Holiday photos.
This was my first Christmas/New Year holiday season spent away from my family and in another country, so it was a little strange. Here are a few food related photos from my trip, which are by no means exhaustive!
I traveled Brooklyn, then a few days before Christmas, I got the train upstate with Deirdre and met up with Chris. I had made people little vegan baked goodie bags with cookies and blondies in, but I forgot to take photos. Each mini package contained one NYC black and white cookie, one peanut butter blondie with chocolate chip topping, and one banana everything cookie, all recipes courtesy of Vegan Cookies Invade your cookie jar. Here's Deirdre modeling hers at Grand Central Station:
On Christmas morning, Chris made us an American breakfast of french toast and sausage with maple syrup. The combination used to sound weird to me, but I'm now a firm fan of maple syrup with savoury things.
A couple of days later, I returned the favour and cooked a vegan version of the traditional British fry up. That's fried bread, baked beans, grilled ("broiled") tomatoes, fried mushrooms, sausage, and hash browns. Deirdre said it was "too savoury", but that's because she's used to drizzling maple syrup on anything that can be called "breakfast" or "brunch". Silly American.
On one of our drives, we stopped off for snacks, and I found throwback Mountain Dew (not "MTN DEW"). I preferred this as it has less caffeine, real orange juice and no gross high fructose corn syrup, but Garrett thinks I'm a traitor because he's a purist. Anyway, this photo was the start of a bad couple of days, when I over-ate to the extreme and made myself feel very ill indeed. Just trust me that you never want to find out what Oreo cookies look like when they come back up.
Back to New York City, though. Despite my poorly tummy, I still managed to track down a supplier of Vegan Treats, so I stocked up for "research purposes". Garrett and I shared a slice of the genius concept of brownie cheesecake. That's cheesecake, TOPPED WITH BROWNIES. Ridiculous.
Unfortunately, our slice was still frozen, so we didn't get the full effect. It was still great, though. Vegan Treats may be full of hydrogenated oil, and contain way more sugar, fat and general bad stuff than I would like to think about, but considering how often I get to eat them, I think I can let myself off every once in a while. I also got an Oreo Creme donut(!):
I wasn't too sure how this would go down, but it was delicious and surprisingly light and not too sickly (by my standards, at least!). I was torn between having this or another Boston Creme donut, which I had had once a few months back, but my curiosity won. I think I still prefer the Boston Creme, but I wasn't disappointed by my choice. Something else that I always crave when I think of Vegan Treats is their brownies, which are incredibly fudgy and dense. Again, I dread to think of the amount of bad stuff contained within them, least of all the hydrogenated oil, but it's not like I'm eating them every day. I'll just have to strive to make a comparable (but better, if that's possible!) version myself. This is a brownie with PB fudge on top:
Garrett and I also spent quite a bit of time hanging out at Boneshakers in Brooklyn. I've never taken any photos of the food we've eaten there, but we love that place. The Sag sammich (tofu scramble, vegan "ham" and vegan "cheese" in a roll) is so cheap and tasty that I find it hard to branch out and try anything else. They also have good coffee there. Oh, and I had a hot chocolate with vegan marshmallows (the infamous Dandies, light of my life!) - YUM!
A few friends of ours were playing a show in DC, so we drove down for the night. While the guys practiced their set, a few of us hung out in a local anarchist café/bookshop called Red Emma's, where we drank coffee, ate donuts (I forgot to get a picture of my maple glazed ring donut, but Donna, I thought of you!) and perused the books and zines. I bought myself a Slingshot organiser in an attempt to sort my life out a bit more this year.
After the show, we stopped off at Duccini's for a "jumbo slice". Now, this is America, so when they say "jumbo slice"...
...they mean JUMBO SLICE. This thing was almost as big as my body! It was also made with Daiya cheese, which I had been dying to try for months now. This vegan cheese melts, not just into some weird vegan mush, but it blends into itself and when it starts to cool, it turns almost - dare I say it - stringy. It wouldn't fool a non-vegan, but it's by far the best vegan cheese I've had. I can't wait for it to be more widely available! Here's another photo for you to bask in its glory:
Oh yes.
And finally, here's Duccini's during the vegan invasion:
VEGANS LOVE PIZZA. And I love being surrounded by so many vegans!
Last of all was a visit to The Fractured Prune, just before our trip back to Brooklyn. This place serves vegan breakfasts and a couple of varieties of vegan donuts, so we decided to try it out. Unfortunately, it was a bit disappointing. I mean, it was ok, but it's not somewhere I'd make an effort to go again, it was just one of those "oh, that's nice that that exists" type of places. They did have a separate vegan options menu, which was very helpful, modeled here by the wonderful, positive and inspiring Rachel (who plays in an awesome band called Bridge and Tunnel that you should listen to):
As it was the morning, I was boring and stuck with coffee (which was cold, booo!) with soy creamer Silk Nog (they had run out of creamer) and a cinnamon raisin bagel with Tofu cream cheese. Again, it was great that those options were available, but I wasn't wowed. Maybe I'm spoiled. I decided that it would be a shame for me to miss out on their donuts, as after all, they are first of all a donut shop. Their pumpkin base donut was vegan, then you could choose from five toppings to fancy it up a bit. These were: cinnamon sugar, agave, coconut, chopped nuts, or Oreo crumbles. I decided I wanted to try four of them, so I ordered all but the agave one as I'd already tried a bite of someone else's. After having paid for them, they realised that actually, they'd run out of chopped nuts and coconut, so I asked for agave instead. Nope, they'd just run out of that as well. I ended up with 3 cinnamon sugar donuts and one with Oreo crumbles.
Unfortunately, they weren't really anything to rave about. The dough was too chewy and tasted overmixed, and they weren't too flavourful, either. This just made me want to make my own donuts at home even more, though, so as soon as I've figured out where I'm settling down, I'll be buying a deep fat fryer and experimenting with greasy, sugary goodness.
You see why I love America so much, now? :)
I traveled Brooklyn, then a few days before Christmas, I got the train upstate with Deirdre and met up with Chris. I had made people little vegan baked goodie bags with cookies and blondies in, but I forgot to take photos. Each mini package contained one NYC black and white cookie, one peanut butter blondie with chocolate chip topping, and one banana everything cookie, all recipes courtesy of Vegan Cookies Invade your cookie jar. Here's Deirdre modeling hers at Grand Central Station:
On Christmas morning, Chris made us an American breakfast of french toast and sausage with maple syrup. The combination used to sound weird to me, but I'm now a firm fan of maple syrup with savoury things.
A couple of days later, I returned the favour and cooked a vegan version of the traditional British fry up. That's fried bread, baked beans, grilled ("broiled") tomatoes, fried mushrooms, sausage, and hash browns. Deirdre said it was "too savoury", but that's because she's used to drizzling maple syrup on anything that can be called "breakfast" or "brunch". Silly American.
On one of our drives, we stopped off for snacks, and I found throwback Mountain Dew (not "MTN DEW"). I preferred this as it has less caffeine, real orange juice and no gross high fructose corn syrup, but Garrett thinks I'm a traitor because he's a purist. Anyway, this photo was the start of a bad couple of days, when I over-ate to the extreme and made myself feel very ill indeed. Just trust me that you never want to find out what Oreo cookies look like when they come back up.
Back to New York City, though. Despite my poorly tummy, I still managed to track down a supplier of Vegan Treats, so I stocked up for "research purposes". Garrett and I shared a slice of the genius concept of brownie cheesecake. That's cheesecake, TOPPED WITH BROWNIES. Ridiculous.
Unfortunately, our slice was still frozen, so we didn't get the full effect. It was still great, though. Vegan Treats may be full of hydrogenated oil, and contain way more sugar, fat and general bad stuff than I would like to think about, but considering how often I get to eat them, I think I can let myself off every once in a while. I also got an Oreo Creme donut(!):
I wasn't too sure how this would go down, but it was delicious and surprisingly light and not too sickly (by my standards, at least!). I was torn between having this or another Boston Creme donut, which I had had once a few months back, but my curiosity won. I think I still prefer the Boston Creme, but I wasn't disappointed by my choice. Something else that I always crave when I think of Vegan Treats is their brownies, which are incredibly fudgy and dense. Again, I dread to think of the amount of bad stuff contained within them, least of all the hydrogenated oil, but it's not like I'm eating them every day. I'll just have to strive to make a comparable (but better, if that's possible!) version myself. This is a brownie with PB fudge on top:
Garrett and I also spent quite a bit of time hanging out at Boneshakers in Brooklyn. I've never taken any photos of the food we've eaten there, but we love that place. The Sag sammich (tofu scramble, vegan "ham" and vegan "cheese" in a roll) is so cheap and tasty that I find it hard to branch out and try anything else. They also have good coffee there. Oh, and I had a hot chocolate with vegan marshmallows (the infamous Dandies, light of my life!) - YUM!
A few friends of ours were playing a show in DC, so we drove down for the night. While the guys practiced their set, a few of us hung out in a local anarchist café/bookshop called Red Emma's, where we drank coffee, ate donuts (I forgot to get a picture of my maple glazed ring donut, but Donna, I thought of you!) and perused the books and zines. I bought myself a Slingshot organiser in an attempt to sort my life out a bit more this year.
After the show, we stopped off at Duccini's for a "jumbo slice". Now, this is America, so when they say "jumbo slice"...
...they mean JUMBO SLICE. This thing was almost as big as my body! It was also made with Daiya cheese, which I had been dying to try for months now. This vegan cheese melts, not just into some weird vegan mush, but it blends into itself and when it starts to cool, it turns almost - dare I say it - stringy. It wouldn't fool a non-vegan, but it's by far the best vegan cheese I've had. I can't wait for it to be more widely available! Here's another photo for you to bask in its glory:
Oh yes.
And finally, here's Duccini's during the vegan invasion:
VEGANS LOVE PIZZA. And I love being surrounded by so many vegans!
Last of all was a visit to The Fractured Prune, just before our trip back to Brooklyn. This place serves vegan breakfasts and a couple of varieties of vegan donuts, so we decided to try it out. Unfortunately, it was a bit disappointing. I mean, it was ok, but it's not somewhere I'd make an effort to go again, it was just one of those "oh, that's nice that that exists" type of places. They did have a separate vegan options menu, which was very helpful, modeled here by the wonderful, positive and inspiring Rachel (who plays in an awesome band called Bridge and Tunnel that you should listen to):
As it was the morning, I was boring and stuck with coffee (which was cold, booo!) with soy creamer Silk Nog (they had run out of creamer) and a cinnamon raisin bagel with Tofu cream cheese. Again, it was great that those options were available, but I wasn't wowed. Maybe I'm spoiled. I decided that it would be a shame for me to miss out on their donuts, as after all, they are first of all a donut shop. Their pumpkin base donut was vegan, then you could choose from five toppings to fancy it up a bit. These were: cinnamon sugar, agave, coconut, chopped nuts, or Oreo crumbles. I decided I wanted to try four of them, so I ordered all but the agave one as I'd already tried a bite of someone else's. After having paid for them, they realised that actually, they'd run out of chopped nuts and coconut, so I asked for agave instead. Nope, they'd just run out of that as well. I ended up with 3 cinnamon sugar donuts and one with Oreo crumbles.
Unfortunately, they weren't really anything to rave about. The dough was too chewy and tasted overmixed, and they weren't too flavourful, either. This just made me want to make my own donuts at home even more, though, so as soon as I've figured out where I'm settling down, I'll be buying a deep fat fryer and experimenting with greasy, sugary goodness.
You see why I love America so much, now? :)