Kale, Hillside Quickie's Café, Seattle

©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Just got back from a quick four day visit to Seattle to see the house we will be living in next year. (Our kids had seen it but not us.) The whole way there and back the airline upgraded us to first class, and if I could always travel like this, I'd travel a lot more! There's a normal amount of space, so I didn't feel like I was pinned inside a high school locker, and they kept bringing things to eat and drink. It was great. But here's the catch to the "things to eat" part. We were flying on Northwest-Delta and were told we couldn't request special food on a domestic flight. So, we were offered a grilled chicken sandwich (an ENORMOUS grilled chicken sandwich) or a salad covered in ham and cheese. We got the fruit and the bread sticks that came with the salad — mealy apple wedges, good red grapes and a pineapple slice. We know enough to carry food, so on the way there we got Spa Salads from The French Meadow Bakery in the Minnesota airport, and on the way home we got sushi in Seattle's airport.

It was probably a good thing that we ate lightly on the way home anyway, because we ran into some turbulence that reminded me of the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios, but without the fun part. For about an hour I had to close my eyes and sleep (after checking to be sure I had a barf-bag available). When I reopened my eyes, there was a horrible crash, and a spear of intense light shot in front of me, as the plane got hit by lightening. Exciting.

Are you wondering about the food in Seattle? The first evening, after traveling all day, we went to a potluck barbecue with our kids. There was plenty of good stuff for the vegan minority including bean salad, kale-wild rice salad and vegan brats. My daughter-in-law made the kale salad and it was really good. The next day after visiting the farmers market in Capitol Hill we had a late lunch at Hillside Quickie's Café in Capitol Hill, with our other son and his gf. They were serving Sunday brunch, all day. The table was sticky and the prices seemed high but they really give you a lot to eat. I knew I couldn't eat a whole meal, so my husband and I shared a plate, and it was plenty for two.


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking

We had a plate containing Cajun mac and cheese, biscuits with berries, grits and gravy, chicken-fried steak and seitan. At least that's what I think we had! I've never had mac and cheese that tasted this good. It was spicy and fabulous — and I don't even like mac and cheese. This is something I'll try to recreate and post a recipe when I get it right. The biscuits were fluffy, the grits creamy — everything tasted great.


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Our son and his gf had some kind of chipotlé yam-stuffed tortillas and fried okra. I think we liked our food more than they liked theirs but it was all pretty good.


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking

The person at the table next to ours had a stack of waffles and seitan that looked so amazing, she let me take a picture. The person at the table next to her had a startlingly high stack of fluffy-looking pancakes and I took a picture of that, too, though without his permission and after he knocked the stack over. (You can see it at the top of the post. The orange drink is a mimosa ordered by the person at the table next to us.)


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking

That afternoon and evening we attended another potluck barbecue at our son and daughter-in-law's house. As you can imagine, I wasn't too hungry, but still managed to eat some grilled potato, grilled tofu, grilled veggies and more kale salad. The recipe for the salad will be coming as soon as I have a chance to make it myself.


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Monday afternoon I found myself alone with a sleeping baby and craving some simple, green food for lunch. I went into the garden and picked some tender, young Red Russian kale, swiss chard and lettuce. I cut them into small pieces, tossed them with a little olive oil and vinegar and topped them off with some leftover grilled veggies. This made a perfect, simple salad lunch.


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking

On our last morning in Seattle, our d-i-l made us a yummy banana bread for breakfast. The little munchkin of the house (my granddaughter) is an enthusiastic eater, and although she'd already had breakfast, she saw us eating, took a box of cereal from a cupboard she can reach and had a little snack.


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking


©2009Andrea's easy vegan cooking
http://cookeasyvegan.blogspot.com/2009/06/kale-hillside-quickies-cafe-seattle.html

Wedding weekend

Well I've been totally wiped out after a packed four-day weekend trip to Philadelphia to attend a niece's wedding extravaganza. Haven't even READ any blog posts since before we left on our trip, let alone write one. I prescheduled something to post last Saturday and even completely forgot I had done that but, after two intense days back at work that just added to the exhaustion, I'm home today and starting to feel somewhat normal again. So, here's the "condensed" version of the weekend.

Last Friday, I dressed at 6:30 a.m. (in Wisconsin) in the outfit I planned to wear at the rehearsal dinner some 12 hours later in Pennsylvania. And I discovered that if you wear a long skirt for air travel, you will get patted down at security. Good thing I didn't tape a soy yogurt to my leg. We changed planes in Minneapolis and headed to our favorite pit stop, French Meadow Bakery Café, for an early lunch. I've posted about this before and it's still a great airport find. I had a bowl of vegan chili that was too much to finish. It was a bit too heavy on tomatoes and light on beans but still tasty and filling. It came with two slices of sourdough bread. Ken ordered a grilled tempeh reuben. After 20 minutes he went to check on it, and twenty minutes later went to cancel it and get his money back. This was an airport—we had a plane to catch. This brought the manager out and she got the sandwich, packaged it to go and gave him a refund! (French Meadow has two airport locations. The main, full-service restaurant (packaged food also available) is at the end of the main shopping area just before entering concourse C. There is also a small satellite shop with packaged food and beverages at a different location.)


Tempeh reuben from French Meadow Bakery

When we arrived in Philadelphia, we picked up the most garish red rental car I've ever seen and headed to Lai Lai Garden restaurant in Blue Bell. An indication of the festivities to come, the rehearsal dinner had 90 guests! I first want to say I had plenty to eat—was, in fact, obscenely stuffed and loved my dinner—but since I'm writing about vegan stuff here, there are a few things I'd like to point out. When the appetizers came, the non-vegetarians (NVs) received plates with a large egg roll, a large spare rib and a third thing. It may have been a fried shrimp—can't really remember. We vegans (Vs) received a plate with three small steamed dumplings. Okay, ours was probably much healthier, but theirs was much BIGGER. Quality and quantity are different things altogether, but still. They had three DIFFERENT things. Why didn't they get a dumpling? Why didn't we get some other interesting vegetable thing to go with our dumplings?


Our single plate

We Vs were then given a choice of three entrées. We could have tofu and veggies, string beans or a third thing that I can't remember. (I do seem to have a problem with third things.) We all chose the tofu. Then the NV entrées started coming. There was a giant lazy susan in the middle of our very large table and it was soon filled with meat, chicken and seafood dishes. More and more kept coming until the turntable was packed to capacity. And still more dishes came. The Vs were each brought a plate with tofu and veggies. It was really good, and I couldn't finish it, but it's the principle of the thing I'm pointing out. Is it assumed that NVs should be provided with an extreme assortment of food and Vs are limited to only one thing? I also wonder why NVs are unable to have vegetarian dishes along with their meat.


Their food (only some of it!)

The wedding the next night was very beautiful and very big. There were 270 guests, making this the biggest wedding I've ever attended. The bride was beautiful and the groom dashing. Everything was in good taste, especially the food. After the ceremony, we had a cocktail hour with lots of interesting dishes. I'm sorry to say I was so involved in eating that I completely forgot to photograph anything so a description will have to suffice. I visited the pasta bar first and received a plate of perfectly cooked pasta on which I chose to add a chunky tomato sauce. There was all sorts of non-veg stuff to add for the so- inclined, but I was happy to find a bottomless bowl of black olives and another of a finely chopped kohlrabi salad. After that I headed to the bruschetta station where all sorts of spreads (including hummus) were stacked up. There was a vat of artichoke salad, a gorgeous roasted red pepper salad and who knows what else. Roaming the room, the Vs found plenty of delicious food to eat, as did the NVs. A cosmo from the bar, artichokes and olives and I was happy.

When we finally started dinner around 10:30, I wasn't all that hungry, but managed to eat my baby greens and a good portion of my —guess what?—tofu and vegetables. Good thing I never get tired of tofu and veggies. It was delicious. I wish I had some now.



The great band stopped playing at 12:30 a.m. and we made our way back to the hotel room (we stayed at the wedding hotel for the night of the wedding.) by about 1 a.m., and crashed.


Pumpernickel bagel, roasted asparagus, marinated mushrooms, salad.

The next morning we attended a brunch at the hotel. You wouldn't think we could eat any more, but we did. The brunch was a revelation. I never got past the salad with ginger vinaigrette, marinated mushrooms, balsamic roasted asparagus, bagels and fruit, but the room was laden with every imaginable breakfast food an NV could dream about. And Vs could find plenty to be happy about, too, unless they were looking for protein! I wish I had photographed the long table filled with gorgeous NV pastries.


Bagel, salad, hash browns, fruit.

We are originally from Philadelphia, and still have family and friends in the area, so in between wedding events we visited with relatives and friends, trying to make the most of the short amount of time. It was wonderful to be with my family, my husband's family and old friends. I wish it could be like this all the time. It was exhausting but worth it. Oh, and did I mention that our oldest son, daughter-in-law and their fabulously amazing baby were there from Seattle?

Vegans at the airport - Minneapolis

It was sad to leave Seattle. Goodbyes are hard, and we live so far away. (The photo above is of Moo-cow, who lives with A and E) Our Seattle flight was delayed, and the late start caused us to miss our connection in Minneapolis. Our last experience at the Milwaukee airport reinforced the message that vegans who don't carry snacks may be out of luck if stuck at an airport, so I'd packed small sandwiches for the trip, but those were long gone, and we had several hours ahead of us with an arrival time at home of after midnight. (By the way, don't pack soy yogurt. It will cause your backpack to be seized and searched and the yogurt will be confiscated as a dangerous "gel." Really.)

I don't think I've ever had to find something to eat at the Minneapolis airport, and I wasn't too optimistic about finding vegan food. But, we had lots of time to look around. After setting off the security alarm three times before realizing that I had a cell phone in my back pocket, they finally let me through security. Frazzled, I wasn't too hungry, but Ken and J were. As we were walking towards our gate, I spied a French Meadow Bakery Café and went to investigate. I used to purchase French Meadow sourdough bread and I knew the company had a popular café in Minneapolis.

There were a number of choices for vegans and the food I choose was fresh and organic. I was feeling kind of well-fed after our vacation, if you know what I mean, so I opted for a spa salad to eat later. It was packed with fresh raw salad stuff and a too-generous slab of grilled tofu. It came with avocado dressing on the side. Ken and J chose grilled tempeh reuben's which took kind of a long time to arrive but which they both really enjoyed. Looked a bit greasy to me but oh well. There were lots of salad greens for balance!

Traveling vegan (lots of eating-no cooking)

Since we were taking a four-day weekend to visit relatives in Florida and I couldn't do any cooking, I decided to document what a vegan might find to eat in Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the airports along the way. When we got to the Madison airport (where we could certainly find vegan food) we found our flight to Milwaukee had been cancelled, and we were to be bused to Milwaukee airport (MKE) in time to catch our flight to Ft. Lauderdale. As far as we knew, we'd be in Florida by 6 p.m. and go to dinner. When we got to MKE and went to our gate we saw that our flight was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. We also discovered that nearly all the food places and shops were on the other side of security. We'd brought some baked tofu slices and crackers with us as well as some nuts and Clif bars, but they were mainly supposed to be snacks and to tide us over until dinner. But, it became increasingly clear that we wouldn't be arriving at dinner time. If we didn't find some food, the snacks would be our lunch and dinner. We wanted something to take on the plane - assuming we would get on the plane. The only thing we could find in the gate area was a bottle of Dole smoothie and some underripe bananas. I passed them up. Even the Starbucks, which usually have veggie wraps and salads in other airports, only had pastry.

With a sigh, we crossed back over the security line. We hung out for a while in the used book store (MKE actually has a good used book store with knowledgeable staff) and then set about searching for vegan vittles. Too bad for us. MKE is a meat-eatin' kind of place. The only thing I could find was a side dish of wild rice salad at a very crowded sit-down restaurant. Duh. And it had ingredients that I wouldn't really want to eat. We went back through security empty handed and bought the smoothie and banana. I had the smoothie, a banana and the Clif Bar for dinner. I can tell you that MKE is NOT vegan friendly. (The Detroit airport, on the other hand, has Japanese and Middle Eastern restaurants—but that's another story.)


















We finally landed in Ft. Lauderdale about 11 p.m. and went straight to our hotel and to sleep. Our room package included breakfast and we went to the hotel restaurant the next morning quite starved. The breakfast menu included a tofu scramble and it wasn't bad. It came with fresh squeezed oj, roasted potatoes, whole wheat toast and Tazo tea. Ate every bite. (The restaurant also had several vegan options for lunch and one for dinner but we didn't have time to try those.) We spent the day with family, and that evening we all went out to a "Nouveau Thai" restaurant that was supposed to be fabulous and veg friendly. We ended up ordering an appetizer salad, a vegetable side dish and rice, because it was all we could find on the menu. And it actually took 1 1/2 hours before our table received food. Although I'm really not a big eater, I was still hungry. I wanted to photograph the attractive food but it was too dark in the room. Each thing I had was tasty but small. And expensive.



The next morning at the hotel we opted for the stone-cut oatmeal with raisins, juice, toast and tea. I've never heard of stone-cut oats but it was delicious. (And it wasn't steel-cut oats. I know what that is.) It was huge and filling and we left feeling happy and healthy.



Early that afternoon my kind sister-in-law and brother served a large lunch with bagels and vegan cream cheese, mock chopped liver, eggplant salsa, and salad stuff for the vegans and fishy stuff for the non-vegans. Later in the day, when the Super Bowl came on, she put out a big tray of chips, veggies, hummus, tapenade and other stuff that we snacked on. They know how to treat their guests well! After stuffing myself and, not much into football, I went out for a while with my other sister-in-law and niece.

About 9 p.m., although not really very hungry, my husband and I decided to go to dinner at the renowned Ft.Lauderdale vegan restaurant, Sublime. I have mixed feelings about this restaurant but, on the other hand, it's such a relief to go to a restaurant where everything is vegan. I think they try too hard to make the food seem like it's not vegan rather than try to make delicious food from vegan ingredients. There are lots of meat substitutes and not enough creatively used vegetables. The manager once bragged to me that most of the people who eat there are not vegetarian. Maybe they have to take this direction to survive—and I hope they continue to find success.

That said, there are a couple of things I really like, even though I think they are too fattening. There's frito misto which is crispy, crusted, fried-I-guess cauliflower with sweet and sour sauce. It's so addictive. And I also like the portobella steak with spicy tomato confiture, whipped mashed potatoes and garlic spinach. It also comes with three, huge french-fried onion rings which I try to only eat one of. (photo at top of post) My husband got a cup of quinoa soup which was delicious, and a salad. The desserts are yummy but we couldn't possibly eat any more food so we declined.

We opted for the oatmeal again the next morning and set off for another unexpectedly long day of travel and food deprivation, but at least we'd been more than well-fed over the weekend.