My favorite meals focus on a variety of textures and ingredients to create truly dynamic salad-like dishes. Corn and Poblano Chilean Salad with Adobo Pinto Beans is a solid, Mexican inspired meal and is the ideal lunch for the first warm spring of the year. Roasted chili, sweet corn, cabbage, brown rice and pinto beans, mild spinach background and roasted jalapeno vegan ranch seasonings I can drink directly from Rami Ginri.
I still dream about the lemongrass shirataki bowl, a cold noodle salad dish that hits all the right flavors and the right elements of all textures. Refrigerated rice noodles are served with a lightly spicy marinated crumbled with stir-fried vegetables and pea protein. Crispy cucumbers, spinach, ginger, lemongrass and peanuts add to the crisp texture, but the delicious savory, slightly rich homemade vegan “fish” sauce does blend all of these sauces together. This sauce uses dynamic ingredients such as coconut amino sugar, date syrup, rice vinegar, lemon juice, tahini, mushrooms and seaweed to get the same premium fish sauce, but without pain. Sigh, I wish I could eat again.
Photo: Molly Higgins
I’m not a breakfast guy, so the little fruit choice of thistle is perfect for me. A dense polenta almond cake preserved by bright, sweet raspberry Chia jam. A smoothie bowl with blackberries and hibiscus topped with crispy coconut granola was the ideal start for my day. Super Seed & Berry Muesli overnight oatmeal dish has a good texture, and its brightly colored coconut and vanilla spirulina “mylk” is a fun addition, although I wish it had more fruit to add fresh elements.
The heated dinner was good, but it didn’t feel as complicated as a hearty salad. Chili sauce is the best of the pasta that was originally a dish with beans, artichokes, spinach and sun-dried tomatoes. Latin-inspired black beans, spinach, rice and plantains require more sour or spices to make it liven up. Other snacks, such as deli-type plates, are a little flat, the vegetables start to dry out, the vegetarian texture becomes dry, and the vegan cheese. (Later that night, though, I had thistle vegetarians with tahini tres leches mousse with tahini tres leches mousse, which was perhaps the best vegan dessert I’ve ever had, so everything was – too much – Ford.)
Nothing is perfect
Apart from the high price (there is a 40% discount now) (in serious case, if you’re curious about this cutlery set, I recommend trying it when it’s discounted) – I don’t have much grip on Thistle.
When you sign up for a plan, you will receive text with a delivery update and they will notify you when it arrives. I received a text notification that I was abandoned on Sunday night, but when I checked nothing was delivered. The next day, I found out that the delivery guy finally put it on my neighbor. I had to wait the whole week until the next Sunday before delivery was again. It was frustrating because I had to do my last week at the last week of the grocery store on a busy Sunday night, which was a time I had no budget – time or money. In the future, I may choose to meet the delivery guy in person so I can guarantee that I will be fed that week.
