What I Did Ate On My Summer Vacation

Yeah, so our San Francisco trip was almost a month ago, but work and general summer shenanigans (i.e. lounging about the apartment in my underwear) have kept me from updating this here web log. Rest assured, my delay in posting about our trip was not for a lack of tasty foodstuffs.

The Metro Hotel, our home away from home.

BBQ seitan cheesesteak from Jay's

Pizza with Cheezly from Amici's. Yeah, so I don't get the big deal about Cheezly. I mean, it was good, but to me it didn't taste any different than Follow Your Heart. Which is fine because I really like FYH, but I'm just sayin'.

Lemon chicken (vegan, of course) from Golden Era

Vermicelli with fried rolls and tofu from Golden Era - totally worth the terrifying walk through the Tenderloin to get there.

I haven't heard particularly good things about Herbivore but since it was mere blocks away from our hotel, we ate breakfast there a couple of times. There were some hits as well as some misses.
The hits:
French toast - as French toast goes, this was sort of perfect, I've gotta say.

Pesto scramble

The misses:
Pancakes - these were nice and thick but virtually flavorless

Southwestern scramble - this wasn't bad, but mostly because anything is good if you cover it in guacamole.

We also patronized the tiny and adorable Weird Fish on two different occasions: once for brunch and once to meet a friend for lunch.
Capp St. Potatoes - smothered in vegan cheese and sour cream, salsa, and green onions

The pancakes were on the thin side but had a delicious, old-school diner taste.

Buffalo tofu. These were okay, but here in Denver we're spoiled by the amazing seitan buffalo wings from Watercourse/City O' City, to which these paled in comparison.

Seitan fish and chips with vegan ranch. Holy fried, Batman! This was delicious but was a bit more fried food than I can handle in one meal, even when shared with my husband.

Raw strawberry cheesecake from Cafe Gratitude

Vegetarian platter from Axum. Best Ethiopian food I've ever had.

Ethiopian beer!

My dude still managing to look smokin' with a face full of messy Ethiopian food.

Vegan truffles and espresso from a little truffle shop on Divisidero near our hotel

We also had some amazing Japanese food at Cha-Ya and delicious ice cream from Maggie Mudd (okay...several delicious ice creams as well as a milkshake) that I failed to snap pictures of. We walked all over the city, went to the beach and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time (we're east coast kids), toured Alcatraz, and had a total blast. I must say, though, that I was happy to return home to my dog and my beloved city. And my kitchen!

If you are going to San Francisco...

...Be sure to bake some peanut butter blondies for your friends who will be dog sitting for you. These rich, fudgy morsels of peanut butter goodness come from the upcoming Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, with a sprinkle of bittersweet chocolate chips subbed for peanuts on top (because what the hell, right?) The hubs and I are leaving tomorrow to eat our way through the City by the Bay for the next couple of days, so stay tuned for what promises to be some killer food porn. Oh yeah, and I guess we might do some other stuff too.

Before I leave you, check out the shameless begging I had to endure while photographing the blondies:

I miss that little beast already.

Raw Tacos and Pretty Days

The weather here in Denver has been delightfully warm - perhaps even hot by some standards, but I'm from Florida so I laugh in the face of low 80s with no humidity. The result of this weather, in addition to running more often and sleeping with the windows open, is that I've been craving cool, refreshing meals. Enter raw foods. I recently made raw tacos using red cabbage leaves as the shells and filled them with raw corn salsa (Yellow Rose Recipes) and an almond cheeze that I based on a recipe from Vegan Fusion. Topped with lettuce and cilantro, it was a fresh, satisfying meal. Some avocado would have also made a lovely addition.

Another warm-weather perk: hiking with my husband and our friends.
Shawn, Norton, and Lacy on Mount Sanitas

In conclusion, I'm looking forward to a beautiful summer (my first spent living outside of Florida) filled with delicious eats and outdoor activities.

Reason #346 Why Denver is Awesome

Vegan BBQ chicken pizza from The Rebellion. The clincher: it's cheap, too. Word to your mother.

Cookies for My Homegirls

Chocolate-and-rainbow-chip cookies for my mama

Since Mother's Day will soon be upon us, let me take a moment to tell you about my own mother. She is an incredibly sweet, loving, selfless, supportive, empathetic, badass chick. She reads like a fiend and, like all the women in her family, is batshit crazy (but in a good way - I mean, unless you cross her, and then she's apt to cut a bitch). And it is her who I have to thank for my stunning good looks and ravenous sweet tooth (thanks, Mom).

For Mother's Day I always used to make her a big brunch, but now that I live 1800 miles away, a care package will have to do. I sent her the above cookies (my regular chocolate chip recipe with some rainbow chips thrown in for festivity) and a couple of books that Shawn and I thought she'd like. Dessert and reading material are a surefire way to my mama's heart.

I also recently did some baking for the other important lady in my life: my dog, Dobby. Shawn and I adopted her from a shelter in 2003 when she was about a year and a half old. Not a day goes by where I don't thank various deities that this smelly beast is a part of our lives. We don't know her exact birthday, but we know it's probably somewhere around this time of year, so last weekend I made cookies just for her.
Peanut-butter-carob-chip cookies for the Dobster

When I remember her sweet, scrappy face looking back at us from behind those bars at the shelter as she stood on her hind legs, imploring us to love her, it makes me want to spoil her rotten. And so that is what I do, and that is what every animal deserves.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms, whether your children are of the human or furry variety.

Paninies and Cupcakes and Bike Rides, Oh My

Cheesy panini: the grilled cheese sammy's more sophisticated cousin

I make a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches (with homemade cheeze filling, not the store-bought stuff) because they're cheap, easy, and I always have the ingredients on hand. Fortunately, my husband never seems to tire of them. I recently mixed it up a little and made them into paninies with roasted red pepper and fresh basil, brushed with olive oil and grilled on the grill pan. The cheese was modified from the grilled cheeze recipe in Vegan Vittles. The result was the grilled, gooey perfection you see above.

In other grub-related news, my husband's office threw a party for the opening day of baseball season (complete with one of those hot dog rollers, no shit) and his boss asked me to bake something. I'm not really a sports fan, but I am a fan of baked goods and themed food, so I was happy to oblige. Hence these cupcakes, based on the fauxstesses from Vegan with a Vengeance:
Because of the white-on-black coloring, they actually looked more like footballs, but no one seemed to care.
That's that money shot, baby.

Some other things I've recently shoved into my pie hole:
Scrambled tofu with with chickpea gravy

Curried chickpea patties (a tester for Joanna) with peach mango salsa

Wait, don't leave! I'm not done with you yet, my little pretties. You may already know that Josh Hooten is riding his bike the 600 miles from Portland,OR to Orland,CA to raise money for Farm Sanctuary in May. His goal is to reach $10,000 and he's more than halfway there. You can lend your support to this worthiest of causes and awesomest of dudes by donating here. Any little bit helps, so there's no shame in donating five or ten bucks. However, if you wanted to sell a kidney or take out a second mortgage on your home in order to facilitate a mega-huge donation, I'm pretty sure that would skyrocket your status to Level 20 Vegan - even if you're not actually vegan. Read about Josh's preparation for the ride here: Bike Ride For Animals.

Did you know that it snows in Colorado?

Blizzard beginnings, from my bedroom window

Just when I thought spring had finally sprung here in Denver, we were hit by a blizzard. Being a native Floridian, blizzards have always seemed something of a myth to me, simply a hyperbolic way to describe, you know, a bunch of snow. Turns out they really exist, and once my husband made it back from work after being sent home early and braving the interstate, we had a cozy day lazing about with our dog and watching the snow pile up outside.

Two days later and just in time for the weekend, the roads were clear and the sun was out, so we went with some friends to have amazing vegan pho at Pho Duy.

Between the sun and nice, hot bowls of pho, we were sufficiently thawed to take a spur-of-the-moment detour for some ice cream at Sweet Action, a new ice cream parlor on Broadway. (I'm still incredulous of the fact that I now live somewhere where I don't have to drive an hour to get decent vegan food at a restaurant, much less be able to impulsively stop for ice cream at an ice cream shop.) All of their ice cream is homemade and they always have a couple of vegan flavors, as well as honkin' vegan ice cream sandwiches in their freezer.
Vegan ice cream sammich and a cup of coffee, with coconut lemongrass ice cream hiding out in the background

I have always generally tried to cook healthful meals based around whole foods, but I've been focusing on this even more lately in an effort to combat all of the less-than-wholesome foods we've been eating out. (Pizza, milkshakes, and seitan buffalo wings, anyone?) On the baking front, I'm toying with a few recipes but none are quite ready to be revealed to the masses*.

*My three readers

I'll leave you with some recent testers from Isa and Terry's upcoming Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.
Naked figs, chopped and ready to be made into...

Soft Whole Wheat Fig Bars (these put any store-bought fig bar to shame)

Big Fat Rice Krispy Squares - just like your mom used to make for your class in elementary school. Except, you know, without the ground up cow bones.