Oh Sugar!

Oh agave, agave! You are my candy girl. And you've got me wanting you.

Today DanT and I went on a dessert tour of the Lower East Side. This was semi-intentional and semi-unintentional. We intended to go to Cowgirl's Baking, the new vegan bakery in the East Village. We did not intend on going to Lula's Sweet Apothecary, but we were right nearby and we live so far from there that if we are in the neighborhood, we cannot help ourselves.

While at Lula's buying our ice cream (I had a half scoop of peanut butter and jelly and a half scoop of cookies and cream. DanT had cake batter and chocolate soft serve twist. He always gets the soft serve. His ice cream choices are boring but delicious.) I noticed that they had a cute little display of Dun-Well Doughnuts! This is a new vegan doughnut company made here in NYC that has a few drop off spots in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I had forgotten that Lula's was one of their drop off places and that the deliveries happen on Saturdays! I had to get a doughnut! And DanT had to get a doughnut. So we came home with two doughnuts... And a box of baked goods from Cowgirl's Baking.

Taste test!

A chocolate frosted with peanuts, and a coconut frosted with flaked coconut.

Slice them up, DanT!

Please ignore the mess in the back...

So the doughnuts. DanT didn't love the coconut one, because as he says, he doesn't love coconut. Fair. He did love the chocolate frosted doughnut. I loved the doughnut dough. It was very much not a cake doughnut and I appreciate that. Yeasted doughnuts are the only kind I ever ate in my childhood (I think) and I loved them. These are the doughnuts of my childhood. I would kill for a jelly-filled one of these suckers covered in powdered sugar, but these work for now. Dan and Christopher, keep my request in mind!

Look at those magnificent innards!

Next, we opened our box from Cowgirl's Baking to taste test some deliciousness. This was the disaster we found:

These had a long trip home...

Not the best look ever, but smooshed cupcakes still taste like the unsmooshed ones! So I soldiered on and cut them up for testing.

Man, the tart looks big from this vantage point...

 

 

Top row from left to right: French toast, chocolate with peanut butter frosting, and chocolate with mint frosting. Bottom row: Strawberry tart. Duh.

The French toast was delicious. The cupcake was solid enough to be lifted up and not crumble at all and the taste was fab. The frosting was maple-y goodness. I will eat more of that one when I work off this sugar coma. The other two had one major problem... The chocolate cupcake doesn't hold together well! I think it's downfall might be the chocolate chips that it is filled with. But I also loved having those chocolate chips to bite into. I am very conflicted about the chocolate cupcakes. They were moist, however, so if you are smarter then me and bring the plate up to your face while feasting, you might not mind the crumblyness of these cupcakes. On to the frosting. DanT loved the mint. I wasn't so hot on it. It is very green. I know that is a silly comment, but I don't like artificial coloring and it looks really fake. It just didn't do it for me. It was minty, but it didn't hold my attention. That peanut butter frosting, however, I loved. It was dreamy. Light and fluffy and fully of peanut buttery goodness.

The tart. Well, the pastry was salty. I'm sure I was all sugared out at this point, but then you would think I would have appreciated a salty pastry, but this was a bit much. It felt like the pastry's only purpose was to hold the filling in, not to stand out on its own. If I'm going to eat five-million calories of pastry, I would like it to taste worthy of those calories. So I ended up breaking off that outer crust and eating the yummy strawberry innards. But overall, I would say the cupcakes are a better bang for your buck.

I hope you get a chance to support all of these wonderful vegan businesses if you are ever in NYC, oh faithful readers. Catch you as soon as I come out of this sugar coma!

The one where I apologize

Sooooooo...

This is me saying sorry for disappearing! The end of October was very hectic to say the least. I am looking forward to a slightly calmer November.


Happy day after World Vegan Day! And happy beginning of Vegan MoFo (Vegan Month of Food)! I will try to read as many of your blogs as possible.

Lets go back in time, shall we?

VegFest! Two Saturdays ago (the 23rd of October) we had the second annual NYC VegFest! Many groups were represented! We had a prime location in Union Square. All the farmers market visitors walked right on by. Perhaps we piqued some interest?

I was volunteering with the Sea Shepherd table. If you haven't yet, (and you live in NYC or the NYC area) you must send an email to nyc@seashepherd.org to get on our mailing list!

The Sea Shepherd table!

Mercy For Animals

OlsenHaus shoes sample sale

Love it!

Later in the day, Terry Hope Romero lead an awesome "how much vegan stuff do you know?" trivia game.

Terry, being awesome!

My team was named the Vegan Halloweiners. We were the dream team! And, we won! We won a scoop each at Lula's! YAY!

Happy Campers with Terry!

Then on the next day, Sunday, it was Farm Sanctuary's New York City Walk for Farm Animals!

vegan NBA star John Salley, the walk leader, with Gene Baur

I volunteered in the morning, but I walked with everyone in the afternoon!

DanT, Steve of Kiss Me, I'm Vegan, our friends Emory and Joe

So many people walked! And so much money was raised! All the money goes to Farm Sanctuary to help save farm animals.

John Salley was wearing a Bold Native shirt! On the right is my friend Lauren Krohn, the professional photographer!

Hope to see you all at next year's walk! And thanks for sticking by me throughout my busy October! I will attempt to be back with a vengeance!

A vegan food tour

of, well, no specific area of New York City. Perhaps this could be called a "best of" tour. DanT, my friend Alissa and I had an all day vegan eating fest (followed by watching a Yankees loss on tv... BOOOOOOOO!). Here's a photo essay of our day!

First up: FOODSWINGS! Vegan diner food. That's right. All vegan, all the time!

The beautiful facade of Foodswings!

Now I am going to show you all of the food we ordered. Do not freak out. It is a lot of food for three people. DanT and I took some of it home (I'm not going to lie, we didn't take much home...) and I had it for lunch the next day. There is a reason we ordered this absurd amount of food. A month or so ago, Groupon in NYC had a groupon for Foodswings! $7 for $15 worth of food! So, we had to get our moneys worth. We each spent $15-20 ($0-5 after the groupon), and at Foodswings that ends up being a lot of food. For proof, see below:

Mozzerella stix, a corn dog and creamy mac and cheese

Corn dog! Nostalgic for me, which is weird as I never had corn dogs as a child... Extra points if you saw my Sea Shepherd water bottle in the background of this pic.

Chicken Caesar salad

Grilled Cheese

Chicken cutlet sandwich

A Kickin' Veggie Slider. SO good!

Look how kickin' and tiny!!

Missing from all that gluttony is the large butterfinger shake DanT and I shared. Holy yummmmm. Chocolate ice cream and chik-o-sticks. If you have never had a chik-o-stick, you should find one. It tastes just like the peanutbutter-y, crispy part of a butterfinger. It is delish. I have only ever found them at Economy Candy here in NYC. I would check at old time-y candy stores. Worth the trip!

Post insane indulgence. Full. Leftovers include most of the salad, two mozz stix, a little mac and cheese and a little of the grilled cheese. Lunch!

DanT! Giving me bunny ears. Tiny bunny ears. And I'm wearing my Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary shirt!

 Post Foodswings, we needed a walk. We had a goal in mind. I'm not telling you where we went until I show you all what we saw along the way!

Pigeon central! Like one big crazy family.

Kitty manning the boat... The boat sitting in a parking lot... Weird.

Really cool, narrow as heck, apartment building! The blue section is made out of solar panels!

Our destination was...?

Champs. I have blogged about Champs before, so I will not bore you all with words. Here, have some pictures instead!

See the pumpkin pie in the corner? DanT wanted to take a whole one home.

On top of that display case is row after row of delicious cinnamon buns.

Alissa's berry scone. I tasted it. It was goooooood.

Top row: Black and white cookies! The real deal! I had one. My first black and white since loooong before I went vegan.

Alissa got that scone you saw above. DanT and I got a black and white cookie and a sweet potato marshmallow cinnamon bun. You will be happy to know that we did not eat our Champs baked goods until much later in the day as we had a plan for dessert already. Lula's Sweet Apothecary, of course!! Though the Champs goods were delicious, in case you were wondering. I would recommend any of the kinds of cinnamon rolls. They are huge!

Alissa and DanT being good little Lula's models!

It should be said that Lula's is Alissa's favorite ice cream. Alissa is not vegan. Lula's is not her favorite vegan ice cream, but her favorite ice cream. Ever. Seriously, just ask her.

Cake batter - Pumpkin spice soft serve twist!!

We all got soft serve... Alissa and I got the twist, DanT got straight up pumpkin spice. We were all extremely full and happy. All-in-all the best eating day I have had in a very long time. And my waist line says thanks! Hope to do it again soon!

RAMEN!

Who doesn't love ramen? Everyone has their own ramen-based memories. My favorite ramen memory is from college (probably just like your ramen memories are). DanT and I had just started dating and DanT was not the healthiest eater... He ate a lot of ramen. So, I decided to make us healthy ramen! This involved adding a bag of steamed birds eye mixed veggies. So, truth is, it was only marginally better for you. What you are about to see is not your college ramen. This is the good stuff. The professional stuff. Souen is a mini-chain here in New York City of macrobiotic restaurants. They are not vegan as they serve fish. Vegan except fish. Annoying, but that's how macrobiotics do it. Souen opened a ramen restaurant last year: Souen Ramen Noodle Shop. I've been twice. This is a recap of tonight's adventures.

Seitan Dumplings

These were some delicious dumplings, though I had a very hard time eating them. They were a bit slippery. Right after this picture was taken I dropped one into the sauce you see over there on the left and made a bit of a mess. Woops! But they were very tasty. Full of ground seitan. Yummmmm.

DanT and his Curry Ramen

DanT says he thoroughly enjoyed his curry ramen. full of noodles and veggies, it had carrots and Japanese squash that were delish. I tasted some of the soup as well. It was well spiced with curry, but not overly spicy. DanT does not like overly spicy.

my White Sesame Ramen

My ramen had a broth made out of white sesame (i.e. tahini) and miso. It was salty and exactly what I had been looking forward to. There were bean sprouts, some lotus root slices, seaweed, and various asian greens. The only thing I could have done without were the hunks of ginger floating about. It was not the most pleasant surprise. But those noodles? Perfection.

I treated DanT to dinner, so he treated me to dessert! You know what we were near? Lula's Sweet Apothecary. If you do not know of Lula's yet, you are way behind. It is the best ice cream ever. Not the best vegan ice cream, the best any kind of ice cream. Ask DanT (a recent vegan convert), and my friend Alissa who is not vegan and eats cow milk ice cream (I'm working on her...). They swear they have never had better. This ice cream is so creamy and flavorful that I do not go to the East Villiage without stopping by. Also, there is no artificial crap in this creamy dessert. The flavors taste exactly like what the label says because that is what it is made out of! Okay, lets see the desserts!

My cone of Lula's awesomeness

This was a gluten-free cone (why not? It tastes good and does the job.) with ginger cookie ice cream on the bottom and peanut butter and jelly on top. Both taste exactly as the name states, so I'm not going to bother elaborating. I'm pretty sure that these were both cashew based. Lula's has some flavors that are soy or coconut based, but most are cashew based. Trust them. They know what they are doing.

DanT's cone of soft serve

DanT went at this cone within a second after it was handed to him. I didn't get a change to take a picture before he had mixed his swirled flavors together! This is chocolate and cake batter soft serve swirled. So essentially it is chocolate cake batter. That is exactly what it tastes like. I do like the cake batter. It tastes like licking the beaters in my childhood when my mom would bake birthday cakes.

One last word about Lula's, it is run by the nicest people. The counter people are lovely as well. You can taste every flavor (on metal spoons that they wash and reuse, people!) without feeling like they are frowning upon you. Tip freely!