The Last VeganMoFo

So this is my 12th post for VeganMoFO. I didn't even do half the month.....but really, i'm not surprised. Or, actually, i should say i am because i didn't think i'd even get through this many.

This is just going to be a spazz post about several different things. Maybe a list of my favorite things...

1. Trader Joe's Very Cherry Chip (actually made by Double Rainbow). This stuff is creamy delicious.

2. Trader Joe's 3 Buck Chuck. Can you beat a $3 bottle of prize winning wine that tastes good? Only if you're in California (where it's $2)

3. Wildwood Garlic Aioli. Currently, you can buy this at the Hollywood Grocery Outlet for $1.29. I like this best when used as a dip for veggies, especially red bell peppers. It's a match made in heaven....

4. Tofutti's Better Than Sour Cream. I put this shit on everything i make. (that is savory...not sweet stuff...) It makes anything i make taste good, magical stuff....

5. Tofu. Gosh, how did i go for so many years without this? Probably because my mom's afraid of it and the first time i tasted it was in Food Prep class in 10th or 11th grade and it was given to me raw.

6. Tube's Vegan Ham and Cheese. It's what my dreams are made of. It's taste is part nostalgia and part hot faux ham and cheese with chipotle vegannaise.

7. Dr. Pepper. I'm a pepper.

8. Vegan Chicken Nuggets from Food Fight! R.I.P. They are no longer available (because they are no longer made), but i still think of them....

9. Sweetpea Baking Co.'s Glazed Donuts. I've mentioned these many times, but there's a reason for that: they're delicious!

10. Apples. Probably my all time favorite fruit. Favorite types being Gala or Honeycrisp. One kind that i won't touch with a 10 foot pole: Red Delicious. Ok, maybe i would if i was tricked and they were baked in something, but damn! the skin of those is drying to the mouth!

11. Chocolate. I'll take it in many forms. My favorite being Missionary truffles, Chocolove Dark Chocolate with Almonds and Cherries, Terra Nostra's Ricemilk Choco with Dark Truffle Center, bits of it in ice cream....

12. Faux sausages. I cut those up and it gives flavor and protein to any veggie saute i make...or pizza....yum....

What are some of yours?

I do hope to blog more than i have. It's been nice having everyone blog so often. There's always something new to read.

Happy Halloween, y'all! Watch out for the poisoned candy!

Would i like to try some chocolate?

I was asked this question. I replied by saying something to the effect of "is the pope catholic?" I'm a bit of a whore when it comes to free samples. Maybe not a whore, because i don't have to actually do anything for it....except talk about it, and that's not even mandatory. 

So the Missionary Chocolates have been around for quite a few months. I believe they officially debuted at the VegFest in May. Jess (of GetSconed) and Webly (of Fueled By Popcorn) invited me to be on their podcast that they were doing for the their collective blog, StumptownVegans. We talked about VegFest, which we had just been to and we oohed and ahhed over the Missionary Chocolate truffles we gotten to taste there. 

They have a lot of flavors and they're sold in various shops here in town in Portland (Food Front and that store in Jantzen Beach that sells local stuff....can't remember the name! it's in the Target building with the carousel and food court...) 

Vanessa kindly dropped off 10 flavors for me to try. I don't know which one i was most excited to try, they all sounded delicious. I had a few friends and coworkers to help me out. (i couldn't do it all myself! they're too rich! it would've taken me a long time to get through them all. ) Almost all the ingredients are local and some are organic, the chocolate is fair trade and they're all handmade. 

Peanut Butter Passion (according to the website it's called Treasures now): i actually couldn't really detect the peanut butter in this, so i wouldn't consider it very "passionate", but that didn't mean it didn't taste good! I thought it was creamy delicious. My friend Anna declared it "fuckin' delicious!" and my roommate Missy said it was rich. 

Boule d' Amandes (Almond Ball): The center of this one was almost fudge-like and it was creamy chocolate goodness. Anna was a fan of the fudgyness and said it was pretty much perfect. Missy really liked the crunch of the nuts that coated the outside of this truffle and i believe it was her favorite.

Meyer Lemon Explosion: The won the award for the #1 People's Choice at the Northwest Chocolate Festival. I wasn't too excited about this one since i'm not big on citrus-y things, but i liked this one. It was surprisingly tasty and it had a nice tart flavor. Anna said it was the perfect amount of tanginess and was clean and refreshing. Missy wasn't a fan and said people with TMJ need to be careful with this one.  :o)

Coconut Haystacks: I thought this one was going to be my favorite, but i was wrong. Don't get me wrong, it was good, there wasn't a bad chocolate in the bunch. I think i just like a creamy/fudgy inside to my truffles and this one had shreds of coconut in it and didn't have as much coconutty flavor as i thought it would. Anna liked it alot, but did wish it had more coconut flavor to it. 

Sweet Raspberry Heart: I took this to work with me. I have a gluten-free coworker that i thought would enjoy trying out some chocolates (these are all gluten-free....i'm not sure how many chocolates actually have gluten in them, but it's nice when they're labeled as such). I liked this one more than i thought i would because i'm not a big fan of raspberries and mixing fruit with chocoate(though i have been known to love cherries in my chocolate). Vanessa told me they simmer the berries for 6 hours and then mix it with chocolate ganache. Another coworker of mine really liked the flavor of this one and said she couldn't tell it was vegan. 

Dark Chocolate Delights: this was the other one i took to work and my gluten free coworker liked this one a lot. This may be my favorite. I was told by Vanessa that it's usually a little different but i can't remember how. Maybe something about how it's not usually as soft? I liked that it didn't have a shell around it, just some cocoa. So it was like eating a ball of fudge. 

Smooth Espresso Spheres: Smooth, indeed. A little more coffee taste than i'd like but maybe if there was more chocolate i would like it better. Though my roommate Missy had the exact opposite reaction, she wished for more coffee flavor and chunks of bean. She really liked this one. Our friend Corinn said it was a smooth mix of coffee and chocolate.

Peppermint Perfection: i thought this one tastes like an Andes mint, which i kinda miss eating as a vegan. It was Corinn's favorite of the ones she tried and she said it was a good combination of flavors. 

Ginger: Tasted like the pickled ginger that you get with sushi.....that's all i could really taste. I couldn't really taste the chocolate part. Not bad, but not something i'm looking for in chocolate. Missy, on the other hand, said "OMG"....yeah, she liked it. She likes ginger a lot more than i do.

Cinnamon & Chipotle: Spicy! Tastes like burning! ok, it's not that bad, but i sat there kinda waving my hand at my mouth until the burning stopped. Missy liked this one, subtle and delicious. This is a girl that uses Aardvark Sauce on everything, so it was right up her alley.

These were really good chocolates and for about $4 each, a good treat when you want or need one. You can really tell they are high quality and made with really good ingredients.  I look forward to some of the other flavors, such as the seasonal Champagne and the Black Cherry Bombs. 

 

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!

Waffles and Me

I've posted about waffles before on here. It's not my favorite breakfast food, but when it comes to quick and easy, frozen waffles are just the manwhores of breakfast foods. Especially when someone else is making them for you....and adding maple "butter" and vegan sausage. Then it's just flippin' golden! Look how happy Katie is!



Yesterday Katie (of Sweetpea Baking Co) and i went to the Flavour Spot cart at N. Fremont and Mississippi (the other location is somewhere on Lombard, google if you want specifics, i'm unable to do links...). We met up with our friends Kevin (www.tofuligans.com), Jeff, and Susie. Kevin is currently visiting from the great north (aka Canadia.....yeah, Canadia) to do photography for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's new brunch book (yay!). Jeff is a recent transplant from....Iowa? This here is Susie, a recent transplant from Vancouver...Washington. Heh....She's into science and molecules and how to make vegan whip cream.(http://parsnipparsimony.wordpress.com/)


Anyways, back to food....

I had been hearing about this food cart for a very long time, but it's quite far for me to go just to get a waffle, no matter how good that waffle is. I finally went a few months ago when i was house/dogsitting for the Hooten's, who live out near the Lombard location (and also the Fremont/Mississippi location wasn't open just yet). I fell pretty hard for this delightful mix of flavors and textures. I had to go again the next day. And then again a few days later....The wait can be a little long at times. The cost is $4.50, which isn't bad.

Bellies full of goodness:

My First MoFo Blog....a day late...

Yeah, it didn't happen yesterday. So sue me.

This first post will be about my veg story. Back in high school, my sister, who was 3 grades ahead of me, took a Food Prep class where she got interested in food and somehow (i never actually asked...) got interested in vegetarianism. She stopped eating red meat, which was a big deal in our family full of deer hunters. Me and sister didn't exactly get along until after she left for college, but she's always influenced me. I don't remember her telling me about why i shouldn't eat red meat, but it got in my brain. One day during summer school when i was on break at McDonald's having my usual cheeseburger (plain, as always) and i was eating it in the way i had since i was young. I eat about half of it and then i pull the bun off and just eat the meat and cheese. When i pulling the bread off i saw one of those weird slimy, brown "slugs" that gets on hamburgers and just got totally grossed out and vowed not to eat red meat anymore. This was big for me, it cut out a lot of favorite meals: Poor Man's Steak, Arby's roast beef sandwiches, deli roast beef sandwiches, this one casserole my mom makes.....and, of course, cheeseburgers. I believe i even started calling myself a vegetarian at this point, which now makes me wince and laugh at myself.

i continued to eat any other kind of meat for the next few years. My sister eventually became a pescatarian (vegetarian that eats fish), which she still is to this day. I worked Chick-Fil-A as a senior in high school and definitely got my fill of their chicken nuggets, which were my favorite growing up. I was never grossed out by white meat, which is why i continued eating it. i'm still not grossed out by white meat, cooked anyways.

I was in Germany for a year from Aug 2002-Aug 2003 and decided to be pescatarian (but mainly veg) while there so as to not worry about the meat situation, they eat some weird meat over there. I worked kitchens while there and i once had to cut up some bloodwurst, which was disgusting! Also, i prepped bread for the old people at a nursing home i worked at and one person, just one, wanted schmerwurst (known in america as braunschweiger, it's smearable meat), which made me gag every time.

I ate chicken once during that year, when i was out dining with an american friend of mine. when i came back home, i ate chicken once and decided to give it up altogether. well, except seafood, which i clung to. i'm one of those people that consider seafood differently than land animals. Some people don't get this, and i understand that.

I was living in Sarasota with my parents for over a year and working at a small health food store. I wanted to go vegan then but at the time i had access to free, recently-out-of-date yogurt and eggs. soon after moving here to Portland, i stopped eating seafood. i moved in with a vegan friend and that's when i became the vegan i am today. i'm not 100%, there are times where i will eat dairy and, honestly, i don't feel like explaining the various situations that i do.
oh, and i'll eat honey. i would kill a bee and you can't torture them, like cutting off their tails, debeaking them, etc. that's how i see it anyways....