fruit Snacks

Nabisco Oreo 100 Calorie Thin Crisps

Ore Ida Tater Tots (Original Flavor)

Oreos (regular)

Popchips (original only)

Popcorn (plain or with salt and/or oil, and without butter)*

Pretzels (Most hard pretzels, check to make sure they don’t include whey, butter or milk)

Pringles (plain only)

Red Vines*

Rice Cakes (Original Flavor, check carefully on fancy flavors)

Ritz Crackers

Ruffles Potato Chips (original or tapito limon only)

Salsa (most)

Santitas

Skittles

Smarties*

Sour Patch Kids*

Sun Chips (Original only)

Sweat Chili Heat Doritos (purple bag, other doritos are not vegan)

Takis (original flavor only)

Tangerines or other oranges that are easy to peel

Trader Joe’s Inner Peas

Trader Joes Marshmellows (most other marshmellows are not vegan)*

Trader Joe’s Twelve Grain Mini Snack Crackers

Twizlers*

Unfrosted Pop Tarts (not frosted ones)

Vegan Rob’s Chips

Vegetable Platter without dip (dip most likely dairy)

Wheat Thins (original flavor only)

Open Streets DC shows how successful Georgia Avenue could be if it went car-free!

By: Rachelle Kafuman with photos by Noah Kaufman

For a few hours it felt like we had been transported to Oslo or Copenhagen.   But we weren't, we were actually in DC.   Where the car-free street flowed busy with pedestrians and cyclists.   

Giving it is DC, I was a little skeptical on how well the city would pull it off.   But the organizers, police, and other first responders did an excellent job of blocking off all the side streets and even garages to traffic making the event truly safe.   

Open Streets DC provided a unique opportunity for pedestrians, cyclists, strollers, and others to walk, run, and cycle through Georgia Avenue in NW DC.  Open Streets DC occurred on October 5, 2019.  The event was a very long street festival, covering three miles.  Many vendors and other entities had booths – the groups including the DC bike association (WABA), a community garden, beer vendors, restaurants, and numerous others.  Attendees had the chance to attend free fitness classes (including Zumba), run, or cycle.  

Families with young children could easily wheel their babies and toddlers in strollers or cycle with their children in all kinds of various bike carriers.   A day where families could enjoy taking their young children out without having to fear them being hurt or killed by selfish drivers who choose to do such reckless things as drive SUVs that are 3x more likely to kill or whom are texting and not  paying attention to the roads.   Also,  a great day for dog children too and we saw lots of cute dogs!   

Open Street DC included several musical acts.  For example, a steel drum band played.  Concluding the festival was including an outstanding the TOB Go-Go band with great beats, enthusiastic dancing, powerful percussions, drums, and vocals – very appropriate, as Go-Go is a musical style that starts in the nation’s capital.  TOB Go-Go band was so popular nearly the whole street plus the sidewalk filled with people watching them.   

For our trip, we arrived at the Georgia Avenue metro station and headed south.   This was our first time on Georgia Avenue and we enjoyed discovering more about this community!   We greatly enjoyed taking a quiz and learning more about urban gardening at the booth with DC community gardens.   We also had a great time at Bruce-Monroe Community Park which has a fun playground and on that day had special guests Washington Area Bicyclist Association who had a fun course and the Department of Parks and Recreation which had a special roller skating and scooter event.   Many of the scooter companies were also located in Bruce Monroe Community Park and had scooters available to try out.   We then got to try out the completely vegan restaurant Nuvegan Cafe.  We also saw the beautiful Ms. Wheelchair who demonstrated how everyone including the disabled benefits from car-free streets. 

The only downside was that the event was way too short!   After the event I saw so many  pictures of fun things I missed out on.   Please share with us what fun things you found to do during Open Streets DC (either in the comments below or in comments on social media)!