i have a serious brain disease. please bring me a cat.
This past weekend I missed a quick trip to Asheville because I had to study for an exam on food safety. It’ll be another week before I get the results, but I’m pretty sure I aced it. Kevin was a sweetie and brought me back a box of chocolates from French Broad Chocolates. They’ve been delightful. I’m not sure which is my favorite yet. I guess I’ll just have to keep eating to figure that out. And of course, all of these are vegan.
September has apparently been the month that treats come great distances to end up in my pie hole. First it was Voodoo Doughnuts delivered all the way from Portland, Oregon. Here is Chik-o-stik and something coconutty:
Then Kevin was in Las Vegas for work. You know what Las Vegas means…Ronald’s Doughnuts! I was too busy stuffing a vegan boston creme doughnut in my face to take a picture, but you can check them out at that link. So, yeah, I’ve never been to Las Vegas or Portland, but I’ve sampled of their doughnuts. How cool is that?
But wait, I’m not done. Last week, Danielle brought us back these Vegan Treats cakes from NYC. Now don’t judge it’s appearance. It did get knocked around a little in its little container, but it ate up just fine.
Hooray for well-traveled, treat-totin’ friends!
Wedding, monuments, art, yada yada yada. I think what most people reading this want to see is the food porn. If you want to see that other stuff too, it’s in my flickr account.
We landed Friday afternoon and after we got settled into the hotel, went out in search of food before meeting up with everyone at the Brickskeller. Teaism in Dupont Circle turned out to be one of the options in between the two, so that’s where we went. They had a few vegan options right off the menu. I got the bento box and Kevin got a seitan stir fry.
When the food came out, it looked small to me at first. Until I started eating. It was deceptively small looking food. Turned out to be really filling. The bento box had grilled veggies, edamame, sweet potatoes, brown rice and tofu. The grilled veggies and edamame were served cold. I liked that, but I know it might put off some people. Here are a couple of dark, blurry pics along with a middle finger for anyone that has a problem with that.
Saturday, we had certificates for breakfast at the hotel. Fruit, peanut butter and jelly sammiches, coffee, juice. Standard hotel stuff. We had lunch at Java Green. I try to get to Java Green every time I’m in DC. This particular day part of the proceeds went to Compassion Over Killing. Bonus! I felt a little carb heavy from breakfast, so I opted for the Chili “Chicken” Wrap and a live juice mix, I forget which one. The wrap turned out to be crazy hot. Someone got extra happy with the rooster sauce, I think. Whew! I like hot, but wow. I think Kevin’s sammich was “chicken” and “cheese” on a ciabatta roll.
I should have taken pics of our food at the wedding. We had cucumber and avocado sushi rolls and a tofu veggie stir fry that the made up for us special. It was really nice of them to cater to us like that.
Sunday morning we headed to Sticky Fingers for breakfast. We split a soft, fluffy and fresh cinnamon roll. Then Kevin had pancakes and I tried the grilled cheese made with Daiya. I had it on whole greain bread, so that makes it healthy, right? To me, Daiya has the tastiest vegan cheddar style cheese I’ve had yet. Plus it gets all melty like Teese does. Can’t wait until Cosmo’s has it in. Also, there’s a pizza chain with some Metro Atlanta locations that is going to start carrying Daiya.
Apparently most vegan friendly non-asian restaurants near us Sunday were closed. So we ended up at Pizzeria Paradiso. I think I liked it more than Kevin did. The brick oven did lovely things for the crust. They didn’t have any fake meaty toppings, so we went with basil, red onions and red bell peppers. I think they were using Follow Your Heart cheese. It couldn’t have been too bad. We ate it all.
For such a short trip, we definitely packed in a lot of sight-seeing and yummy vegan food. The best way to approach DC is to say that you’re coming back. Because there’s no way to do everything in one trip.
Most of the cool, vegan-friendly restaurants in Richmond are near VCU. So Monday, Memorial Day, Panda Veg was closed and so was Harrison Street Coffee Shop. I figured since Ellwood Thompson’s is a grocery store, it would be open. And it was. It’s kind of like Whole Foods, but independent and more focused on local items where possible.
They had a hot bar that didn’t look that appetizing. There was also a salad bar that looked okay. So we settled on sandwiches. They had a bunch of options for vegans. You fill out a little laminated card with all the options you want on your sandwich and they make it for you.
Mine was a vegan chicken salad on sourdough. The texture reminded me of Soul Vegetarian’s eggless salad. Kevin said it tasted better than Whole Foods’ fake chicken salad. It was tasty. And the sandwich was huge! Half would have been plenty. But I ate 3/4 of it any way.
Kevin got the vegan BBQ. It was supposed to be heated but wasn’t really all that warm. The texture was satisfying but I’d probably punch up the flavor of the sauce a bit. I like a bit more oomph to my BBQ sauce.
They also have baked goods. I picked up this orange cookie with chocolate glaze that I ended up eating on the road Tuesday. It was a fat cookie and the texture was somewhere between shortbread and a scone. I’d be tempted to eat this for breakfast. I think I’m more of a chewy cookie sort of person. The orange flavor was lovely and the simple chocolate glaze was a nice contrast.
Ellwood Thompson’s also carries some of Twin Oaks‘ products. They use only organic, Virginia-grown soybeans in the products. So I picked up their chorizo, breakfast sausage, regular tofu and Italian tofu. Once we try these out, I’ll give a report on how they were.
While we would have been perfectly happy going back to Harrison Street Coffee Shop for lunch Sunday, we decided to continue the standard food tour every vegan does when they visit a different city. So we went to Ipanema Cafe instead, which was right around the corner from Harrison Street.
Ipanema Cafe is in the basement of a building. Lots of exposed brick and definitely on the dark side. I can see it being a favorite of people with hangovers and vampires. The place was full when we got there, but the bar was empty so we decided to go ahead and sit there to eat. They were serving the brunch menu but while we were sitting there we could see the dinner menu posted on the wall and spent some time drooling over those options and wishing we could come back for dinner.
I ordered The Rubi (Tempeh Benedict) – smoky grilled tempeh resting on homemade english muffin, sautéed spinach, mushrooms, onions and marinated tomato. Topped with a vegan citrus béarnaise sauce. The tempeh was packed with flavor and sliced thin. Baked, I think. Everything else complemented it well. It was definitely a winner. It also came with sweet potato hash and fresh fruit. Here is a blurry picture thanks to the fact that my camera only focuses when it feels like it. I’m sure someone on some blog will make a snarky post about crappy food porn pics. That person can bite it.
Kevin got the French Toast with Warm Apple Compote – Billy Bread dipped in sweet apple sauce batter and griddled. It was good, but apparently didn’t come close to touching the french toast at Pick Me Up Cafe in Chicago.
The girl at Harrison Street said we HAD to get a piece of pie at Ipanema. Just as we were getting ready to ask about that, the bartender came out with a free piece of blueberry pie for us since we were from out of town. How cool was that? It had a shortbread crust with a tasty, crunchy streusel on top. It was really good, but the baker in me is always thinking of things I’d do differently. Can’t help it. 🙂
I don’t know what we’re going to do about food today. Harrison Street and Panda Veg are both closed. Time to hit up Happy Cow!