Happy Thanksgiving!

Michael and I contintued with our previous tradition of heading up to Native Foods for Thanksgiving since they serve a huge buffet every year. The Native Wellington, pictured below, is a puff pastry filled with seitan, kale, portobellos, orange-glazed yams, stuffing, and carmelized onions. This is always the highlight of their Thanksgiving meal I think I was able to stuff two of these bad boys into my belly. Also pictured -- green bean casserole, polenta butternut squash terrine, corn bread, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. They also served a mushroom gravy, wheatberry waldorf salad, and a green salad with maple glazed pecans.

For dessert, they served pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, and double chocolate brownies. On the side was some sort of pecan sauce as well as a ginger sauce (I'm not entirely sure of these because they weren't labeled). The pies were AWESOME. The brownies had some strange taste that I wasn't fond of. Not sure what it was but at least I was able to down around 6 pieces of pie.

In the previous years, before dinner, we visited Downtown Disney. We have annual passes now so we decided to not only go to Downtown Disney but also Disneyland and California Adventure. The park was so beautiful and luckily not too busy. I can't wait to go back for Christmas!

How was your Thanksgiving?

Sick Darcy Cat + Thanksgiving

Wow, it's been a while since I posted! Michael's cat (well I guess she's sort of my adopted cat now), Darcy, became ill two days before Thanksgiving. We noticed that she was being extremely lethargic, not cleaning herself (which is very unusual for Darcy girl), not eating, and puking up this white foamy stuff. We immediately took her to the vet (a vegan vet!) in the area. She wasn't sure what was wrong with Darcy so she ran some blood tests. The tests came back the next day and they weren't promising -- she still didn't know exactly what was wrong with Darcy, only that her liver levels weren't where they were supposed to be. Since Darcy hadn't eaten all that day or the previous, our vet told us that we needed to take her to the ER that night. Our vet was closed Thanksgiving day and the day after, so poor Darcy stayed in the ER til Saturday. While there, they pumped her with fluids, performed an ultrasound, and gave her a bunch of vitamins and medicines.

Here she is at the ER on Thanksgiving day. Sweet thing was shivering like crazy. She hated it there...

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we took her over to our vet, where she stayed til last Friday. She was away from home for 9 days! While at the vet, they continued to pump her with fluids as well as hand feed her and give her even more medicine. Her liver levels kept going up so we needed to have a liver biopsy done. We found out last Thursday that she has feline hepatic lipidosis, or fatter liver. They're not really sure how she even got this since she is only 8 and, before getting sick, was in extremely good health. In any case, we were finally able to pinpoint exactly what was wrong and exactly what kind of medicine she needed to be taking. We brought her home and have been hand feeding her a high calorie food, vitamins, and liver medicine ever since. We feed her pretty much every 4 or 5 hours (or more frequent if we are home) and it's not an easy task. She hates getting food from a syringe but we need to build up strength in her liver. Slowly but surely she is getting better. 

I came home from work today and found our cute girl snuggled up in our blankets...

It's been pretty cold in our house and she does have a bare belly from the biopsy which makes her a bit colder than Murphy, her brother. We'll be taking her back to the vet sometime this next week and hopefully I'll have some more updates!

In the meantime, check out our awesome Thanksgiving! Darcy was in the ER this day, and we were almost sure we wouldn't be able to celebrate. They reassured us that she'd be ok where she was and would most likely be sleeping during the day, so we headed up to Downtown Disney. We walked around the hotels and checked out the Christmas decorations there.

Everything was beautiful! We love Disney so much and will take any chance we can get to sneak up there, if even to walk around the hotels!

We had reservations at 4:30 for Native Foods, who was hosting a vegan Thanksgiving buffet. They had the same buffet as last year, so we were pretty pumped. The Native Wellington is SO GOOD!

I also couldn't believe how amazing their pumpkin pie was (shown on the bottom of the photo). If I didn't fill up on other delicious food I probably would've eaten more than two pieces!

Their cornbread was the best I have ever had. It seriously melted in my mouth. Michael obviously felt the same way...

We were worried about Darcy during the whole Thanksgiving day, but I am sure glad we were able to get away. I love Native Foods, Disney, and Michael, so having all of them jammed packed into one day was pretty much awesome.

Visiting Ohio, Part 2

I had a lot of great food on my trip. My mom, sister-in-law, and I went to VegiTerranean and shared one appetizer, 3 entrees, a side of fries, and 2 desserts (I always get the tiramisu when I am there). I could hardly move afterwards.

This lemon raspberry cake was one of the best cakes I've ever had. It had little spurts of fresh raspberries inside.

While we're on the topic of cake, let me show you a picture of Michael and I at our cake tasting appointment. Yeah, we tried vegan cakes for free. (Please excuse my dumb face)

We tried almond with ganache filling, pistachio with buttercream filling, white cake with lemon curd filling, and chocolate with raspberry filling. We decided on two different flavors (I'll give you a hint about one of them: there's a picture of it on this blog and it's not one we tried at the bakery, hehe).

Wow, so much cake! Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining by any means. I love me some cake!

My mom held a get together at her house just for the sole purpose that I was home. How nice of all my relatives to show up! She put together a huge [mostly] vegan dinner. There were fresh veggies and pita chips with hummus, potato chips, cow tails (for the kiddies. Obviously not vegan), Tofurky and Daiya wraps, stuffed cabbage, rice pilaf, a watermelon (that wasn't vegan -- had feta cheese sprinkled on top), fruit salad, and chips and salsa. I can't believe my mom prepared all of this while also helping me with LOTS of wedding planning. Whew!

The rice pilaf had veggie stock, dried cranberries, and pine nuts. This was ahhhhmazing!! The stuffed cabbage was incredibly filling and delicious and the wraps were nice and light. Luckily I was able to take a couple wraps on the plane with me :).

And to end my trip, here is Michael at the airport with a cashew butter and chocolate sandwich, provided by some gourmet pb&j place in the airport.

Now I am hungry...

Visiting Ohio!

I am in Ohio for the week visiting my family and making lots of wedding plans. My Dad cooked dinner last night and it was delicious! He made a chunky gazpacho, which had red and yellow bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, garlic, zucchini, carrots, olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper.

I drank a glass of fresh juice he made. It was watermelon, lemon, lime, and fresh mint from the garden.

My complete dinner: Gardenburger black bean burgers with Heinen's bakery bread, roasted potatoes, a big bowl of gazpacho, and a glass of fresh juice.

So, so good. Thanks, Dad!

Sprinkles Cupcakes

If you've heard of Sprinkles, then I am sure you know that their cupcakes are featured in magazines, television, etc. I've heard of this place not only from the mentioned places but also from quite a few friends. Sprinkles recently opened a location in La Jolla and, knowing they had a vegan option, I knew I'd have to visit it eventually.

I went there with some friends (hi Ash and David!) who were in town visiting. They frequent Sprinkles every time they are in the San Diego or Los Angeles area and warned me that there is pretty much always a line at this place. Turns out they were right! After waiting in line for 20 minutes or so outside (thank you, San Diego, for beautiful weather), we walked into their tiny little shop. It is decorated very modern and the place smells beautifully. They have cupcakes in all varieties lining their shop -- even doggie cupcakes! Unfortunately they only have one vegan option, red velvet, but at least it's anything but plain ol' chocolate or vanilla. David snatched up a box of a half dozen (he had already eaten one before I was able to snap that shot above) and graciously bought Michael and I each a vegan red velvet cupcake. It was AMAZING! The icing was oozing with coconutty goodness and the the cupcake itself was perfectly moist. Even though sometimes vegan options aren't exactly spot on with the taste of what they are trying to imitate, this tasted just like a red velvet cupcake. While they seem like they have a hefty price tag, the cupcakes are rather large and very filling. They're pretty much the size of a piece of cake! They also have quite a few varieties. I wish their banana dark chocolate came in a vegan option. Oh man.

Michael and I liked them so much that we went back for more a few days later.

If only they'd have more vegan options. Don't get me wrong, I love red velvet, but I can only take so much of one kind! In any case, I'm sure I will be there soon for more of those deeeeelicious vegan red velvet cupcakes!

Thanksgiving at Native Foods

Since we are new to San Diego and have no friends here yet, Michael and I didn't really feel like cooking for just us two. When we went to Native Foods a couple weeks back, we noticed they were serving a huge vegan buffet at some of their locations on Thanksgiving. We knew we had to have our Thanksgiving there but we were worried I'd have to work. I found out my work schedule a week before and luckily I wasn't scheduled! We were able to snag a reservation in for 5:15pm. That's a late Thanksgiving for me since my family usually eats around 2 or 3, but I didn't care either way. We were both so excited!

Native Foods is about an hour and fifteen minute drive away, so we decided to make a day of it in Orange County and surrounding areas. We spent our day walking around downtown Disney and the hotels there as well as some parks in Huntington Beach. The parks were somewhat boring and we were pretty hungry (we decided to only snack on bananas and whole wheat crackers to save space in our bellies). Needless to say, we couldn't wait for 5:15 to arrive and to stuff ourselves!

We arrived at Native Foods at about 4:30pm (like I said, we couldn't wait). It was in this really neat area called The Camp. It's a small collective of retail shops, restaurants, etc. that all focus on nature and community -- there are hammocks to hang out on, fire pits, and even a trailer used for a plant shop. It was SO cool. I wished we lived closer to Costa Mesa or else I'd go there just to hang out!

Anyway, now time for the food. After standing there looking like dummies for a few minutes (we didn't really know what we were doing and it was a bit crowded at the time), we were finally seated -- RIGHT next to the dessert table! Very dangerous for me since I have such a huge sweet tooth. In any case, I made sure to get some "real" food before dessert [this time].

Here our both of our plates on our first round. Sorry for the crappy picture quality.

My plate, clockwise: Native Wellington, cranberry stuffing, polenta butternut squash terrine, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes.

Michael's plate, clockwise: green bean casserole, polenta butternut squash terrine (hidden), cranberry stuffing (also hidden), Native Wellington w/ mushroom gravy, wheatberry waldorf salad, cornbread, mashed potatoes.

Their Native Wellington consisted of a puff pastry filled with seitan, kale, portobellos, orange-glazed yams, stuffing, and carmelized onions. Holy crap, this thing was DELICIOUS! I was so filling, though, that I could only eat about 3/4 of mine until I had to give up. I think both of our favorites was either the wellington or the butternut squash.

My second plate, clockwise: polenta butternut squash terrine, mashed potatoes w/ mushroom gravy, green bean casserole.

Michael's second plate, clockwise: polenta butternut squash terrine, corn bread, mashed potatoes w/ mushroom gravy, and a green salad w/ maple glazed pecans and pomegranate pearls.

One of my dessert plates, clockwise: chocolate love pie, pumpkin cheesecake, and pumpkin pie (all with whipped topping). Note: I didn't take a picture of Michael's plate because we both ate the same desserts. They also served a regular cheesecake which I didn't not take a picture of.

Overall, the meal was absolutely phenomenal. I think my favorite out of everything was the pumpkin cheesecake. I probably ate 4 or 5 small slivers of it! The chocolate love pie wasn't my favorite -- I felt like it was way too sweet. Regardless, Michael and I had a great time stuffing our faces and eating like there's no tomorrow.

P.S. How cute are these mugs?!

Native Foods

I go out to eat quite frequently but only decide to post it here when I am really impressed. Michael and I took a trip to Universal Studios and decided on a random vegan restaurant in LA to eat at afterwards. So glad we chose Native Foods because it was SO good (check out their menu if you can. Doesn't all of it look scrumptious?!). I hope I don't work on the 25th so I can go to their vegan Thanksgiving. Ok I am rambling... now time for the food...

Our appetizer: Nuevo Native Nachos. Their homemade cashew "cheese" was amazing. I could eat that stuff on everything.

Michael's dish: Oklahoma Bacon Cheeseburger. Holy crap, his burger looked so good! I didn't try any because I had my own food to eat. I did, however, try the fried pickles. Neither of us were really a fan of those. Warm pickles kind of freak me out.

My dish: Portobello and Sausage Burger. This was the special that day so I was able to get french fries on the side for free. This burger was delicious but incredibly hard to eat. I had to take some of the portobellos off and eat with my fork. In any case, I am so glad I decided on this. It was so good that I ate too much of it and went home with my stomach hurting. Totally worth it.

Besides the food, we also loved the atmosphere there. Every person who worked there was super friendly and accommodating. They were all about animal rights, too, which is awesome. I felt great being able to support a place like that! I can't wait to go back. Thankfully LA is only about 2 hours away, so it won't be impossible to make a short trip there.

Cleveland!

Michael and I decided to spend the day in Cleveland yesterday since we were planning on attending a concert that night. I discovered this place called The Flaming Ice Cafe. They just opened a location in Cleveland so I knew we had to check it out.

It was in a great location -- right in public square. The only issue I have with the location is the parking available. Luckily we were there in the middle of the day so we found street parking relatively easy. I'm sure if we were there on a weekend, though, that it would be nearly impossible to find anywhere to park.

Anyway, it's a quaint little place with a few tables. We took a seat and our server, George, immediately befriended us. He was an older vegan new to the area, so he chatted with us quite a bit. Once we were able to sneak some time in during our conversations to look at the menu and order, I decided on the Pesto Burger which consisted of: a veggie burger (I think it was tempeh), basil pistachio pesto, vegan mayo, lettuce, and white onions. I must say that this is honestly one of the best vegan burgers I've eaten. I think the pesto was the best part of the sandwich. Yum! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture before I started devouring it...

Oh yeah, I also decided on the corn and bean salsa as a side.

Michael decided on the Italian Panini which consisted of vegan salami, pepperoni, turkey, onions, and tomato. He loved it and ate it up immediately...

He also chose the potato salad for his side.

I would definitely go back to this place if given the chance. George made us feel very welcome there and even gave us his email! If any Ohioans are reading this, you should check that place out.

Later on we decided to check out Tremont Scoops. I've heard great things about this place but I wasn't sure what to expect since their online menu is sort of up in the air. However, right when we walked into the place I noticed a giant sign on the wall: "Vegan Menu". Woohoo! It took me a while to decide what I wanted, but I ended up getting a sundae with vanilla Tofutti ice cream, strawberry syrup (with chunks of strawberries in it!), vegan whipped topping, and a cherry on top! Oh man, this definitely hit the spot. It was a pretty good size portion and I ended up eating the whole thing. Michael ended up getting the Vegan Brownie Delight. It was a vegan brownie, vanilla Tofutti ice cream, chocolate syrup, vegan whipped topping, and a cherry. I think he loved his because when he finished he had chocolate sauce all over his face, haha.

I wish there were more places like this around. It was an old fashioned-type place with tons of vegan options (even buckeyes!). I hope I can check out that place again sometime.

We went to Now That's Class for the concert. I was excited about this venue because they have vegan food. Unfortunately, they hardly had any vegan options and their menu didn't match up to what they actually had on hand. I just got 3 veggie hot dogs for $5 (don't worry, I only ate 2) and Michael got coconut curry. They were all so-so and pretty much things I could make in my own kitchen. The food was a bummer but at least the show was great!