Vegan Road Trip: Part 1
Heading East
The Sunday before Christmas we packed up my little VW wagon and hit the road heading east. (Let me just tell you, you don’t realize how small your car is until you fit four people and a load of luggage and gifts in it.) Shawn and I were off to visit his family for the holidays and decided to finally take the road trip I’d been dreaming of, well sort of. I never meant to take a road trip in winter but the weather treated us rather decently.
Our friends Jannatha and Kyle piled in with us heading for North Carolina. Lucky for us, they’re both vegetarian and put up with our crazed searches for vegan pizza and obscure restaurants along the way. The first place we decided to stop was Flagstaff, Arizona, high up in the mountains, covered in the first snow of the trip. Shawn had located a pizza place with vegan pizza. Unfortunately we arrived to find it closed. Lesson one, call ahead.
We drove around looking for an alternative and when our other option was found to be boarded up for the winter we just asked someone walking down the street. Lesson two, don’t be afraid of people, go ahead and ask. Being from Los Angeles, you forget people often will be glad to help you (just not so much in LA).
We ended up at Macy’s Vegetarian Coffeehouse. It was a cute place with a comfortable atmosphere. There were a number of items on the menu that were vegan or could be made that way, but I went for the basic veggie blt with tempeh bacon. This is something I usually wouldn’t order, because I am all too often let down by tempeh bacon, but this sandwich was truly satisfying. First of all, it was huge, and the bread was simultaneously soft and crunchy, with a really great flavor. All the fillings were fresh and crisp and the tempeh was the perfect nutty compliment to the greens and tomato.
So when you’re on the road, you often don’t eat at anyplace special at all. Sometimes you eat only the entire contents of bag full of car snacks. Sometimes, if you’re unlucky, you get altitude sickness and don’t eat anything but saltines. So let’s just skip right along ahead to Columbus Ohio! You weren’t hoping to hear about anything between there and Flagstaff, were you? Didn’t think so.
Shawn was super excited to take me to Benevolence Cafe in Columbus as he remembered it having been there forever. Surprise, surprise, it was closed (possibly for renovations, possibly forever, I’m not sure). Back to Lesson one, call ahead. This ended up being for the best as we instead found On the Fly Street Food. This small cafe is part of the upscale Dragonfly Neo-V. Both restaurants are all vegan. On the Fly is open during the day with an awesome selection of delicious street style foods and great beers.
We couldn’t resist the empanada, which was stuffed with a rich mushroom filling. The crust was just as buttery and flaky as you could wish for and the cheesy sauce on top was just the right amount. I also ordered the chili and cornbread which was equally, if not even more delicious. The chili achieved a magical balance of beans, sauce and “meat.” With a hearty taste that wasn’t too spicy, it was the perfect thing for a very cold Ohio day. Oh and the corn bread, it was delicious; moist and soft, just right for spooning into your chili. It had a lovely cakey consistency and wasn’t mealy at all. So good!
Though we failed at our earlier vegan pizza attempt, Columbus came to the rescue at Circus. This bar and performance venue, decorated with old-school circus paintings, has two vegan pizzas to choose from, the regular vegan and the vegan crow. Since you can order half pizzas, we went ahead and got both. One is a pretty standard cheeseless pizza piled high with tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers and seasonings. The other has a cashew cheese, corn and caramelized onions. Both were superb. The really great thing about these pizzas is that they have a super good crunchy crust that is just thick enough to hold the tons of toppings without being too thick and mushy. The veggie to crust ratio was about 1:1, which is pretty amazing if you ask me. See, pizza isn’t all bad for you.
Overall, Columbus was pretty awesome in the vegan department, it even has an all vegan bakery which I’ll get to in the next post about all the vegan desserts we devoured. Just had to tempt you a little…
Happy New Year!
Hope everyone started their year off right and had a lovely holiday season. I’ve got a bit of catching up to do here at cute and delicious but I’ve got a few treats in store. First, I wanted to travel back in time, not too far back, just to the end of December, and finally let you all in on those gifts hidden in the bags. You remember, right?
Yeah those ones…Now I filled them with all sorts of things but I tried to make a good portion of the gifts that I put in them. This ended up being mostly for the girls I gave gifts to, as well, it’s just easier to make stuff for girls sometimes. Since I only had a few weeks to get all my gifts in order, I decided to make aprons from A is for Apron. The designs were cute and not overly complicated. I picked a few designs and made six different aprons in total.
This one you see my mom wearing is probably my favorite as it has a completely different feel than most aprons you see. It’s a full apron with a smocky design that is still elegant. My mom’s only complaint was that she wouldn’t want to get it dirty, which is pretty good coming from an apron connoisseur like her.
My other favorite was this super cute design that you see on Amy, Shawn’s sister. I loved all the trim on this one and the fun combination of fabric patterns. Overall, A is for Apron was great in that most of the designs are really great and it has a lot of tips and apron history. On the other hand, the directions are, unfortunately, written pretty poorly. It took a lot of re-reading and just plain ignoring the directions and go with my own sewing knowledge to make them all come out correctly.
Like I said, I didn’t make every gift, there were definitely a bunch of books, blu-rays, stainless steel water bottles and the like handed out as well. After last year’s christmas cookie disaster, I stayed away from baking gifts this year. I did, on the other hand, have to bring something to share at my family christmas party.
I decided on vegan rice krispie pops dipped in chocolate, thinking their cuteness would make up for their simplicity. Last year I made peppermint cookies and cream cupcakes and they were hardly touched (obviously they didn’t know what they were missing).
This year all the krispie pops were snatched up before dessert was even served, mainly by small children, who gobbled them up off their sticks. Thanks to dandies, no one had any clue these treats were vegan.
Soon after this, Shawn and I left for a cross country road trip for two weeks. I can’t wait to show you all some of the awesome places we visited all across the country.
