Hot Weather Food & It's Only Natural

   In Connecticut, it seems to go from pleasantly warm in the day and cool at night to whimper-in-discomfort hot and humid all the time overnight. This kind of weather begs for snacky, room-temp-friendly foods--even if they require a half hour or so in front of a hot stove, as this meze we had the other night.

    That's fresh veggies, Yellow Rose Recipes quinoa tabbouleh, pita, falafel, hummus and some Greek-inspired zucchini fritters I made up--my mom doesn't like falafel, so I wanted to have something substantial (and of course, fried) for her to have. The texture needs some tweaking, but they were good.

    Some of the leftovers went into a pretty tasty bento for work the next day.

    Of course, you could always just let someone else do the cooking for you, even if the cooking consists mainly of sandwich-making. My uncle was paying a quick visit for a few days this week so we took him to one of my favorite restaurants for lunch today: It's Only Natural.

    We got the southern fried tofu appetizer for the table, which was pretty quickly gobbled up.

    This time I got the veggie melt, which is pretty much a stir fry sandwich with cheese on top. They did have melty vegan cheese available, but I went with cashew parm instead. If you're skeptical, it turns out that a stir fry sandwich is an excellent idea. This was super good, although after way too much southern fried tofu, I could only finish half of the sandwich.

    Stringbean and Avocado both got the cajun tempeh sandwich, which is still my favorite on the sandwich menu. Both sandwiches come with the best sweet potato fries I've ever had in my life. Seriously. Of course, in the week or so between whining about weather too hot to cook and today, the temperature dropped by about twenty degrees and it's chilly and gloomy. Nothing a cup of coffee can't fix. Okay, maybe three cups.