VeganMoFo: California Food Journal

Day 5 - Santa Cruz

Ah! I'm trying to play veganmofo catch up (hopefully post dating blogs is not considered cheating).

We only got to spend one night in Santa Cruz, but it was a good one! John and I met up with Amey (from Vegan Eats & Treats) and Musty for dinner at Malabar / Asian Rose for Sri Lankan cuisine. Amey and I discovered we both had a serious weakness for bread (and that garlic olive oil was still on my breath the next day!). I attempted to take photographs of dinner, but my camera was misbehaving... though I thought the resulting effect was kind of cool. We sampled three different dishes and shared them at the table including a mango curry, something called the India Jonze curry, and an eggplant dish with tofu. So delicious! I would highly recommend Malabar... especially if it comes along with Amey's accompaniment, because she had me laughing so hard with stories of her travels. Oh, how I love blogger meet ups!
The next morning after tips from several folks (thanks to all of you!) I stopped by the Bagelry for breakfast before starting a long day of interviews. It felt like quite a novelty to be able to order a bagel with tofutti cream cheese out in public. On campus, I also spotted a Sjaak's chocolate bar. This wasn't for breakfast, but it made for a great mid morning snack.
Tomorrow I'll post the conclusion of my California Food Journal. And then I'll be back to cooking and reading blogs as normal. Thanks to those of you who have left comments even though I haven't reciprocated! I'll be visiting soon ;-)

VeganMoFo: California Food Journal

Days 3 &4 - Palo Alto

Breakfast the past two days has been on the run, but I was able to purchase coconut milk soy yogurt and some granola to grab on the way. I also had an english muffin with jam this morning before checking out of our B&B.
Dinner on Tuesday night was at Darbar Indian restaurant. For appetizer I tried the vegetable samosas which were a little greasy (like samosas generally are), but very flavorful with a perfect bland of spices. For dinner I had the aloo gobhi which was also delicious and was enough to save for lunch the next day. A great place for Indian cuisine if you're in the area.
I was excited to try out Palo Alto's brand new, all vegan cafe: the Loving Hut. It was also a chance to catch up with one of my baking partners from vegan bootcamp this past summer in NYC. The menu was quite different from what was posted online, much more limited with only abou 5 entrees. Ordered spring rolls for appetizers, which came to our table wrapped in plastic wrap. Dinner for me was a tempeh BLT with avocado on ciabatta that came with a side of quinoa salad. John ordered the Heavenly Salad. We were both reasonably satisfied with our dinners.... But I am sad to say that the piece of chocolate cake I ordered was anything but satisfying. It took quite a bit of shoving my fork to break off a piece of this rubbery cake. Without a doubt this had to be the worst piece of cake I've ever had.

Luckily Fraiche was a five minute walk away, so I was able to sample more frozen soy yogurt, this time with blueberries and toasted almonds (after confirming that their shaved chocolate topping was indeed not vegan).
This afternoon we head to Santa Cruz!