This post was supposed to go up on Friday. Oops.

Ever had Soy Curls? They’re pretty awesome. Not really healthy, but awesome. I can never find them anywhere around here, so I always make sure to add a few bags to my order whenever I place an online order at Food Fight Grocery. The main reason I like them is because they kind of remind me of seitan but without the gut-busting gluten and with a slightly better texture. You buy Soy Curls dried, like TVP, and reconstitute them with hot water or veggie broth to bring them back to life. Despite basically being TVP, I think Soy Curls have a better flavor and texture than plain ol’ TVP.

Once they’re reconstituted, you can do pretty much anything you want with Soy Curls—bake them, fry them, use them in a stew or stir-fry, make tacos—anything you’d do with any meat analogue, really. These are really the only fake meat I eat with any frequency because most are loaded with gluten and weird soy. I’m pretty sure Soy Curls qualify as ‘weird soy’ as well, but no one’s perfect, right?

The first thing I did when my Soy Curls arrived was make BBQ Soy Curls. I reconstituted them with hot veggie broth, adding a little nutritional yeast, black pepper and onion powder. Then I drained them and stirred in a healthy amount of Stubb’s BBQ sauce and baked them in a glass dish at 400F for about 20 minutes, stirring after 10 minutes. I served them on top of a pile of brown rice with a mound of steamed broccoli. Amazing! I love BBQ’d anything (especially BBQ tofu), and the sauce works really well with these, and baking the curls give them a more toothsome texture.

Next, I made vegan carnitas. I sort of followed this recipe, but not really since I wasn’t using seitan, and I added way more veggies (onions, red bell pepper, corn) and served them in corn tortillas. I used Green’s Discovery Gluten-Free Amber Ale for the beer in my carnitas. These turned out great, and I saved the leftover “beer-broth” that I cooked the curls in to made some slightly different carnitas again last night.

Soy Curls are hard to find around DFW, but several of the food carts we’ve visited in Austin and Portland use them with tasty results. Have you tried them? If so, how do you like to prepare them?

The Dallas-based Nammi Truck is a Vietnamese fusion food truck that’s now started making appearances here in Fort Worth on Fridays at Avoca Coffee on Magnolia Avenue in the Near Southside. What’s good for you, my fellow vegans, is that they’ve got a great assortment of vegan-friendly items, and we’ve tried them.

For each item, Nammi Truck offers a choice of meat – including, for us vegans, some nicely prepared tofu. Naturally, they serve Bành Mì – Vietnamese sandwiches. Seen above is an example – a 12″ sandwich stuffed with tofu, cucumbers, pickled daikons, carrots, jalapeños, and cilantro. There’s a garlic mayo on the sandwiches by default, which should be left off for veganizing.

The next of the three main offerings are the tacos, served with tofu, red cabbage medley, cucumbers, pickled daikons, carrots, jalapeños, and cilantro. The tacos are stuffed full and a little challenging to handle, but are quite tasty.

My personal favorite item is the Nammi bowl, a delicious thing filled to the brim with rice, tofu, grilled vegetables, cucumbers, pickled daikons, carrots, jalapeños, and cilantro. Besides being the simplest to handle, the bowl is very filling and hearty, and everything in it packs a nice flavor punch.

(In all of these, watch out for the jalapeños, as they aren’t kidding around.)

As for prices, the tacos are $3 each, the sandwiches are $6, and the bowls are $7. That’s pushing the upper level of food truck prices, but the quality and taste justify it in my mind. This is some really nicely done food, and if you can catch Nammi at Avoca, make sure and check it out. The most recent round of stops have had them at Avoca on Fridays from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM for dinner.

I had the tasty Simpleton sandwich, which has avocado, cucumber, tomato, lettuce, vegan mayo, and fresh cracked pepper on spelt quinoa bread.

Steph had the Bryan’s Brutal Tacos, another fav, featuring seitan, corn, red bell peppers, onions, lettuce, spicy taco sauce, guacamole, vegan sour cream, and black beans.

Delicious!

We can’t run a Fort Worth vegan blog without talking about Spiral Diner at some point. It’s a little hard, though – what can we say that hasn’t been said already? Spiral Diner, Fort Worth’s 100% vegan restaurant on Magnolia Avenue in the Near Southside, is the promised land for Fort Worth vegans. It’s a landmark, one that’s beloved by vegans and non-vegans alike. It has a wide-ranging menu full of variety and flavor, a cool staff, a fantastic location in a hip indie neighborhood, and tons of character. We realize most long-time FW vegans know about Spiral, but since we’re hoping this blog also encourages new vegans in Fort Worth, we need to post about Spiral.

Virtually everything we’ve tried at Spiral has been delicious. It’s some of the most flavorful vegan food you’ll find anywhere, let alone in Texas. There are incredible sandwiches, like the legendary Jamaican Jerk BBQ…

Or the Chopped BBQ…

Awesome salads like the Taco Salad…

Or the BBQ Salad…

Tasty Mexican dishes like the nachos…

And the quesadillas…

There’s the chili…

The smoothies…

And the frighteningly tasty desserts.

Even the appetizers are engaging, like the flavorful nacho cheese sauce (seen here with corn tortillas).

On Sundays, there’s even Biscuits & Gravy and an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast!

Seriously – just go and take a look at the menu. Whatever your taste, it’s likely that Spiral will have ten things that satisfy you.

What’s more, they even do custom cakes:

(That’s actually the cake from our own wedding party – we had a 100% vegan wedding party catered by Spiral – check the spread in the pic below.)

One could go on and on about Spiral, but you get the idea. It’s ridiculously tasty 100% vegan food – in Fort Worth! The presence of Spiral serves to dispel the “Cowtown” stereotypes of this city, and has blazed a path for ever-increasing vegan dining options in Fort Worth. We salute you, Spiral Diner – you’ve made being a vegan in Fort Worth downright pleasant.

Spiral Diner 1314 W. Magnolia 817-3-EatVeg spiraldiner.com

Some days you just want something fast and cheap. This recipe is from the very first issue of my long-forgotten zine The Cheap Vegan. It’s simple and totally cheap to make, and these can actually be burritos or tacos, depending on the tortillas you use. If you have large flour tortillas, you can fill ‘em up and make burritos. If you use corn tortillas, place a line of filling down the middle, fold in half, and you have a taco. Sweet!

Be sure to save your leftovers. The filling is even better the next day!

Cheap As Dirt Vegan Tacos (or Burritos) 2 small potatoes, diced 1 small yellow onion, diced 1 cup TVP 1 cup water or light veggie broth 7/8 cup hot water 1 T chile powder 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/2 teaspoon sea salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari Corn or flour tortillas (crispy taco shells are dope, too)

Combine the onion, potatoes, garlic salt, onion powder, chile pepper, black pepper, and 1 cup water in a large, nonstick skillet. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes. While the vegetables are simmering, combine the TVP and the 7/8 cup of hot water and allow it to sit for at least 5 minutes. After the vegetables are done simmering and the potatoes are tender, stir the soy sauce into the TVP and add to the potato mixture. Stir to thoroughly combine the TVP and the potatoes and simmer for five minutes. Spoon into tortillas and top with vegan cheese, sprouts, lettuce, tomatoes, avocado or nothing at all.

Variation: If you don’t have any TVP on hand, you can use 1-1/2 cups cooked, drained beans instead (that’s what I used in the ones pictured). Omit the 7/8 cup water if using beans.