Airplanes and airports

As vegans, we know there are some times in our life and in our travels when it will be more difficult to find food that is vegan and also satisfying. For example: wedding are never good (please leave me a comment if you've been to a wedding and have been served something other than plain vegetables with or without rice).
It was on my vacation last year that I got the delicious airplane treats pictured here. I was never so happy to see plain chips and Oreo cookies! Some airplane treats can be vegan, but with labels often in a foreign language I admint I have spent more than few minutes staring at a list of ingredients trying to remember how to translate both "egg" and "milk".
I always bring snacks with me, but it can be disheartening to see everyone around you eating hot food (even if it is airplane food, it's still hot!). Flight attendants have sometimes taken pity on me and brought two breakfast trays so I could at least get two buns and two tiny bowls of fruit. There's nothing like being hungry  while dashing across a terminal to your flight or, worse, stuck a few thousand feet above ground. Sympathetic flight attendants, I salute you!

(Road) Avocado, Part 1: Veg Out in London, ON

 Sometimes I have to travel for work. It's not that often, and since I work fore a charity, it's really not glamourous. I tend to stay with colleagues or family when possible, and these exotic locations include Kirkfield, Ontario, and Fort Erie, Ontario. Yeah, it's mostly Ontario! So when I had to go London, (yes, Ontario) in June, the colleague who offered to host me suggested we go to the vegan place for dinner Friday night. Um, doubletake what? We invited our other London colleagues but only one could join us--the one who made bacon jokes the whole time, unlike my host who seems to eat meatless a lot anyway. And I thanked her for her hospitality with a half-dozen triple-chocolate cherry biscotti, so I'm glad she wasn't too put off by vegan food to enjoy them! She emailed when she got back into town the following weekend and told me she and her husband were thoroughly enjoying them.
And I was glad, because I had thoroughly enjoyed Veg Out. The menu was varied enough to be enticing, with a mix of comfort food--chili cheese fries--and healthy food, like soba bowl with veggies.  For dinner, I absolutely had to get the crispy cremini and shiitake mushroom appetizer (pictured): I love mushrooms and anything deep-fried just has ny name on it. And yes, it was just as delicious as I thought it would be! I also got the bacon-mushroom melt, and whether it's because I didn't take picture or because it wasn't spectacular, I don't really remember it. But I was excited enough to also go back for dinner the next day!

I was there for a late dinner the next day, after the work event that I actually went to London for. I got the mushroom appetizer again, with a satisfying soy latte and this time the "fish" and chips (pictured). It was just as amazing as I hoped it would be! Almost creepily-similar battered and deep fried "fish", sinful fries and fresh and crunchy cole slaw. And I got a slice of the vegan cheesecake to go, for my train home ride to Toronto. All in all a wonderful and delicious trip to London!

Seize your whisks, my vegans!

I made choclate pancakes last week. No big deal, of course, I just MODIFIED A RECIPE! Which is a big deal for me. When it comes to standard dishes I have learned to follow the recipe the first couple times I make it, then modify away. Leek and bean cassoulet (from Veganomicon, I think?) was modified from the first time I made it. I know, I'm such a vegan foodie bad-ass!
But with baked goods, I hesitate to change a thing. The first time I subbed cornstarch for tapioca flour, I googled like crazy. I see cookbook authors and adventurous friends going crazy qwith experimentation, and I feel envy. So when I made pancakes last weekend, I went crazy too. I added 2 tablespoons cocoa powder to the recipe. It was great! I added blueberry sauce too, becuase blueberry-choclate combo is music to my tongue. So I think we should experiment more. But a word of advice--start small, with single batches only, or you could be eating your mistakes for days. Seize your whisks, my vegans!

(Partially) Illustrated Things I can Always Eat.

I asked a colleague out for lunch last week. She said, "I was going to suggest sushi but you just had some on Friday." First of all--good memory on her, no? Secondly, I can have sushi anytime.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, midnight snack, post workout...I hope you get what I'm saying. There are a few things like that--if someone asked, "How about this for dinner, again?" I would say, hell yeah! So for my first post of VeganMoFo 2012, here is my very informative list, of (Partially) Illustrated Things I can Always Eat.

Sushi, obviously
The elegance of Japanese food is inherently appealing. The focus on the aesthetics is so different from the meat-potatoes-veg dinners so many of us grew up with. Hallelujah for that! And plus we get to use chopsticks, which is how I measured when I became a fully-formed city girl.

Pizza
Generally speaking, I have to make it myself. So I do. If I am especially disciplined, I will make a pizza and take it to work with me for a couple days' worth of lunch, health-ified with a salad on the side. Sex is like pizza, right? I can't remember how exactly, but it sounds right.

Dumplings
They're tiny and varied, they're stuffed with things, and they come with sauces. If dumplings aren't on your list of OMNoms, you must have been born without taste buds.

Grilled Cheese
Since going vegan, grilled cheese wasn't a popular item on my menu rotation. But then there was Daiya; and I discovered my panini press makes grilled cheese extra awesome. (It's all the extra space for crispy-ness that the panini press makes.) Now there is now going back. 

French toast
This has much the same appeal as grilled cheese--it's fried and it's carbs, so gimmeh! Only with French toast, it's not the gooey cheeze that make it extra nom-worthy, it's the stuff you eat it with--fruit, fruit sauce, maple syrup, icing sugar, or completing the full-on hot-breakfast trifecta of hash browns and meatless sausage/bacon. Weekends are made for this, people.

Falafel
Another food that builds on the basic fried carbs, falafel kicks it up a notch. Not only do you have the fried falafel balls and the pita, some food genius decided that contrasting this with cool, crisp parsley and adding some tahini for depth of flavour would take this food to a whole new level. And it did. 

Mexican

There is something about the flavour palate and the often vegan-ness of Mexican-style food that I can't get enough of. And seriously, anything I can add avocados to has my heart. Furthermore, chipotle peppers are the perfect addition of heat, and leave me teary with delicious joy--and a burning tongue.


Avocado
Do I really need to explain this one? If anything with avocados has my heart, then avocados themselves must be amazeballs. It's like this: if movies with Ryan Reynolds are inherently awesome, then Ryan Reynolds himself must be awesome squared. Hard to argue with my impeccable logic, right?
Avocados are smooth and creamy and go well with everything. If you're not convinced, look at the picture and try not to imagine how tasty that is.

Hummus

Humans have four basic needs: air, water, food, shelter. This being the 20th century, we can add Facebook and funny photos of cats if we wanted the list to be truly accurate. Vegans can add hummus to the list of necessities. How many sad, hungry vegan, lost and forlorn--on the road or at an event--has found that delicious saviour, hummus, and become instantly rejuvenated? Hummus is a vegan food that can be found so many places now that it frequently saves us from "just the salad". And thank hummus for that!