In the City by the Bay, Day 3.

I spent the first half of our third day wandering around Haight-Ashbury, buying pretty things and taking pictures of weird hippie shit (says the weird hippie), occasionally texting Red when something was especially noteworthy (Tibetan shop, shrine to Jimi Hendrix). It was a lot of walking.

I bought lovely glass ear plugs here. It’s hard to tell, but the front of the shop is made of mirror mosaics!

Then my feet were tired, but Golden Gate Park appeared so I could sit down and eat a Larabar.




After I bid the Haight farewell, I got on the wrong bus for Japantown. This situation happened to me with considerable frequency during the week, because Baltimore has no useful mass transit to speak of and my sense of direction could charitably be described as poor. No thanks to my own navigational skills, I finally made it to this stupid-expensive store that my friend Liz wanted me to say hi to for her. I was nowhere cool enough to be in there, and they didn’t allow photos, so I sort of felt like I’d wasted a trip, but what the hell. It was a new experience.

After I made it back to the hotel, Red and I skipped dinner in favor of healthy snacks because we were headed to Yoga on the Labyrinth! I was more excited about this than about any other part of the trip. If I’d done nothing else that week but stay in our hotel room and read, I would have counted San Francisco a success. I first learned about Yoga on the Labyrinth over the summer, and filed it in the back of my mind as something awesome to do one day. As our trip plans firmed up, I coincidentally found myself reading a book by the instructor, Darren Main—Red’s parents had seen two of his books on my Amazon wish list and given them to me for Christmas. Everything clicked and I realized that I’d be able to take a class with Darren and thank him for his inspiring work! I was a very happy yogini!

Of course Red and I had brought our yoga mats, but his buddy Tony was joining us too and had never done yoga. Luckily, he found a cheap Old Navy mat and grabbed a space next to us. The class was great and very interesting, not least because marble floors are less than supportive, even with a mat! It was so interesting to watch my practice change with the environment and remember that this experience was one I might never have again, so I’d better stay mindful and release my expectations for myself. On top of that, I counted over 100 people stretched out on the floor. 100 people in one class! That’s every yoga teacher’s dream!

Before and after class, we had a chance to look around the cathedral and take pictures. It is gorgeous. I felt so peaceful and centered there, surrounded by all the serenity. I introduced myself to Darren, told him about the serendipity of our trip and my in-laws’ gift of his books, and he was very welcoming and gracious. If I’m ever in San Francisco again, I’ll be sure to take another of his classes.

Lovely Keith Haring triptych in the AIDS Chapel.

AIDS Memorial Quilt. My camera doesn’t do the colors justice.

Thus ended Day 3—on a nice little yoga high and with no concrete plans for Day 4. Whatever could I have found to do?

In the City by the Bay, Day 2.

So, when we last parted, Red and I were sleeping off our jetlag in the beautiful but chilly city of San Francisco. The next morning, I had a muffin for breakfast (maybe coffee too? I managed to keep it to once a day despite the Starbucks in the lobby), kissed Red goodbye as he headed to work, then wandered down the street to the Contemporary Jewish Museum. I have an honorary Jewish grandma who is totally awesome, and she wanted me to go there and send her a postcard. I was happy to find such a cool museum within walking distance. I learned a ton, too. Plus, where else are you going to find an exhibit called Black Sabbath? It was in this amazing room called the Yud Gallery, which is filled with diamond-shaped windows. The light was incredible. Really, the whole place is fascinating from an architectural perspective as well as religious and historical ones. Take a look!

The trees decorated with papers were part of an exhibit.

Lunch, glorious lunch. We had the fortune (good or bad, you decide) to be just down the block from a mall. I am apathetic toward malls on my best day, but this mall had a Loving Hut in the food court. Now, I’ve spent enough time as an Internet-savvy vegan to know that Loving Hut elicits strong opinions (I first read about it in VegNews; if that link doesn’t work, try this),but I wanted to experience the weirdness for myself. Anyway, Red and his coworker met me for lunch. Red had, I think, the Grilled Philly Sandwich and I had a bowl of Loving Hut Noodle Soup. Both were good, especially considering the fate of vegans at most food courts. Well played, Supreme Master.

After lunch, I may have walked around a little more, or I may have just chilled out until Red finished work and we went to the MOMA. Damn, you guys, I love a good MOMA. Not as much as Red does, though. My boy is all about his modern art. Check it, he even found Waldo:

Exploded Views by Jim Campbell in the lobby. The photo absolutely does not do it justice:

Random building photos:

Then we were hungry and didn’t feel like wandering far for food on our first full day in the city. This laziness took us to Samovar, and it was kind of the low point of the trip. Hell, at least we punched that ticket early. It wasn’t bad, for sure, but it wasn’t what we expected, either. It was cramped and noisy and expensive. It’s nice that you can order a “tea service” meal, which is a themed pairing of food and tea. It’s not nice when the tea tastes like feet and you’re afraid to ask for sugar because they obviously frown on that sort of thing, but you damn well drink every drop because you threw down a Jackson for it. If you’re still interested, I had the Chinese Service (to be fair, the food was good) and Red had the veganized Paleolithic Service, which was rather on the bland side.

The teapots were charming, though.

Note: Weird spacing and wonky photo alignment brought to you by Blogger’s new interface. Thanks, Supreme Master Google.

In the City by the Bay, Day 1.

There are many perks of being married to my husband, but one of the most interesting is that I frequently get to tag along when his job takes him to new cities. Some I can’t join in on (I wasn’t sad to miss Middle of Nowhere, Georgia, especially because I got to stuff my face with popcorn and watch Scarface and then Red came home a day early to surprise me on my birthday), but so far I’ve been able to experience Chicago, Orlando, and now San Francisco. The best is when he’s free to wander the city with me, but even on my own, it’s still great.

I was especially psyched for San Francisco because I have friends there. Friends! The best part of any new city! I wouldn’t have to figure it all out for myself! I had ready-made tour guides waiting to feed and entertain me. On top of that, San Francisco is fantastically vegan-friendly, so I didn’t feel pressured to schedule every snack and meal. (All the same, we bought a guidebook and I printed VegNews’ list of top eats in the Mission.) We still packed trail mix and bars and little things like that to sustain us, and for breakfast, I baked up Vegan Brunch’s Cocoa-Raspberry Muffins (with bonus chocolate chips, because you have to) and Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins. They survived our first flight in fine style but several were smashed in the overhead bin during the second. Damn, muffins. They were still delicious, though.

Travel days are almost always a waste, so there’s not much to talk about there. Our first flight was half-empty, which meant that not only was I able to stretch out and snooze with my head in Red’s lap (he is an excellent pillow, in case you were wondering), I could have had an entire row all. to. myself. I know, right? When was the last time you weren’t jam-packed into an airplane?

On our second flight, I was sandwiched between Red and a gentleman who was headed to Santa Cruz on business, that business being a medical marijuana dispensary. This conversation served basically to prepare us for the hella amount of weed we would run into in San Francisco. As I’ve said before, I don’t care one way or the other, but it was profoundly odd to be walking down the street and get a massive secondhand hit. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or bothered, so I mostly settled for amiably confused.

By the time we got to our hotel, it was about 2pm California time, which meant our stomachs thought we were just about due for dinner. Red had eaten less than I had during our flights, so he was fading fast. Friends to the rescue! I hit up my girl B, writer, ecofeminist vegan, and recent San Francisco transplant, and she and her man scooped us up in their pimp ride and got us fed at the St. Francis Fountain and Diner. I was super-excited to finally meet them in person. (If I offended anyone with my use of the world “pimp,” you were probably overdue for it if you’ve been reading the blog for any length of time. Plus, that car deserved a mention.)

I didn’t get a picture of him, but while we waited for our table, we had the chance to snorgle an adorable blue pit bull puppy as he and his person tried to go for a walk. I say “tried” because it was clear they couldn’t get more than a few steps before being accosted by loving strangers wanting to nom on his silky baby ears. Red and I missed Lucy already, so it was nice to get a little taste of pibble love on our first day away from her.

We also got in some good hipster-watching. Left Coast, I treasure you.

Then! Food! I chowed down on the Vegan Thing, which is a pile of home fries, Daiya, guacamole, scallions, and salsa. It is assuredly not good for you, but it is very very delicious and it hit the motherloving spot after our long-ass day. I managed to stop at half so I could walk back to the car, but it was tough. Red enjoyed a Devil Burger, which involves grilled onions and seitan (two of his favorite things), so he was pleased.



After that, our awesome friends dropped us off at our hotel so we could pass out and let our body clocks reset. Thanks, awesome friends!

Slinking back into the sunlight….

Um…hi!

How’d that happen?

Truly, I’m not sure how I’ve neglected my poor little blog for over four months. Even worse, I’ve neglected you, darling readers. I would offer amusing pictures of animals talking in all-caps and beg for forgiveness, but I don’t deserve it.

The worst part is…

I kind of didn’t miss blogging.

There. I said it. I got swept up in holiday silliness (and seriousness), enjoyed not having to remember to take pictures of my food, and just plain slacked off. No major crisis precipitated any of this; I just let life get the better of me. I had yoga trainings and work trainings and my blog reader kept filling up and overwhelming me and then my favorite coworker left (that lucky bastard) so I had his work to do too and I just got so tired. So tie-tie, even. I think I spent whole days mindlessly playing Bejeweled.

And then I started feeling like I didn’t really have anything to add to the conversation anymore, since my photos generally blow (and isn’t that what people come to food blogs for?) and the vegan blogosphere has totally expanded to include, like, three unknown galaxies of awesomeness. I mean, I know my awesomeness is its very own inimitable brand, but even the knowledge of my own special-snowflake specialness wasn’t enough to drag me back to the keyboard.

But I’m here now.

I’m not promising to be Super Blogger Girl. I might flake out on you again.

But I am going to honest-to-Goddess try to get myself back on a regular posting schedule.

First up: Red’s and my adventures in San Francisco. It wasn’t warm, it wasn’t sunny, but it was sure as hell delicious.

In the meantime, here’s a picture of me doing yoga. My hair’s not pink at the moment, but don’t worry, it will be again. Or maybe blue or green.

I love you all like whoa.

CSA Weeks 21-24: Done and DONE.

Whew! That felt nothing like 24 weeks, darlings. Maybe it was because we only bought a half-share and were therefore less overwhelmed by random produce, but this year’s CSA was much more manageable than last year’s. Let’s see how it wrapped up (spoiler: anticlimactically).

Week 21 didn’t happen because it flipping snowed. In October! I hate the East Coast sometimes. The One Straw crew didn’t feel safe driving to the market, for which I couldn’t blame them. It was the first time in 23 years they missed a summer market day. Everyone stayed home, and we got twice the veggies for Week 22:


There we have some garlic, bok choy, sweet potatoes, multicolored peppers, broccoli, and it looks like some scallions. The bok choy, peppers, scallions, and broccoli went into this lovely stir-fry with some cashews:


I’m sure we added some garlic, too. Garlic is great because it can just hang out in the Crisper and keeps for a nice long while.

We’ve been really into dicing and roasting sweet potatoes this fall. Sometimes I do them plain, with just some olive oil and salt and pepper, and other times I add a little maple syrup and ginger. I can’t remember what I did this time, but it was delicious. Fun fact: roasted sweet potatoes are an excellent breakfast.

Week 23 didn’t happen either, but not because of any shenanigans by Mother Nature. Red and Lucy and I went to the beach because I had a three-day yoga training weekend. It was wonderful and exhausting and we took a huge pan of Vcon’s Pumpkin-Baked Ziti with us so we wouldn’t have to cook. Here’s a picture of my girl meeting the ocean for the first time:


So we got double the veggies for Week 24, which seemed an appropriate way to finish out the season:


So much leafy greenage! We got spinach, mizuna, mustard greens, bok choy, broccoli, and I think that’s it. We got two of a few of those, so forgive me for being a little confused.

We had to make space in the fridge, but in doing so we found some sticky grossness and also some random bits of onion skin and other detritus. So Red brought out the vacuum:


I suppose we didn’t use all the sweet potatoes after all, as we had one left over for to make this soup:


This is Double Mustard Greens and Roasted Yam Soup from Vegan Soul Kitchen. We made it last year and loved it, so I was glad to have it again.

We picked up some carrots and made this stir-fry with the mizuna, some of the broccoli, and one of the heads of bok choy. It doesn’t look like much in the photo, but it was yummy.


When we realized we had missed a bok choy and a head of broccoli, we kicked ourselves, then steamed up the broccoli and sautéed the extra bok choy with some garlic and all that beautiful spinach. Over rice, it made a perfectly simple and satisfying dinner. And thus did our 2011 CSA experience come to an end.

Like I said, this year was much better than last year, but we were still finding our feet then. This year, we’re old pros. I’m very thankful for One Straw. One of the things I love about them, aside from their excellent food, is their communication. Joan is always available to chat on market days, and she sends out emails when there’s something we need to know. I found her CSA wrap-up email especially interesting, because she explained how this year’s cracked-out weather really affected their harvest. We had a super-hot July and then a really rainy September, so the hard winter squash didn’t fare too well. The beets didn’t have a good time of it, either. The spinach was delicious, but it made only infrequent appearances at the market. Because of a lack of sunshine, the broccoli heads were very small (and being broccoli lovers, we noticed). Evidently many East Coast farmers experienced the same conditions, and flooding left some without a harvest at all. This is very sad, because I’m sure they are small family farmers, like One Straw, and the weather determines their livelihoods. It really brings into focus just how interconnected we all are, and I hope next year is kinder to those who dedicate themselves to feeding us healthy, natural food.

Southern-fried Thanksgiving.

I love it when I start a post with an outright lie. We didn’t fry all that much, and certainly didn’t Southern-fry anything, however one does that. We did, however, make a ridiculous amount of delicious food.

Red and I, along with my parents, flew down to Charlotte (remember when I went there?) to spend the holiday o’ gluttony with my sister at her new house. Yay, new house! All that lovely space. I am so jealous. She and her boyfriend have done an admirable job of filling it, though, with the aid of this handsome fellow:



This enormous beast is Sampson, and he is still a puppy. When he finishes growing, I am going to laugh and laugh because he will almost certainly outweigh my sister. He is the sweetest, mellowest dog I’ve ever met—and not even a year old! Lucy is that calm when she’s waking up from anesthesia. We had many snuggles and even let him get up on the couch, which, strictly speaking, he is not allowed to do. He is a beautiful boy.

The day before Thanksgiving, Red and I learned of a new vegetarian restaurant in town. We absolutely had to try it! It’s called Fern, Flavors from the Garden, and you’ll just have to Google it because they’re too new to have an actual website. It is really lovely:

Such a great use for Mason jars.

Felt pockets on the wall! With living plants in them!

They poured us glasses of cucumber water, which is totally delicious and I don’t know why I’ve never made it myself. We started with jalapeño hush puppies (with Daiya, for those of you who worship the stuff), which I loved and I am no great lover of jalapeños, believe me.


Look at my pretty First Chakra Juice:


I know it’s ultra-hippie to have a juice menu named after the chakras, but we just covered them in my recent yoga training weekend, and I have a chakra poster (this one, actually) on my wall at work, and I have a chakra ring that I bought in Salem with my friend Jess, so I guess I am a little ultra-hippie, no? And yes, I brought my yoga mat with me to North Carolina.

My entrée was already vegan, and they veganized Red’s easily. Feast your eyes:

Green Goddess Soup

Warm Kale Salad

It was good we fueled up, because we headed downtown to the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. Red and I can be very snobby East Coasters, but we’ve decided we can visit any city with a modern art museum. Well played, Charlotte. It’s right next to the Mint Museum (which, no, is not about currency), which I visited last time, so there was a nice sense of familiarity. I did not see the sign banning photographs, so I took some.

Me and Marilyn.

The rest of our visit was very domestic, as befits a family holiday. On Thanksgiving, my sister, Red, and I cooked up a storm—no, a goddamn tornado, and I had to stay sober the entire time because it was a very small kitchen for three people and I didn’t want to injure anyone (or, worse, spill my drink). But the day started off right, with these yummy vegan pumpkin cinnamon rolls (made the night before, because can you imagine? you’d have to be up at 4 to have them ready for breakfast):



The recipe is here, and aside from its being a pain in the ass in the way that all cinnamon roll recipes are (knead! rise! roll! slice! roll! rise! KILL ME), I can’t say enough good things about it. The rolls were perfect. The icing recipe looked like it made a vatful, so we halved all the ingredients except for the spices and rum, because my family likes to party.

Release the Kraken!

Most of the day was pretty chill, and we played a very satisfying game of Monopoly. My sister has the set we used as kids, and man, it has survived some craziness. I’m pleased to report that I won, although Red did remarkably well for his first time playing Monopoly ever. We’ll civilize him yet.

Before we started cooking in earnest, we needed appetizers. The omnis had their own stuff, and Red and I made Tami Noyes’ Seitan Veggie Crowns. There’s a reason they were named Vegan.com’s Appetizer of the Year! Go, Tami! BTW, leftover filling mixed with a little extra vegan mayo makes for a delicious sandwich.


Once we started making dinner, it was on like Donkey Kong. We made garlic mashed potatoes (vegan and omni), green bean casserole, bourbon mashed sweet potatoes with pecans, Appetite for Reduction’s Sweet Potato Biscuits, stuffing from a bag (you know you love it too), and Sage and Pumpkin Seed Encrusted Gardein with Cranberry Cabernet Sauce (Gardein’s Thanksgiving menu is off the hook). We used malbec instead of cabernet, and it was a delicious substitution. Even my dad loved the Gardein!

We carved a V in our mashed potatoes so there’d be no confusion.

I was too stuffed to eat dessert, but the day before I’d made the Gingerbread Apple Pie from Vegan with a Vengeance. I made it last year, too, because it is easy and fantastic. Shout-out to Red for his peeling/slicing assistance. Actually, I made two pies—it turns out that the recipe makes one pie when you have a big-ass ceramic pie dish, but two when you’re using disposable grocery-store pie tins. So, a bonus pie! Who could complain? My sister didn’t have maple syrup, so I improvised and used a combination of molasses and rum. Again: Problem? Where? (I forgot to take a picture, so if you want one, it’s in here.) I ate plenty of it the next day, don’t you worry.

No trip to Charlotte is complete without a visit to Lebowski’s, so we made a family pilgrimage there on Black Friday. Vegan White Russians and french fries, you have my heart. I was committed to not buying anything that day, so I guess I failed, but it’s not like I got up at 3am to stand in line with hostile strangers jonesing for a discounted Xbox or something. That shit scares me.

Bar lighting is so flattering.

On Saturday, it was home again, home again. I am so thankful to have been able to spend Thanksgiving with people I love, in a city that cares about its vegans at least a little, remembering what really matters.