Vegan sensory overload!!! My senses (mainly that of taste) are still trying to figure out what's going on after our sweet weekend trip to Seattle. The purpose? 1. To visit my older sister, 2. To eat lots of good vegan food (but not necessarily good for me), and 3. To check out VegFest (in hopes of someday starting one in Houston) and score lots of free (well, almost, $5 to get in) samples!
And what better way to start the trip than a visit to Mighty O, home of the world's best (vegan or not) donuts! This place is mere minutes from my sister's place.... no fair. But at least that means it's easy for her to pick up a dozen on her way to visit Texas, just what she did at Christmas. Instead of trying to choose just one donut, we got a six pack that included the Don King (chocolate with coconut), grasshopper (chocolate mint), mocha, french toast, chocolate raspberry, and plain chocolate. I dream of the day they ship these nationwide, but until then I'll savor the last few bites of the mocha donut that's currently on my kitchen table.
After getting our fill of vegan donut heaven, we headed over to the U-district to do some shopping at Washington's only all-vegan store, Side Car for Pigs Peace. Even though it's a small shop, I could have spent all day here browsing! In the end, I definitely splurged a bit, but I felt better knowing that 100% of their profits go to the animals. So what did I score? Let's see.... ricemellow cream (I see frosting cupcakes in my future), veggie scallops (all John, based on my last experience with canned faux meat), vegan caviar, Cheezly (battle vegan cheese coming your way soon!), a vegan princess t-shirt (so not me, but that's the fun of it), fake vegan tattoos, Sweet & Sara peanut butter smores (which I devoured in one sitting), the cutest little cupcake wallet, a "meat is murder" rubber stamp, sjaaks chocolate, and veggies chicken chunks. Whew!
We then made our way down to Fremont for some window shopping, sadly cut short by the rain and cold. But we did duck into the Flying Apron Bakery, where we were tempted to eat lunch, but ended up just getting two cupcakes to go, one chocolate with chocolate frosting and a cardamom chai cupcake. The chocolate cupcake was a huge disappointment. It was so dense it stuck to the roof of your mouth and it didn't even taste like chocolate. The cardamom chai cupcake was a bit redeeming, but still didn't live up to my cupcake standards. Was it the lack of gluten? Unrefined sugars? Bad technique? Not sure, but if I ever go again I'll be choosing a different kind of baked good.
For lunch, it was back over to the U-district for Hillside Quickies, a greasy spoon type sandwich shop. A "quickie" lunch it was not, we waited over 45 minutes for three sandwiches!! Finally our sandwiches arrived, a gyro for John, and NYC deli style tofu sandwich for my sis, and a bbq seitan burger with mac and "yease" for me. We all agreed that the mac and yease was the best thing out of all the dishes... it had a spice that we couldn't quite place; maybe fennel? The burger was pretty messy and tasted too much like the yellow mustard they slathered all over it. John liked his gyro except there wasn't enough seitan. While waiting for our food, we did get to sit and watch the snow come down outside.
To escape the weather we spent the afternoon watching a movie inside, then did some grocery shopping to make dinner that night. I showed my sis how to roll her own sushi and we ended up making way too much. But the best part about sushi is that it doesn't leave you full for very long... which means there was plenty of room for the chocolate mousse cake, purchased from whole foods. This one deserved it's own picture because it was just that good. My sis even had to tell her boyfriend to stop eating it (and a good thing cause it meant there was more left for me!). Now I just need to convince our whole foods to start carrying it.
And now the main event, VegFest! John and I took the bus down from Greenlake to the Seattle Center. I had never been to a veg-themed festival, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was promised lots of food based on the website and flyers that I saw around town. It certainly lived up to that expectation, there was so much food that I don't think I could have tasted everything if I had wanted too! There are way too many to list here, but here's a sampling of things I tried: Field Roast, Tofurkey dogs, cyberdogs (local), mighty o donuts (as if I needed more), Tofutti cuties, So Delicious ice cream, Lara bars, Sheese, Lightlife chili, Wildwood tofu, Odwalla, Green&Black chocolate, FYH cheese, and local smoked tofu. My only tiny complaint is that things weren't really marked vegan or not, so I had to do lots of label checking (booths are manned by volunteers, not people from the actual company). We also went to one of the cooking demos given by Bryanna Clark Grogan, featuring Italian food (including a handout with the recipes).
Eventually, we dragged our full bellies out of the Seattle Center into the outdoors, and even into some sun! We took the required touristy pictures of the space needle, then made our way over to Queen Anne for more sweetness.... coffee with Mrs. Cakespy herself! If you haven't seen cakespy's dessert detective blog or her insanely cute cupcake drawings, you must be living in a hole. We had fun chatting about blogging and desserts (of course!), career dreams, and life experiences. Mrs. Cakespy is as witty and charming as her blog, and meeting her made the trip even sweeter!
Now you may be wondering, were we able to stuff anymore food into our faces? The answer is a resounding yes. We ordered pizza from the all vegan Pizza Pi, each of us getting a personal pizza so no one had to comprise on what they wanted. The garden pizza with it's creamy white garlic sauce was my favorite. The vegan cheese they topped the pizza with was pretty useless, definitely no melting action going on, and next time I would just order it without. And luckily there was more chocolate mousse cake which we supplemented with a few vegan chocolate cupcakes from Whole Foods (which were nothing special).
We had to make just one last stop on the way out of town, brunch at Squid & Ink in Georgetown. I must admit, we were a little skeptical pulling in. We weren't even sure if it was open, even though I checked the times. The heat hadn't been turned on yet, so we kept our coats on till enough people arrived that our bodies warmed the place up a bit. I had decided on the french toast, though I thought about the waffles, but overheard the woman running the place saying that they should take it off the menu because their waffle iron had been broken for months! John chose the ohmlett and my sis went a la carte with hashbrowns, toast, and veggie sausage. We all got the signature orange slice with spinach leaves underneath. I was quite impressed with the food, the hashbrowns especially. I wished the french toast was on a heartier/hardier bread, I think it was just white and the maple syrup seemed like it had been thinned out. And I was pretty excited too because they had lots of back issues of Herbivore to browse while you waited on food.
But all sweet things must come to an end. And I must thank John and my sis for being such good sports on this vegan-centric weekend. My dream of the moment now is to move up there and open a vegan bakery called "sweetness in seattle"... sorry, still trying to wake up from my sugar-induced coma....
17 teams from around our beautiful state competed in the competition. Each team was charged with making 5 gallons of vegan chili. In case you've never had to make 5 gallons of chili yourself, here is what all the ingredients look like.... thank goodness all those cans are recyclable!
After the vegan police inspected all of our ingredients, we got started bright and early (around 8am) chopping vegetables, draining beans, measuring spices, and getting everything prepped to start our first batch of chili.
At high noon, the doors were opened to the public for chili tasting. Before we knew it, there people were lined up at our booth! From then on, it was an almost constant stream of filling up chili bowls, serving up cornbread, selling baked goods, and handing out vegan literature. With all the running around trying to make additional batches of chili, I barely had time to say hello to Diann from Eat'n Veg'n who stopped by for a sample. It was nice to see a familiar face!
So did I manage to actually eat any chili during the cook-off? The answer is, of course, yes. We did several tastings of our own chili to get the seasoning right, and John was nice enough to run out into the crowd for brief breaks from kitchen duty and bring me back almost all of the other chili entries.
Chili wasn't the only vegan food being served up at the Society of PEACE booth. We made several batches of cornbread (one with jalapeno and one without) that were complimentary with chili samples while supplies lasted (it went fast!). To soothe the taster's taste buds, we offered grapes as a palette cleanser. And to finish with something sweet, as a fundraiser we offered Stacey's pumpkin oatmeal cookies and my pumpkin pie brownies as well as chocolate and vanilla cupcakes (Happy National Vanilla Cupcakes Day by the way) swirled with Society of PEACE colors.
As the competition came to a close, we gathered around to hear the results of the judges voting as well as the crowd favorite. Imagine our surprise when we heard Society of PEACE called out... the judges awarded our chili 2nd prize!! It was a rewarding finish to a crazy day. I had such a great time making chili with our awesome team: Sergio, Stacey, John, Kristen, Tosh, and Cairo (he's hiding between Stacey and I). Be sure to check out Stacey's post about the day on her blog Te Amo Vegano! And Tara posted about her experience as a chili tester on her blog My So-Called Vegan Life!
Congratulations to everyone who competed!! And the next time someone asks you how a vegan could ever survive deep in the heart of Texas... send them to the Lone Star Chili Cook-Off!
