Pasta Della California

Last night i came home from work and decided to use up some veggies that needed using. I happened to have an avocado and immediately thought of Pasta Della California from Veganomicon. I had been wanting to try it and i looked it up to see if i had enough of the ingredients (since i finally will make something even if i don't have everything, i'll just do as i can) and i pretty much did. 

What i didn't have: white wine and arugula. What i had instead: kale stolen from roommate, crimini mushrooms and zucchini. oh, and pine nuts. i didn't replace the white wine with anything. I also did use as much veggie broth since i didn't use 3 cups of greens. This recipe uses 8 cloves of garlic and i love garlic so i left that as is. I normally wouldn't put avocado in a warm dish like this, but i liked it. I felt like i was still missing something, but i don't know what.....maybe Joanna's faux parm? It was good though and it was so healthy looking since i had spinach fettucine and with the broccoli and kale.....yeah, yum! There's some kick in it from red pepper flakes and i felt like it was just the right amount. I'll definitely make this one again. 

New Years Meal!

Every year for the past few years my family has made a particular meal for January 1st. I believe my sister started it. She found some recipe from one of Nava Atlas's cookbooks (the 5-Ingredient one) that has black eyed peas and greens and we found that we liked it a lot. We eat it every year with mashed potatoes, sauerkraut and some kind of fake brat/sausage.

I hope that 2009 will be a good year for me and for you too! Happy New Years! And definitely follow the link and try that greens recipe out!

ARCTIC! BLAST!

I'm supposed to be enjoying 70-80 degree weather at this exact moment in my hometown of Sarasota, Florida. But no. I'm stuck in the winter wonderland that is Portland, Oregon. We've been dealing with snowy weather for 2 weeks now and it's gotten pretty old. I'm over it. I don't see how people deal with this as part of their normal winter weather. I prefer rain. Rain doesn't delay/cancel flights. I was supposed to fly out Monday night but i had to reschedule and now i'm leaving Saturday morning. I was looking forward to Christmas at home and New Years in Portland, but fate had it planned differently. So i'm trying to roll with it. My mother is none-too-pleased and thinks i should make them give me a flight since that what i was paying for or at least a voucher. 

I don't know what i would be doing without my new rain/snow boots from Rocketdog. (which apparently were being sold for only $15 on that website....i paid a bit more for them...but not $89) I probably wouldn't leave the house as much for fear of my feet being cold and wet. They have a trim inside of some kind of brown furry material. I've been wearing them nonstop. Kinda like my new jacket that i got from Papaya. (i'm the one on the far right). It's quite warm for being only $35. 

I've been spending a lot of time at Sweetpea Baking Co. They have soup nowadays, which is great.  I like having "real" food to choose from. They were out of it since Jessie, their soup guy, went on vacation, but i did see they had it again yesterday. It was the Chik N Noodle kind. It has chunks of seitan in a broth with noodles. Tasty stuff. I just would like to mention again, out loud, that i would love Lisa forever if she decided to make biscuits and gravy a regular menu item. I love Hungry Tiger Too's version since it's only $4 and it's got faux sausage in it and the biscuits don't suck (::coughparadoxcafecough::), but the one time i had Lisa's version at a brunch, i was diggin' it. It's a nice southern white gravy with no heavy spices but pepper and her buscuits are light and fluffy. HT2 has a lot of herbs in it, which isn't what i look for, i just want a good ole southern sausage gravy.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! It doesn't feel like Christmas Eve to me. Probably because i'm not at my parent's house that's all decorated. I only remember once not being home for Christmas and that was the year i went to Germany. I'm not a huge family-gatherings person, but it's tradition for me. And i like tradition. I'm glad that i do have a lot of friends that are still in town. My roommate is leaving tomorrow evening so we'll be together for our first roommate Christmas.   :o)

Be safe, y'all. Curl up under the covers and watch While You Were Sleeping or some other nice Christmas movie.....heh....seriously, love that movie though....

it's on the B.L.

Yesterday morning i woke up in a hotel room with snow flurrying about outside my window. It's like i was in a movie or something. But instead of being snuggled up next to a boy, i was in bed with 3 girl friends. One of those friends had gotten a free night's stay at Hotel Deluxe and we made the best we could of a king size bed in the smallest hotel room i've ever been in. They did have a "Make It So" motto, where you could call them and ask for whatever. One of those things was a wide selection of different pillows, like body or one of those special neck pillows. We totally made it so....By breakfast/brunch time there was 3 of us left.

We walked to Blossoming Lotus for breakfast. I had never been there for breakfast before. Me and Maeve's feet were about frozen when we got there. I was wearing Chucks and a thin pair of socks and she had on boots that had a hole in one of the heels and weren't wet-proof. 

They didn't have much in the warm side for breakfast. Really, there was only one choice and that was toast...So i ended up ordering lunch (which they serve after 10am). 

I chose the Smokey Maple Tempeh Sandwich. 

Yeah, look at that plate of deliciousness....mmm.....so it's copious amounts of vegan aioli (i don't know what makes this aioli, it tastes like Vegenaise to me...yum..), alfalfa sprouts, tons of ripe avocado, lettuce and slabs of warm smokey, mapley tempeh on spelt bread. It was so good. I was only able to eat half of it (i polished off the leftovers last night...).  This picture was taken by Jess. She herself had gotten one of their bowls filled with pinto beans, tempeh chunks, kale and quinoa (or rice?) with a peanut sauce/ginger sauce mix. that was pretty tasty too.

Unfortunately, i wasn't able to order some of their delightful vegan soft serve. The flavor of the day was Nog, which probably would've been fun to try.

I like Blossoming Lotus, but it's not for breakfast place unless you're looking for a muffin, juice, granola or smoothie. I'm looking for warm and comforting when i go for breakfast. Oh, they have oatmeal, but i don't usually roll that way...

Ice Cream!!!!

We all scream for it, don't we?

Recently I had the chance to pick some flavors out from the Turtle Mountain company and give them a try. I had had some before so I knew they weren't going to suck. Here's a list of the flavors some friends and I tucked into:

Snickerdoodle- this has a nice cinnamon flavored ice cream with bits of snickerdoodle cookie dough. I didn't like the cookie dough part. Partly because I'm still cookie doughed out from when cookie dough was popular when i was a young teen, and partly because it tasted like i was eating small balls of brown sugar...weird......My other friends that tried it and loved it, so apparently I'm the only one that disapproves of the dough...

Coconut Craze- this is one of my favorites. The ice cream is just damn straight delicious. I believe I've already spoke my love of this flavor before here. 

Turtle Trails- caramel sauce and praline pecans in vanilla ice cream. I thought I would fall for this flavor completely. I didn't. Not that's bad. I would just buy other flavors before I would buy this one.

Peanut Butter Zig Zag- I don't think I like peanut butter in my ice cream. A friend of mine and his 8 year daughter love this stuff and helped polish off the pint. 

And I also tried some of their new Coconut Milk line as well. These aren't totally soy free (they use soy lecithin and other soy products depending on the flavor), but for those looking for a little less soy in their life, it's great. The flavors:

Cookie Dough- I liked everything about this flavor except for the dough part. I loved the ice cream flavor and texture and the chocolate chips, but I ate around the balls of cookie dough. I'm just so not into frozen balls of dough....which is sad, because this ice cream is good.

Chocolate- good, i would like to make a banana chocolate milk shake with these. Sip has probably already done that.

Coconut- this is probably my favorite coconut ice cream I've had. A lot of people like the Coconut Bliss brand and though it's not bad, it doesn't have the creaminess I look for in an ice cream. 

I've also previously tried the Blueberry Cheesecake and Cookie Avalanche. The Cookie Avalanche is a cookies-n-cream flavor that I really like. It nostalgia from my days back in high school when that was my favorite flavor. I love the idea of the Blueberry Cheesecake, but it didn't quite do it for me. The chunks of crust are very dough-like....meaning I'd rather they weren't there. Also, I'm not a huge fan of blueberries in food except for scones and muffins. Oh, and beer. That's food, right? I once heard it called "liquid bread." 

Oh, also the Blueberry Cheesecake is gluten-free for all you gluten-free peeps out there.

Sorry, this is pictureless, I forgot....

Canadian 'Couv...oh, and Thanksgiving

Across the border, of Oregon that is, there is a town called Vancouver in the lovely state of Washington. My sister lives there in a cute house and i, occasionally, visit her. Most people call Vancouver by it's nickname, the 'Couv. I am one of those people. Kinda how we call Beaverton (a Portland suburb) "Beavertron" and Gresham "Shithole." Heh...i kid on that last one. Seriously, no ill will towards Gresham, i just don't want to live there. 'Cause it's not Portland....

anyhoodles, this is all really just to say i went to the "real" Vancouver this past weekend. Yeah, as Michael from a recent The Office episode says, i went abroad. I have a friend that lives there and i haven't seen him since moving to the Northwest 3 1/2 years ago and i wanted to see Vancouver again. I had a 5 day weekend because of Thanksgiving. It probably would've been better had i used all 5 days, but i really wanted to spend Thanksgiving here with my sister and her in-laws and also with my friends (i had two Thanksgiving meals). 

Short side note on Thanksgiving:

I made my first Pecan Pie!

I had leftover filling so i made some pie dough (i had to make a second batch, the first was with whole wheat flour which is why there's such a color difference in the one to the very right) and smooshed it into some cupcake/muffin tins. I loved these mini pies! i'm sure i'll make them again. I used a premade graham cracker crust that needed to get used for the big pie. I do believe graham cracker crusts aren't the best for pecan pie. The Pecan Pie recipe comes from a PPK thread, it's Toddx's recipe and it was adapted by Jess, which is where you'll have to go to get the recipe b/c i can't seem to copy it from the document i have it on....

But back to Vancouver. The weather was rainy and my feet got wet and cold (wearing Chucks in the rain = ridiculous), but other than that, it was a great trip. I walked around downtown and shopped and ate. I ran across Gorilla Food, which i had heard about, and decided to eat some raw food. I had a kale/seaweed salad that was tasty and a carrot-beet-apple juice that was large in size and kinda tasted like dirt. You know how sometimes carrots have that dirt flavor? yeah, that. I could've used more apple....i left there early b/c there was a strange guy that sat next to me and made me uncomfortable with his words, such as "can i come visit you?" and "will you remember me?"....and also b/c when i shook his hand, he didn't let go and he rubbed it...

i also ate at Naam, which i was excited about. Unfortunately, half way through the meal my stomach became upset. But, this place has big portions and, best of all, open 24 hours! I got a dragon bowl, but i think i should've picked something else...it was good and all, but i have a feeling i would've liked something else more. grass is always greener, eh?

I also had a hot dog at Japadog, a hot dog stand known for its' japanese style toppings. I just had the  holy trinity of toppings: sauerkraut, ketchup and yellow mustard. The grill there dogs, so it takes a little longer than the boiled kind, but it's definitely worth it.

I also picked up a 24 pack of Dr. Pepper. They don't use high fructose syrup there. Or any other country, right? We're the only ones that refuse to give that shit up, i think....

I had a good time in Vancouver and hope to go again when it's sunny out....

Skipping....

Hey, guys!

I forgot to write what i ate and now i can't remember. but for the most part it consisted of:

Yogurt muesli or english muffin toasted with pb & homemade-by-my-roommate j

snack of raw almonds, red hot blues tortilla chips and pretzels

mixed baby lettuce with sunflower seeds and Goddess dressing

Boca Melt without the Melt at East Burn- comes with carmelized onions and mushrooms

French Fries

Beers

Cocktails

Coffee

Glazed Donut

Brussels Sprouts with Garlic from VWAV

Sauteed mushrooms, tofu, leeks and carrots with quinoa, Better Than Sour Cream and Srirachi

 

Yup....

Today was:

Yogurt muesli

Nachos from Hungry Tiger Too

My roommate had the Portland Scramble and declared it the best scramble she's had out and about. And they have hash browns like Jam on Hawthorne, so that's a plus. I tasted the scramble and thought it good, but i thought the portion size of the scramble was quite small for $9. Seriously, i should have leftovers for that much....yeah, i'm having a serious issue with HT2's prices.....

PBR

dinner will probably be the leftovers of the veggie/tofu/quinoa from last night

Food Journal Monday and Tuesday

Monday:

Yogurt muesli- Vanilla yogurt with rolled oats, banana, shredded apple, fresh squeezed orange juice, sunflower seeds, raw pumpkin seeds and flax meal. I love this stuff and make about one large container of it at a time. I started eating it while i was in Germany, they call it "muesli." I usually put some soymilk in it for liquid but i had an orange in the fridge that badly needed to be used. 

Coffee with soy and sugar

Snack: Red Hot Blues chips, spelt pretzels, raw almonds

Tuno Casserole leftover with Srirachi

Pad Thai Woon Sen- yeah, i had it again

Tuesday:

Yogurt muesli (see above)

Roastaroma tea with French Vanilla Silk creamer and honey 

Snack: Red Hot Blues chips, spelt pretzels, raw almonds

Tuno Casserole leftovers with Srirachi

3 (yes, three!!) Vegan Ham & Cheese sandwiches. I was going to stop at 2, but then Jess

just insisted i take one off her hands. So for her sake alone, i did.

1 Greyhound

1 Whiskey Sour

Tonight's America's Next Top Model! It's getting close to the end, which is kinda sad because that means there is an upcoming 3 month break between "cycles." Sad face.

Food Journal 11-8 and 9

I had a great day with my friends Corinn and Philip (he lived here until a couple months ago, but he's currently visiting for 6 days) on Saturday. It was actually quite nice out and the sun was shining most of the afternoon. I actually got to wear just a T-shirt (and jeans) when we sat outside the Gold Dust Meridian for a drink. Well, until the sun sneaked behind the building across the street...then it got cold and we went inside.

I slept in quite late on Saturday so my first meal was lunch.

Pad Thai Woon Sen

Dr. Pepper

Coffee with soy and sugar

Ginger ale and Gin with lime

1/2 Meatball Sub and Brussels Sprouts from Bye & Bye

Nebraska- hot apple cider and apple cinnamon rum

Stockholm- lemon infused vodka with ginger ale

Session

Pad Thai Woon Sen leftovers

By the way, all that alcohol was within an 8 hour period so i wasn't obliterated at the end of the day, if you were wondering. 

Then on Sunday..

Bite of bagel that may or may not be vegan. My roommate was trying not to starve to death (b/c of our friend philip's lack of speed to get ready for breakfast) and was eating one of her Kettleman's bagels that she buys in a mix bag. i took a bite and was like, that's a pizza bagel. that's probably not vegan...

Coffee with soy and sugar- $2.25 a cup at Junior's! yowza! that's almost as bad as Zell's! (i'm pissed at them b/c they charge $2 but 50cents more for soymilk.)

Vegan Potatoes from Junior's- i'm not sure why i get these since i'm not a fan of their potatoes. Ok, actually i do know why i get these, i'm a sucker for corn, mushrooms and their spicy tofu sauce. But, really, their potatoes kinda suck. And the only person that doesn't agree, that was in our party, is my roommate.

Homemade Tuno Casserole- i've had a frozen tube of Tuno (R.I.P.) for at least a year and i've been wanting to make a tuna casserole with it. My roommate and i topped ours with our respective hot sauces, her Aardvark and me Srirachi. It was comforting stuff. I added peas because what's any casserole without peas??

Southern Blend Greens (from Trader Joe's) with garlic and olive oil

Trader Joe's Soy Creamy Very Cherry Chip ice cream

Food journal 11-7-08. Part II

So yesterday. (just assume that anytime i mention "sausage", "yogurt", etc, it's the vegan version of them)

At work i ate:

Tofurkey Smoked Turkey Sandwich with Veganaise, lettuce on Dave's Killer Bread

Spinach hummus (this stuff is so good! it's that brand that you can find in all the fridgerated section of almost every grovery here) with organic blue corn chips

Plain yogurt mixed with rolled oats, the juice of a small blood orange, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, raisins

Chocolate silk milk

I got home and me and my roommate went to Hungry Tiger Too. They have a separate vegan menu now. It's nice to have but they've upped some of the prices *and* they make you pay a $1 (for crinkle french fries) or $2 (tots, salad, or soup) extra with your sandwich. Wtf??? Who do they think they are, McMenamins?? So they prices are technically the same, except you have to pay more for fries or tots.....You're free choices are chips or coleslaw. The secret vegan club sandwich is on the menu, but it's now $10.50 (and, again, you have to pay extra for tots or fries......so you would have to pay $12.50 (!) for a club with tots.......), it was $9.50ish before. They do now have homemade corndogs, which is what i ended up getting. I knew it was bad idea though. It's 2 of the corndogs on a bed of tots for $7. Who can eat all that, i ask? It's too much grease. I about died. The corndogs were good though. I asked the waitress if it's possible to get a half order, b/c i only need one corndog at a time, thanks. She said she didn't think so but she would mention it to someone. The shitty part of our visit was that there was a table of about 12 people and they were kinda drunk (i think) and they were talking so loud and shrill, it hurt me and missy's ears and we could just barely hear each other. 

I also had a PBR to drink there.

I went to a show and i drank a gin and giner ale.

After the show i ran into my lovely friend Philip, who had just gotten into town for a week long visit and we went and had a beer at Squeez. I had a Shock Top Hefeweizen.

And that was my day.....

What i ate...

I've been thinking of doing a food journal of what i eat each day. That would actually get me posting more (because that's what y'all are dying for, right?) b/c it's easy. I thoroughly enjoy looking at what people eat. Not even looking, just reading about it is fun. I work for a naturopathic doctor and sometimes she gives people a diet to follow and i just like reading it. It's not even meals to make, just a list of foods to eat or avoid. And sometimes patients send in what they've been eating each day and i read them. I don't know what it is about them that i like so much.....

So, so far today i've had:

Maple Sausage Waffle from FlavourSpot

Coffee with sugar-in-the-raw and soymilk

Yeah, that's it. I haven't gotten very far today....

Good bar food: it's not any oxymoron

One of my favorite bars here in Portland is Bonfire, SE Stark and 28th. I've gone there for twice as part of my birthday celebrations. In my most humble opinion, they have the best fries in Portland. And i don't think that only because they're the cheapest! It's $3.50 for a motherload of well seasoned fries. McMenamin's charges $5 for tater tots! But i won't get started on my love/hate relationship with the McMenamin's company, maybe a different post...

French fries is what i look for at a bar as my primary way of judging their food selections, but in Portland you'll find a lot of substantial food and there's usually some good vegan options. I think it's the law here to serve some kind of food as long as you're serving alcohol. I really should know this since i took a mandatory 6 hour long alcohol class so that i could work at Hot Lips Pizza....

Anyways, at bars around here you can almost always count on a hummus plate and french fries (though there's a few bars that don't have that have, if you can just imagine that! i'm looking at you, Beulahland, Roadside Attraction, Tube and Hedge House! man...there's quite a few....), but you can also count on something more filling, such as the tofu or tvp tacos at Bonfire, which is what my friend Matthew above is about to devour. They also have a curry burrito, which i've never had. My friend Corinn loves the portobello gyro, which can be made vegan. Side note about the waitstaff: they can be a bit more-hipster-than-thou, but there's at least one awesomely nice server there named Sean.

The Tube downtown has the yummiest $2 Ham & Cheese english muffin sammies during their Happy Hour (which last i checked ended at 10pm). The Bye & Bye, our town's only all-vegan bar, has quite a few options including a delicious, but messy meatball sub and several different bowls, which are nutritious and delicious. Oh, they are also fry-less.....sad face....

As you can tell, i'm not looking for good-as-in-healthy bar food, though it's possible. I just know that when i visit home in Sarasota, Florida i don't even think about trying to get anything vegan that tastes good when i'm out and about.

What's your favorite bar food?

My Story, Part Zwei

My long story didn't really include why i am vegetarian, so i thought i would explain a little. Explaining things is not a strong suit of mine, i tend to babble and i don't have the ability to make it clear and ideas are a little disjointed. So bear with me.

I started becoming veg because i became grossed out by red meat and also just because my older sister was doing it. I also figured out that I am unable to actually kill an animal myself and i think that if you can't do it yourself, then you don't deserve to have someone doing it for you. Growing up in a "city" and not a farm, you don't really put the 2 together that what comes in a nice clean package first went though a disgusting slaughterhouse. It's just a nonmoving lump of "meat." The German word for meat is "fleisch" (pronounced "flysh"), literally "flesh." I think if i grew up calling meat "flesh" i would've been a little weirded out that i was eating it.

While i still lived in Florida with my parents, i started learning more and more about the dairy and egg industry and i didn't like what i found out. They are connected with the meat industry. Dairy cows produce male calves that are good for nothing, so they get sent to veal farms. (I have family friends that run a veal farm and i remember visiting the air conditioned barn when i was young. i didn't think much of it, just that it was dark and coo inside. the husband has mentioned that he thinks veal calves have an excellent life. i guess he just feels like just sitting without being able to barely move is a great life. i do believe he is nice to them, but the not being able to move is what gets me, and also that they are separated from their mothers...) Since male chickens aren't needed for egg producing they get disposed of or sent to farms that grow chickens for meat. Some of them get disposed of by being thrown into garbage bags and die by suffocation.

The way most of the dairy cows and chickens live just sucks. Like, for real, it's not what God intended. The standard American diet uses too much of these products. Years ago, before factory farming, people ate meat once a day and butter was used sparingly and you got whatever eggs your own chickens laid or whatever you could afford to buy from the local farmer. Chickens weren't "shocked" (put in darkness and not given food) so that their bodies would produce more eggs for awhile long before being killed.

Slaughterhouses are gross. Stun guns don't always work and animals are sliced open still alive. People that work in slaughterhouses get injured and die from falling into dangerous equipment. The speed they must work at to keep up with their quotas is mostly to blame.

And then there's the shit. Literally, shit. Animals produce a lot of it and it produces a lot of greenhouse gas. It gets into our water and even into the meat you eat. One of my favorite quotes from Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is "The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms : coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat.

Some people aren't fazed by killing an animal. I don't, personally, understand that, but i realize it's why the motto "meat is murder" and the like are not going to change someone's mind to stop eating meat. I am not like a lot of Portland vegans and vegans worldwide in that i'm not eating vegan for animal liberation. I don't mind people owning animals and i don't think animals are just like us humans. I don't put them on the same "level" as humans. But I do have compassion for them and animal cruelty is something i find despicable. It's a living creature and if you're a christian or whatever and believe that God put you on this earth and you have dominion over all the animals, it doesn't mean you can treat animals like shit. Shooting squirrels for the hell of it with your bee-bee gun is something i'll never understand. Putting a lizard in an emptied tennis ball and lighting it on fire....these are things boys, like my cousin benji, did. I don't know where they get this from....

I always find it humorous when people find out your veg and they get all worried about your protein intake or whatever. It's like, hello, my diet even if low in protein (which it's not) would be 10 times better than what you eat. i eat plenty of grains, legimes, veggies, fruit, nuts, etc. You, with your white bread devoid of any nutrition, your 40 oz of soda a day, your processed cheese and your red meat full of saturated fat is not healthy and you're not getting all the nutrition you should be getting......We don't need as much protein as some might think and i eat tofu and beans, i'm just fine. So just lay the fuck off. Thanks!

Vegan MoFo

Last year Isa Chandra Moskowitz, of the Veganomicon, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook trifecta, started the Vegan Month of Food blog challenge. It's not really a challenge per se....but for me it definitely will be. I have been a terrible blogger and have only been posting once a month. With Vegan MoFo the guidelines this year are for the blogger to post every weekday during October. I'll most likely do the weekend as part of that and take off 2 weekdays.

"Join us for VeganMofo - the Vegan Month Of Food. The idea is to write as much as you can for the month of October about vegan food. The blog entries can be about anything food related - your love of tongs, your top secret tofu pressing techniques, the first time your mom cooked vegan for you, vegan options in Timbuktu - you get the idea."

For more info and the list of participants: http://theppk.com/blog/2008/09/16/veganmofo-is-upon-us/

So make sure you check all the blogs out, it's going to be fun to see what everyone talks about and what ideas they come up with to talk about....Let me know if you have any splendid ideas or anything you wish for me to talk about.

Galaxy Brand Hummus

My good friend Jess (letsgetsconed blog, see links on right) gave me the Spicy Chipotle Hummus as a housewarming present. i was kinda worried that it would be too spicy for my taste buds. I have been trying to create a higher tolerance for spicy and i feel like i've improved, but i still feel like a wuss. Especially compared to my roommate Missy and our friend Matthew. They are spicy freaks!

So the other night I finally found the courage to open it up and taste it. It was delicious! I almost ate the whole container in one go. But i controlled myself and stopped. There was just something about the taste that i found very enjoyable. The first bite, honestly, left a weird taste in my mouth, but after that second bite I was smitten. It was just the right amount of spice. Any spicier and I think it would've kicked my ass.

I'm not sure how much this stuff costs, but since it seems to be mainly sold in grocery stores such as Albertsons (in Florida) and Safeway (Northern California) I have hope that it's affordable. I also don't know where it's sold here in Portland since there's no mention on the website. I look forward to tasting the Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic kinds as well. I do love flavored hummus!

Sweet & Sara S'mores

I had heard of these S'mores for a long time, but every time I had gone to buy one at Food Fight they only had the Peanut Butter type and I was just really wantin' the Original. I love peanut butter and chocolate together as much as the next person, perhaps even more, but when it comes to a s'more I want to keep it simple.
The other week I finally got one. They cost $4.00, which, yeah, is a lot, but everything in moderation (including pricey things), right?
It seems like my expectations were set too high. Not that I wasn't amazed at the marshmallow part. I feel like it's a big joke or something, like how can it be vegan? It's soo marshmallow-y! And I liked it, but I didn't $4 love it. Maybe there wasn't enough chocolate? The graham cracker part was crumbly, but that's to be expected when it sits in the fridge and has come across the U.S. for out tasting pleasure.
I have had the coconut marshmallows that Sweet & Sara make and they were awesome. I think what i would prefer to do is just buy some of their marshmallows and make my own s'mores. Or make Isa & Terry's S'mores Cupcakes (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World), which are tasty-delicious.

The inside:

Tubesdays....my favorite day...

My friend Jess(of GetSconed!) and her boyfriend occasionally meet up with friends at the hipster haven Tube on Tuesdays, therefore dubing it Tubesday. The place is downtown right down the block from Dixie Tavern and across Burnside from Dante's and Voodoo donut. I remember going into the bar before they renovated and made it bigger. you literally felt you were a hamster in a tube. It's still small but it's do-able. The bartenders are usually hipster hot and pretty friendly (which kinda defies the hipster's stereotype). They have the latest happy hour that i know, besides that of Portland City Grill. It's from 5-10pm and the well drinks are $2 and they're strong. They have a lot of vegan items, my favorite being the Professor McGonickle. It's a hot ham and cheese on an english muffin for $2 during happy hour. i think they misspelled McGonagall (it's from Harry Potter, y'all) because it may have originally contained a pickle....but that's me guessing. Maybe whoever named it doesn't actually read Harry Potter books...or can't spell......or maybe it has nothing to do with Harry Potter after all.....

Anyways, the piece of "cheese" on it is ridiculously small but it doesn't take away from the tastiness of the sandwich. i could eat those things all damn day long. They seem to use the ham log (that can be bought at Food Fight Grocery) and the menu says it comes with chipotle veganaise, but i would swear that wasn't true. there's something that kinda looks -not tastes- like balsamic vinegar on the muffin. It's just heaven...

They do serve a regular ham and cheese that comes on foccacia bread and with a good sized salad for $7. Here's the menu(click on it to enlarge):


and happy hour:

"FUNNY HOUR" MENU:

PROFESSOR MCGONICKLE MUFFIN - Sliced fake ham, vegan cheese, & our homemade chipotle veganaise on an english muffin, $2

VEGAN TACO - Our homemade tofu scramble in a grilled flour tortilla, topped with shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes, $2

GHOST DOG - Real or fake dog on a bun with kethcup and mustard, $2

CHIPS AND SALSA, $2

POTATO CHIPS, $2

ZESTY TUBE PASTA SALAD - Big bowl of our amazing homemade pasta salad, $4


DINNER:

GHOST DOG - Real or fake dog on a bun with kethcup and mustard, $4.50

VEGAN MEATBALL SAMMY - Meatless meatballs with our homemade marinara sauce on a grilled hoagie roll, served with homemade pasta salad, $7

VEGGIE HAM AND CHEESE - Grilled slices of fake ham, vegan cheese, & our homemade chipotle veganaise on grilled focaccia, served with side salad, $7

TUBE SALAD - Tossed salad with our homemade Goddess dressing, cucumbers, carrots, red onions, tomatoes, and slices of grilled fake ham or real turkey served with focaccia, $7

VEGAN SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS - Just like mom makes, only with meatless meatballs. Served with grilled focaccia and side salad, $7

TOFU SCRAMBLE DINNER PLATE - Our homemade tofu scramble with veggies, served with zesty pasta salad and grilled focaccia, $7

VEGAN TACO DINNER PLATE- Our homemade tofu scramble in a grilled flour tortilla, topped with shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes, served with chips, salsa, and side salad, $7


and now that i've read the menu i'm kinda suspicious of the veganness of the ham. they call it "veggie ham and cheese" but on most of the other vegan menu items they straight up call it "vegan"....jess, have you asked them about the ham?

The Tube is also popular with the vegans because the serve a vegan White Russian. I have never got this because it's $4-5 and i always end up with a $2 Cranberry Vodka with lime. I have heard mixed reviews of the White Russians, but i would still like to try them some day....

Blossoming Lotus Ice Cream

It must be summer, i'm doing another post about ice cream. This isn't something you can buy anywhere. This is pretty much a restaurant review, but i don't care. Blossoming Lotus is a all vegan organic restuarant here in Portland (though the original restaurant is in hawaii somewheres). It's inside a yoga studio in the Pearl district and they serve vegan soft serve. my gosh, it's a delight! They only have one flavor at a time and it's not surprising when you get there and they're out or the machine's not working. It's $1 for 2 oz which is just right in terms of size. It's unbelievably rich and creamy for vegan ice cream. The flavors they've had:

Chai- i haven't had this but i want to hella bad (yes, i used the word "hella"...)
UPDATE 8-11-07: i tried their Chai today(this is what is pictured above). there was some flavor in it i was totally not liking. kinda like anise or black licorce. my sister disagreed with that assessment and really liked it and said that it tasted like real Chai tea (as in not like Oregon Chai).

Chocolate- yum

Vanilla Bean- at events they usually serve this with chocolate chips and hazelnut pieces and it's so good!

Orangesicle- they called it something else, i normally don't like this flavor but it really grew on me when i had it the second day in a row

Raspberry- i don't like this flavor in anything i eat, but i tried my friends in it was more like a *hint* of raspberry and it wasn't so bad, tasted more like vanilla ice cream with taste of berry

Strawberry-Kiwi- or something, i don't know, it was a mix of fruit and it was weird and i didn't care for it...i don't really like when they have berry flavors b/c really i could go to any gelato place around here and have one of their vegan flavors, which is always fruit.

Banana Nut- tasted like Banana Bread and it was delicious.

Chocolate Cherry- chocolate, which is always good, with a hint of cherry.

Vanilla Almond- good, but i prefer the pure Vanilla Bean


My sister and i really wish they would do 2 things:
1. open an only soft serve place in the SE
2. get a machine that can do 2 flavors, with chocolate all the time (also so you could swirl!)

if you're in Portland, go get you some!