CSA goodness and a cupcake failure

We joined a CSA about a month ago, and are loving it so much.  It's really fun to get a box of vegetables, herbs, and fruit every Wednesday and then to have to work with what you've been given, like you're in your very own (but private and more low-key) episode of Iron Chef or some such.  Pictured above are chard and zucchini sauteed with a little bit of tamari, with lemon and dill quinoa, and a potato carrot leek soup, all of which were made from CSA box ingredients.  We have been having a really hard time using up all the dill we've been getting, so the quinoa recipe was suggested by my best friend as a remedy, and it was a really nice change of pace (but I think we're going to trade back our dill if we get it again next week, because despite my best efforts, we've still got dill coming out our ears).

Also pictured above is the cupcake failure of the post's title: Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World's Red Velvet cupper.  I was trying to make them Halloweeny, so I used orange food dye instead of red, but that didn't work out so well, as you can see, maybe because I use hippie all-natural food dye?  Anyway, these cupcakes weren't horrible, but they were the first cupcakes from the book that haven't blown my mind.  I just found the cake aspect to be sort of flavorless and bland, and then I went with a buttercream frosting (one of the suggested pairings for the cupper) and that was a total mistake.  The whole experience was just like flavorless cake with sugary frosting.  Yech.  I'm sure it would have been better with either the "old-fashioned" icing or the cream cheese frosting, but I don't think I'll be making these again just to see how much better they would have been.  I know other people like this recipe, and I guess it's possible I did something wrong, although I can't imagine what.  In any case, there are plenty of awesome recipes in that book, so I'll be crossing this particular recipe off my list.  You win some, you lose some.

vegan pittsburgh

Blogger seems to have completely lost its mind this morning.  I'm having a hard time loading photos, and an even worse time organizing them.  So, I'm throwing my hands up and will just leave the pictures where they randomly float at the moment... 

We had a great time in Pittsburgh last weekend, visiting friends and attending a wedding, and the vegan wonders that were Zenith (our personal fav) and Quiet Storm helped make the trip the great time that it was.

Zenith is a combination antique shop/restaurant, and it's just adorably decorated.  I wished we had had hours and hours to browse the shop and linger in the lovely restaurant space, chatting with our sweet server or the delightfully saucy owner/chef, but alas, we were late to our wedding.  We had to scarf our vegan lasagna and black bean burger so fast, in fact, that we didn't even get a picture of them.  They were amazing, though, as was the free cake the owner sent along with us when we left, since she noted we probably wouldn't get any vegan cake at the wedding we were attending.  I can't recommend this place highly enough, as it is a really unique experience (as you might be able to see from some of the interior shots of the restaurant, above) in addition to having great food.

We got breakfast/brunch two different days at Quiet Storm, just because they were open and convenient.  The food was yummy, but not the healthiest, although that was mostly a result of how we ordered.  They definitely had things like museli with fresh figs on the menu, and we went for hash and breakfast burritos.  It was all delicious, though, and in huge portions that became both breakfast and lunch, so I'd recommend this place, too.

We also had some awesome and super vegan-friendly Thai food one evening at Thai Cuisine, which is basiclaly in the neighborhood of Quiet Storm.  Thai Cuisine had a whole separate vegetarian menu, which I always appreciate, and the food was fantastic, so A+.

wisconsin eats

A little earlier in the summer, I spent a week visiting my best friend at her parents' gorgeous home in the Madison-ish area of Wisconsin. We mostly ate from her parents' sumptuous and all-providing garden, but a couple of times when we were out for the day I did get to experience some of the local vegan flavor, so I thought I'd mention a few of the stand-outs.

First, of course, was the delightful Madison natural foods instution, Willy Street Co-Op, whose deli case provided us with several great picnic lunches at the Student Union on the lake. We had a heavenly baguette, eggless egg (tofu) salad, bbq seitan, thai noodles, and it's hard to even remember what all else. So much goodness.


Also in Madison, the delightful Himal Chuli provided a lovely Nepalese change of pace one afternoon we were spending on State Street.




Most surprising of all, though, was definitely The Cheese Factory, located in the Dells. As you might imagine, the name didn't make the place seem very promising to me, but they turned out to be all veg, with a whole separate vegan menu, and run by a sweet religious cult of some variety that seemed to mainly draw on incredibly kind, middle-aged Eastern Europeans. The Rattlesnake Tofu was an especial stand-out, but everything we had was great, and often shockingly plentiful.





Viva Wisconsin!

vegan omelette

Wow, I had no idea that Vegan Brunch was going to provide an omelette recipe so crazy wonderful I would be making it most Saturday mornings, but, surprise! It did. Filling on these was onions, grape tomatoes, basil, and Teese. Mmmmm.

vincent jalapeño!

My partner and I adopted a bunny from our local animal shelter a week ago, and he's just about all settled in, so I thought I'd post a few pictures. My bunny's name is Vincent, and when he was found by a city parks worker in the park where some idiot had dumped him, he was totally emaciated and had both scabies and mange. They nursed him for about four months, though, and now he's come to live with us, a perfectly healthy, happy, handsome bun. I haven't had a rabbit since I was a kid, so it's been fun relearning all the bunny stuff. Bunnies are crepuscular (most active morning and evening, given to sleeping most of the day and night), so they fit perfectly into the lifestyle of busy working people, plus they're herbivores, which makes them great companions for human herbivores. It's actually really fun to feed your animal friends the same stuff you eat (romaine lettuce, kale, cilantro, basil, parsley, bok choy, broccoli, carrot, apple, etc.) and watch them enjoy it just as much. :)

Vincent is litterbox trained, he's not a chewer, and is very sweet but just frisky enough to be a fun companion. In other words, he's pretty perfect. Oh, did I mention that I can compost all his litter, too? Bunny poop makes awesome compst. Anyway, without further ado, here's Vincent Jalapeño!

best. bread. ever.

I made herb bread last night. It goes without saying that it tastes amazing. This was the first bread recipe I ever used, and for my money, it's still the best I've tried. Even by hand, without the bread machine, the whole thing only took about 3 hours, start to finish. Herb bread, ftw!

easter beans

"Easter Beans" aka "Calico Bean Bake" is a dish my mom has made for us every Easter for as long as I can remember. The original recipe comes from this awesomely sixties Betty Crocker cookbook, but my mom has always modified it a bit to make it a little healthier (by leaving out the shortening and pork, mainly). My brother and I have been obsessed with these beans our whole lives, because they're insanely delicious, but this last Easter was the first time I remembered to get the recipe from my mom. Since then, though, I have made a big pot of them nearly every other week.

The photo above is "Easter Beans" mainly with respect to the sauce. I had some corn, green beans, and a can of jackfruit that needed using, so I threw them in, but they're definitely not part of the classic recipe, which is a bit simpler.

Easter Beans
-aka-
Calico Bean Bake
Serves 6

1 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup catsup
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1-1 1/2 Tablespoons vinegar
1 can pinto beans
1 can great northern or baby limas
1 can kidney beans

Cook onion and garlic in 1 tablespoon olive or canola oil (margarine will work, too) until tender. Add catsup and remaining ingredients. Turn into 1 1/2 quart casserole. Bake at 350 for 1 1/2 hours.

*NB: Personally, I don't mess with the oven on this one. I always double the above recipe and make it in the crockpot, like my mom always has, but you're welcome to whichever method suits.

june growing

I really miss my garden plot in the community garden, but life just got too busy. So, for the last two years I have had to resign myself to potted plants on the front and back porch. At the moment I've got basil, mint, two different kinds of tomatoes, and a dwarf lemon tree. I'll probably look into some strawberries after I get back from a quick trip I have to make up to northern California. Even though it's not the same as growing chard, lettuce, squash, watermelon, peppers, and all the other things I used to get out of my garden patch, this is better than nothing, and keeps me digging in the dirt a couple of times a month or so.




This last photo is just one of the many house finches who eat the birdseed and drink the water I set up in a feeder on my back porch. I like to be able to look up from my book or my computer throughout the day and see the finches munching on seeds, or sipping water, or fighting, or any of the other funny things they do. This guy's a male, as is apparent from his red markings. The lady finches mostly gang up on the males and chase them off, so I only see one or two each day.

good morning

My camera still isn't back, but here's what my morning looks like so far: organic kiwis and an Americano.

vegan brunch

Even though I sincerely felt that I did not need any more vegan cookbooks in my life, I could not, of course, resist Vegan Brunch. My camera is off exploring the wide world for the day (with my partner in tow), so here's a shabby computer picture of my first experiment with Vegan Brunch: vegan omelets. I basically bought the book specifically for this recipe, so I was going to feel really disappointed if I didn't like it. I have tried several vegan omelet recipes in the past and could never eat them because they were so heavy on the chickpea flour, which I apparently don't love the taste of, despite the fact that I basically live on chickpeas in one form or another, most weeks. Long story short, I loved this omelet, so all is right with the world. I made an onion/tomato/spinach/vegan cheese filling, which was awesome. Also, I have to report that kala namak is officially condiment of the year, as far as I'm concerned. Another Isa win.

thailand--eats

Wow, this post is SO overdue. For almost a year now, I've been meaning to post about this delightful little vegetarian restaurant we ate at a number of times during our time in Thailand (Taste From Heaven; see below), because I wanted to give them an internet shout-out, but I'm only just now getting to it. While I'm at it, though, I may as well do a full Thailand post, so here we go.

We spent a little time in Bangkok, a city we didn't like at all, and fled from as quickly as we could, and then had to choose between heading north or south--north to the mountains or south to the beaches. My partner is not at all a beach person, and I am only a little bit of a beach person, and anyway we live in Southern California, minutes from the beach in real life, so the decision, for us, was pretty easy: we went north to Chiang Mai. I have seen enough pictures of gorgeous Thai beaches to know what we were missing, but we were so happy with our decision. Chiang Mai was a bit cooler, and it was nice to take a break from the heat, and it was just such a relaxing place to hang out for five days. There's lots to do, including renting a scooter and going on a Wat tour, or scooting out of town for some waterfall or jungle scenery; hiking and rafting excursions; elephant sanctuary tours; and more. We did a lot of these things, but we also just relaxed, had nice dinners, beers in little bars, met fun people, and just generally kicked back after a few weeks of intense travel.

Chiang Mai is a vegetarian/vegan traveler's dream. There were so many restaurants to choose from (most of which were not in our basically useless Lonely Planet guide, as I've already said, but we were able to find them just by walking around, or spotting them on a scooter adventure around town). The hands down best place we ate (repeatedly) in Chiang Mai was Taste From Heaven. This was the only place in Southeast Asia I ever saw the word "vegan" used, so we ate with a little more confidence on that score, and then man, the food was just incredible. And it was an added bonus that some of the proceeds went to support the Elephant Nature Park.





Aum Vegetarian was one of the only veg restaurants listed in our LP guide that we managed to visit. Most of the others either had crazy hours, were way outside of town, or seemed to no longer exist. Aum did have kind of crazy hours, but it was just around the corner from our guest house, so we managed to try it. The space was cute, in terms of being a restaurant inside a used book store, and the food was perfectly nice, so this was a good lunch experience:




The Brick Road Cafe was a place we just walked past in one of our excursions around town. The restaurant was adorable, the food was great, they had a donation box for helping stray dogs find adoptive homes, and there was a sweet little pup passed out under the table next to us, so needless to say, I loved this place:






We stayed at Gap's House in Chiang Mai, because it had a great location near the center of the old city, a vegetarian buffet every evening, and a vegetarian-friendly cooking school. Oh, and did I mention that it was really affordable? It's not a four star situation, but it had character to spare, which was exactly what I was looking for. The decor was homey, there were plants, kittens, and dogs everywhere, and the rooms were spotless. The owners were delightful, and they offered free internet. I absolutely loved this place.





Because everyone we met while we were traveling insisted that we *had* to take a cooking class while we were in Thailand, we did. We did it through Gap's House, because they already advertised that they could make accommodations for vegetarians, and told us vegan would be no problem. If you ever find yourself in Chiang Mai, are vegan, and want to take a cooking class, I can't recommend Gap's House's class strongly enough. They bent over backwards to help us modify the recipes they were teaching to be vegan, and made us feel super comfortable and welcome while they were doing it. Although I did enjoy this cooking class, my mind wasn't blown the way everyone else's we talked to was, and in retrospect I wonder whether those people just hadn't cooked much in general, so a cooking class was just like unbelievably wild to them? Don't get me wrong, it was really fun, but we had to choose between the cooking class and visiting the elephant sanctuary, and afterwards I couldn't shake the feeling that we'd made the wrong decision. We did see plenty of elephants throughout our trip, and that combined with everyone gushing about the cooking class experience led to our choice, which seems like a weird one in retrospect if I don't remember all of those things. Not that I didn't enjoy the cooking class, because I really did, but I just wish we could have done both things. Anyway, here are some pictures from the cooking class:





There were more dogs wandering around the cooking class. The owner of Gap House is a huge dog person, in case that isn't clear by now:


Chiang Mai was basically a vegan paradise, and it probably tied with Siem Reap as out favorite stop on the trip. I won't get to travel out of the country this summer, because I need to stay home and write write write, so it was fun to get to relive this trip a little bit on the first Saturday of my summer "vacation." ;)

thailand--sights

This is just a little companion post to the above post of Thailand eats. In addition to exploring the town, we made sure to get out of Chiang Mai proper to see a little of the countryside, going ATV riding through the jungle and white water rafting, among other things. Here are a few of the non-food related sights that we saw:







Rice growing!:





A jackfruit tree!:




A couple of sights from the otherwise icky/unremarkable Bangkok:

cafe de leche--los angeles, ca

Work has really been keeping me busy lately, and I know that I have been neglecting this blog a bit, but it's for a good cause: my dissertation! :)

Anyway, I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to Cafe de Leche, a new-ish cafe in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. In addition to having fantastic coffee, nice staff, a gorgeous space, and not charging extra for soy (yay!), they have recently started carrying vegan treats! They aren't labeled vegan, but the staff will tell you, the small tray by the register with donuts, cinnamon rolls, and iced sugar cookies is all vegan. The woman who started the lovely vegetarian Mexican restaurant, Cinnamon (also in Highland Park), is apparently their source.

So, if you're ever in the neighborhood, give Cafe de Leche and their yummy vegan treats a try.

maple banana walnut bread

We've been alternating between this maple banana walnut bread and the PPK Pumpkin Spice Bread for breakfasts lately. Both are super yummy! Here's my recipe for maple banana walnut bread (or maple banana pecan bread, if you prefer).

Maple Banana Walnut Bread
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 bananas, mashed
1/4 cup canola oil (all but 1 Tbsp optional)
1 Tbsp ground flax
2 Tbsp almond, rice, soy etc. milk
1/4 cup brown sugar (optional)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup maple butter
1/2 tsp maple extract (optional)
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans

Preheat the oven to 350. Spray a bread pan with non-stick spray.

Mix the dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Mix all the wet ingredients in your stand mixer or in a large bowl. Add the dry ingredients in two batches, mixing until just mixed. Stir in the nuts. Pour batter into the bread ban.

Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before slicing.

**If you want to make this bread a little healthier, you can omit the brown sugar and cut the oil back to 1 Tbsp and it will still come out well.

pumpkin spice bread

I have a post about Thailand coming up, hopefully soon, but in the meantime, I just have to say that the pumpkin spice bread from the PPK is awesome. Wonderful on its own, or with a smear of Tofutti cream cheese.

I made a couple of modifications, namely replacing the apple butter with maple butter (since that was what I had lying around) and replacing 1/4 cup of the pumpkin with 3 Tbsp rice milk + 1Tbsp ground flax, as per the suggestion of a PPK reviewer, since I only had one can of pumpkin and one can is about 1/4 cup shy of what the recipe called for. I also added 1/2 cup of walnuts and left out the raisins, for no better reason than, I love walnuts and despise raisins in baked goods.

These modifications didn't impact the deliciousness of the bread, which in addition to being highly nom-worthy is also amazingly low in fat and semi-healty because of the whole wheat pastry flour, although you can't tell. It also made my house smell amazing while it was baking, so overall a huge thumbs up for the PPK pumkin spice bread.

remember remember the 4th of november

Seen in the window of a minimart in Siem Reap, Cambodia...


:)

cambodia--siem reap

In part 2 of my Cambodian adventure, I present: Siem Reap. Siem Reap was probably my favorite city of all the places we visited this summer. It had such a laid back vibe to it, and we had such a good time there. And the food... mmm, yummy.

For starters, there was this little vegetarian restaurant we stumbled across our first day in Siem Reap. It was in "The Alley," a shaded little alley near the city center that is lined with nice restaurants.


Our appetizer (fresh bread with a creamy, spicy dip) was fantastic, and the presentation was lovely, but the actual entrees were only so-so, so we only ate here once. Too many other wonderful places to explore!







We had several nice, super cheap meals at this no-nonsense kind of place on the main tourist drag in Siem Reap ("Bar street") called Soup Dragon, and then of course we had to visit the famed Dead Fish at least once.


While we waited for our food, we wandered around the restaurant and were treated to 1) free internet, 2) traditional Khmer dancers, and 3) crocodiles. Apparently the crocodiles are not for eating, but have been rescued from somewhere or other and are now kept "safe to live out long and happy lives," aka as a tourist attraction. I guess it's better than being eaten, but it still seemed like a pretty sad life for them to me...



While at Dead Fish, I got to indulge my favorite vegetable discovery of the trip: morning glory. This morning glory is not related to the trumpet-shaped climbing vine that Americans at least mean when they say morning glory. Rather, it's a green vegetable that grows in water and has a deliciously mild flavor, sort of like a mellower spinach except it also had crunchy, broccoli-like stems. Anyway, I loved this stuff and ate it every chance I got:


Siem Reap is also, of course, the town from which you explore the temples of Angkor Wat, so here are a few pictures from our several days spent visiting the magnificent temples.

This is the overgrown temple where they famously shot part of Tomb Raider:



Here's Bayon, which was my personal favorite:





Angkor Wat at sunrise:


Around Angkor Wat:






We also went one afternoon and visited this artisan's collective in Siem Reap. We started at the branch in town to see the paintings and carvings done there, and then hired a tuk tuk to take us to the branch out of town, where they make silk. As vegans, we've always wanted to know a little bit more about how silk is made and why they have to kill the silk worms in the process, so this was pretty much the most educational experience we could ask for:


Here are the live worms eating mulberry leaves:

These are the cocooned worms, which they bake in the sun to dry out the cocoon and kill the worm:


And here they are spinning the cocoons into silk:


Here are some of the center's artisans being trained in how to spin, dye, and weave the silk:


And finally, a finished scarf:


I think we came away from the experience with a deep and sincere appreciation for the incredible artisans making this silk, but still feeling that since silk is not necessary for us to have happy, healthy lives, we would rather not buy and wear it. I'm really glad we went and saw the process first hand, though, because it was amazing and we really learned a lot.

Siem Reap itself and the temples of Angkor Wat were absolutely the highlight of the trip for me, so if you ever get the chance to go, don't hesitate! We also got two or three lovely $6/hour Khmer massages at pretty upscale massage parlors, so that definitely helped foster friendly feelings toward the city, as well.

I've got one more South East Asia post up my sleeve yet... Next stop, Thailand!

cambodia--phnom penh

We looooooved Cambodia, so I found that I wanted to post so many illustrative pictures that this would be better divided into two posts. We started our Cambodia leg of the trip in Phnom Penh, the capital city, so that's what this post will cover. In terms of the vegan eats, everything we had was good, but two experiences really stand out. The first is Friends Cafe, the restaurant aspect of a charity devoted to training street youths in business skills. The restaurant is a bright, clean, colorful space just around the corner from the Royal Palace. Once you're seated, about 3 different young waiters approach your table: one person who is actually going to take your order, one person who is in training to become the person who will take orders, and one person who is an experienced server supervising the whole thing. The restaurant is tapas-style, so you order several little things each, and there's a large, separate vegetarian section to choose from. The prices are a little bit spendier than you might pay elsewhere in Phnom Penh, but it's for a good cause, and the food is EXCELLENT, so it seemed worth it--we went back twice!


Since I was doing the semi-careful traveler thing of no raw vegetables at most restaurants, I hadn't had a salad for a while by the time we got here, so I couldn't resist the siren song of this beauty...

I forget what this was called, but it was nice...

OOH, this was SO GOOD. I ordered it twice. The most crazy delicious spread I've ever tasted on a lovely sliced baguette. I think the spread was eggplant-based. Holy cow was it good.

Grilled veggies...

A glass of chilled white wine on this hot day? I don't mind if I do.

Anyway, you get the idea. They also had incredible fresh juices that were also right up my alley. We loved Friends Restaurant, so if you're in Phnom Penh, I highly recommend a visit... or three. The second lovely dining experience I'm going to post about was totally different. We went to have dinner at the home of a man who drove a taxi but ran an English school for children in the neighborhood at night. The plan was to meet some of the students and then have dinner with them, with the price of our dinner going to help support the school. Unfortunately it POURED rain that evening, so by the time we got there, the surrounding streets, and the school room itself, were all flooded with about a foot of water. So, the students stayed home and instead we ate dinner upstairs with the teacher and some of his family, while the teacher told us a bit about what it's like to be a Cambodian today, 16 years since the country began holding democratic elections again--the financial struggle most citizens face, the lack of free speech or political freedoms, the corruption... it was a really sad dinner, in some ways, but amazingly important in terms of getting a sense of what life's like in Cambodia outside the tourist bubble. The dinner would have been a fantastic experience no matter what the food was like, since eating was a little bit beside the point, but it was fantastic. They made vegan versions of everything for my husband and me, and there was so much more food than we could eat... vegetables, noodles, a curried potato dish... there were also fried tarantulas, a Cambodian specialty, which you can see in the second picture. We didn't partake of these, for obvious reasons, but they were interesting to see...



The last Phnom Penh dining establishment we visited that was remarkable enough to note here was the FCC, or Foreign Correspondent's Club. We never ate here, unless you count french fries, but we seemed to stop in for a beer or two pretty much every day we were in Phnom Penh, just because it was a pleasant place to take a load off:


So much for our delicious vegan eats. I'll leave you with pictures of a few of the sites from Phnom Penh...

Monkeys on power lines:

Don't eat that, baby monkey!

Offerings at the pretty wat (temple) on the hill:

Orchids at the Royal Palace:

You could always tell when I had the camera by the pictures of animals...

Coming soon: Siem Reap, Cambodia!

vietnam

I'm going to divide my posts up by country, so, without further ado, here's Vietnam. We were only in Vietnam for 3 1/2 days, so most of our eating experience was in Ho Chi Minh City. Since we're not big breakfast eaters, we kept breakfasts really simple by just grabbing dragonfruit (pictured above) and bananas from our hotel's continental breakfast on our way out the door in the mornings, and maybe supplementing it with a mid-morning granola bar. For other meals, though, we were bent on good veg eats. After investigating 2 of the 3 Lonely Planet-recommended restaurants, one of which was defunct, the other of which was really tiny and unclean-looking (sorry, but it's true), we just started checking things out around the Pham Ngu Lao area of the city ("backpacker's ghetto," in LP parlance). We found tons of stuff--just about everywhere we looked had at least a small to medium-sized vegetarian section on their menu--but nothing that was quite what we were looking for, since we wanted lots of veg Vietnamese food (as opposed to just one or two dishes, or the Thai, Indian, Italian, you name it, cusine that was on display everywhere we looked). So, we wandered down Pham Ngu Lao until we found a side street (also called Pham Ngu Lao) that had a lot of pubs and restaurants (including Le Pub, which is in a lot of guidebooks, so that's a good landmark), one of which was just what we were looking for:




For $3 USD each we got 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and 2 beers, and it was all so yummy that we came back the next day and did it all over again.



This was such a wonderful dining experience, and there was actually even another vegetarian restaurant right next door, should we have been inclined to change. Not to keep harping on the lameness of Lonely Planet, but here were two great veg restaurants located not more than 10 feet away from a pub that was in their guidebook. Why couldn't they have listed one or the other of those in their useless veg restaurants section? The world will never know.

Anyway, our positive experience with our meals was also reflected in our experience of the city generally--we really loved Ho Chi Minh City. It's a friendly, fascinating, unbelievably scooter-filled city...


The War Remnants Museum, in particular, was really interesting...


After a few days in Ho Chi Minh City, we took a bus to Chau Doc, a town on the Mekong Delta from which it's simple to catch a boat up to Cambodia.


On the way to Chau Doc (at the random, road-side restaurant our bus stopped at) and in Chau Doc itself, we just ate noodles with vegetables or rice with vegetables, which is pretty much the vegetarian stand-by in Vietnam. Both meals were perfectly pleasant, although I failed to photograph them. Here's our waterside hotel in Chau Doc, though, where we had our dinner:


From here we caught a boat up the Mekong to Cambodia, which will make up my next post...

south east asia: a text-filled prelude

I have been absent from the blogging world for what feels like forever. I had a busy, travel-filled summer, and now that I'm back I've got teaching to contend with and my diss to write, so I can't promise I will become a super-frequent blog poster again any time soon. BUT, I do promise never to abandon this blog entirely, and that I will set myself a minimum of one post a month. That shouldn't be hard to do, since I'm collecting photos and things all the time, so it's just a matter of getting them up here...

Prologue/apologia out of the way, I've got a couple of posts for y'all about vegan eats in South East Asia. My Person and I took a trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand this summer, and going into it, we were really, really concerned about whether we would be able to find anything vegan, in light of all the fish sauce/meat that both guidebooks and friends were assuring us we wouldn't be able to avoid. Lonely Planet, in fact, was the worst, with the guidebook not only promising that vegetarians would have an impossible time in South East Asia, but also going out of its way to try to shame vegetarians by assuring them that they would be missing out on the "authentic experience" of SEA if they tried to stick to their narrow-minded and needlessly uptight eating regimen.

Can I just take a moment to say how much I HATE Lonely Planet guides? (If you're not interested in my Lonely Planet rant, and you're probably not, feel free to skip to the next paragraph.) I keep buying LP guides when I travel because they're so... ubiquitous, I guess, but this is definitely my last trip with their guidebook. They're not even that great in other respects, I had a terrible time with their vegetarian recommendations in South America, and now I've had another terrible time with their guidebook in SEA. Their vegetarian recommendations are often out of date (as in, the restaurant no longer exists) or just down right bizarre (think, filthy hole-in-the-wall in an out-of-the-way neighborhood), given the plentiful availability of better veg options, if only one cared to look. How many vegetarians must use those guides, and yet they clearly not only refuse to hire vegetarians or even people who are vaguely veg-friendly/knowledgeable, but actually hire people who are totally hostile to vegetarianism because they have some idea that being veg gets in the way of the "authentic cultural experience" LP imagines it's selling. Well, I have travelled all over Europe, in South America, and now South East Asia as a vegan, and I've had plenty of experiences that would fall under Lonely Planet's rubric of "authentic"--homestays in Quecha villages in the highlands of Ecuador, 3 months of life with a German host family in Berlin, a random dinner with a Khmer taxi driver/English teacher and his family in Cambodia, and so on and so on--and guess what? My veganism was never a problem. They may have thought I was a little odd, but they made me their version of vegan food, and I ate it, and it was always a wonderful experience. Yes, my experience as a vegan will be slightly different than the experience an omnivore would have, obviously, but who is to judge which is the better experience? Or, why does one even have to be counted better and one worse? In the end I say, keep your crappy guidebooks, Lonely Planet. I'm sick of you pretending to pander to vegetarians while all the while directing thinly-veiled hostility and disapproval toward us. I don't need you. This is goodbye.

Ok, thanks for letting me get that out there. The breakup has been a long time coming... So anyway, we fearfully packed half our packs full of energy bars, but, as you'll see from the following posts, we had zero problems finding delicious, healthful, CHEAP!, vegan foods everywhere we went... Despite Lonely Planet or anyone else's promises to the contrary, the same thing held true that I've found most places I travel--you just need to wander over to the tourist quarter of any city to find restaurants that will have veg options (and sometimes you'll find entire veg restaurants). The veg Israelis have pretty much always been there before you, paving the way. The only places I've been where that wasn't necessarily true (e.g. Bolivia), I had no problem finding local dishes that were or could be made veg. So stick it, Lonely Planet!