The dining room floor overlooking Fountain Square
We didn’t plan it when a friend of ours invited us downtown to Via Vite but we continued on our vegan pizza vision quest last night. Unsure of what was vegan beyond a side of Bruschetta (which was tasty as well), we had the red-headed Maggie to thank for guiding us through the menu towards one of Via Vite’s wood fired pizzas. All of the pizzas on the menu include meat or cheese (the crust is vegan) so we had to DIY it — again with the unshakable Maggie at our side — with some basil and peperonata.
Even after Maggie’s detailed explanation (did she just give us an insider recipe?) I wasn’t sure what to expect but a stew of red and yellow peppers, onions, vinegar and sugar sure sounded tasty. And tasty it was! A little runny, as I’m sure it normally sits amid cheese, meat and other toppings, but with fork and knife in hand, I dove in. I suppose the next line would be that I dove into the deep end and cracked my skull on the bottom because after being goaded into juuuuust one more piece I was starting to feel a little overstuffed. Overstuffed quickly turned into stomach pain which lasted through the night but I’m not blaming the quality or ingredients, only my stubborn desire to eat delicious pizza.
Honestly, the peperonata pizza was so great that I’m more than willing to put up with some indigestion to have it again, and if that’s not a glowing endorsement (albeit one probably not fit for a slogan) I don’t know what is!
As a vegan, it’s a given that pizza will never be the same again. Pizza without actual cheese is just another entity, which I’m ok getting to know and love. Yes I miss a pizza with a ton of cheese, it was my drug of choice. One thing that has changed for me personally with pizza eating is that eating vegan/vegan-ized pizzas, I want more veggies on it than I used to tolerate. Pizza is a new creature for me without cheese impeding my taste buds.
We have attempted pizzas at home with vegan cheese, but failed because we didn’t change our cooking methods. Next attempt we will cook the pizza without the cheese a majority of the time, then add the cheese and broil it enough to melt a little. Normal method resulted in a soupy mess. It still tasted pretty good, but the mess of it made it hard to eat and left us not feeling so well.
We went to Mac’s Pizza Pub to try their vegan pizza, which was pretty good, but not like a real cheese pizza. It was a bigger bummer when the first pizza they gave us they had accidentally prepared with real cheese. We were eating it thinking “wow, this stuff tastes real…hey wait a minute!” Either way the vegan pizza is a nice option to have in town.
Next try was a Larosa’s pizza without cheese, with the idea that their sauce has an interesting and sweet taste that might carry it. It was good, but needed more taste to it. Next time we will try double sauce. A better selection of vegetables may have helped too. We got onions, roma tomatoes, green peppers and spinach on a thin crust. Here’s the Larosa’s ingredients list in pdf form in case you’re are interested. The thin and hand tossed crusts both do not have dairy/egg, but the pan crust does.
Next I think I will look up Dewey’s pizza ingredients. Their sauce can be a little spicier, which may do well vegan-ized.
If you were a real person and you registered for the site, I apologize, but I deleted all users except Shawn and I. I suspect it was all spammers trying to find a way in.
We’re going back to Disney World for…drumroll…our HONEYMOON! Yes, yes, we are finally going to do it, but in the quickest and cheapest way possible.
You may recall our first trip there was January 2009 when we had been vegetarian about 7 or so months. Shawn was having his first diverticulitis flare up and was in a lot of pain. This trip we will be vegan about 4 months (by then) and Shawn’s diverticulitis is mostly under control. So now the food research begins! If anyone has tips let me know, but for others, let me post a bunch of links that I will be taking notes from soon.
Tips from AllEars.net -
A Bashful Vegan – Day 1 of 9 at WDW as a vegan
I will try to post here as we find interesting looking options. If anyone has tips, please comment!
The Cantonese name yàuhjagwái literally means “oil-fried ghost” and, according to folklore, is an act of protest against Song Dynastyofficial Qin Hui, who is said to have orchestrated the plot to frame the general Yue Fei, an icon of patriotism in Chinese culture. It is said that the food, originally in the shape of two human-shaped pieces of dough but later evolved into two pieces joined in the middle, represents Qin Hui and his wife, both having a hand in collaborating with the enemy to bring about the great general’s demise. Thus the youtiao is deep fried and eaten as if done to the traitorous couple.
o_O* Uh, wow. I just thought they were like Chinese Churros. Turns out what I made into a dessert here is traditionally eaten at breakfast with just a dusting of salt to go along with some rice congee or soy milk. It’s understandable, then, that they’re also called Chinese doughnuts but even as a vegan I just had to turn them into a monstrous dessert. This particular brand, which I found at Jungle Jim’s, comes in a six-pack of approximately 12-inch long, pre-fried crullers that require little more than a few minutes’ toasting at 350 degress.
I covered them with chocolate syrup, some agave necter, a dusting of cinnamon and some powdered sugar. They had a slight freezer-burnt-fried-food flavor but mostly tasted good, especially covered with all the sweet stuff I could find in our kitchen. Total time from freezer to plate? About 6 minutes.
Bonus Tip! If I’m going to use a refrigerated ingredient like chocolate syrup I like to pour it into a metal ramekin and sit it on top of the oven (or toaster oven in this case). It gets syrupy stuff warm and runny and heats it up so it doesn’t instantly cool off whatever you’re about to pour it on.
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