Well, here we are, our first Top Ten Tuesday of the month. Today we will be reviewing our Top Ten Meals of Summer 2011. The further qualifications are that these are all restaurant-type meals and all from our travels this summer. They aren’t necessarily all the best, fanciest food, either – I have taken into account ambience, particular food items and creative menus, as well as that “it” factor. You know the one.

10. South Pine Cafe – Grass Valley, CA

This probably wouldn’t have made it into the Top Ten otherwise, but it was such a surprising find in such an old California gold mining town (Grass Valley was actually really amazing, and had lots of funky shops and bookstores, but I just didn’t have great luck with food).  There were a tonne of vegan options on the menu and the food was very good.  They had delicious house-made jam and good-size portions, and I was so, SO happy that I wasn’t eating a green salad hold the cheese, egg and bacon.

Sam at the South Pine Cafe, although you can't really tell. He enjoyed some blackberry peach jam with his cereal in that bowl.

9. Sage’s Cafe and the Vertical Diner - Salt Lake City, UT

So, I’m cheating here, but I am including both of these places in one, as from all we could tell, they are sister restaurants.  Vertical Diner was casual and had great food and even had vegan options on its kids’ menu – they were wonderful to Sam and he started to learn to use a fork eating their vegan banana pancakes!  Sage’s was fancier, and had two of my favourite food items of the trip – an appetizer with roasted shiitakes on bread with carrot butter (I have since recreated this at home to rave reviews) and… wait for it… tiramisu! This was my favourite dessert of the trip by far – it has been a long time since I have been able to eat  tiramisu, and this did not disappoint.

8. Magnolia – Burlington, VT

We ate at Magnolia several times while we were in Burlington, and it was a great choice for brunch/lunch.  Sometimes when we go for brunch in a new place, I really struggle to choose between sweet and savoury.  Well, luckily, I got to try both at Magnolia – sweet French toast and savoury chickpea salad sandwich on two different days.  Perfect! The service here was always friendly and the house-made jams were to die for.  It’s a bit hard to find, as it is tucked away below the level of the main street, but it is well worth seeking it out if you are in town.

7. Frida’s – Stowe, VT

Frida’s had lovely, fresh Mexican food and the most amazing, enormous bowl of guacamole. Sometimes fresh guacamole is all a girl needs.  (The rest of the food and drink was good, too.)

6. Aux Vivres – Montreal, QC

Holy moley, do I love Montreal.  We had about two hours in Montreal before we flew home (most of which was spent navigating through various construction detours), but we made it to Aux Vivres and had an amazing lunch.  I had a Choco-Classique smoothie and a Vegelox wrap (vegan “lox” with cream cheese and veggies all rolled up in a chapathi) and I was so full after, I could hardly get back in the car.  But, I got to order in French! And speak French to the waitress! And gaze at all of the French-ness of Montreal as we drove through on our way back to the airport!  Magnifique!!

5. Native Bowl - Portland, Oregon

In my previous post, I talked about the food cart scene in Portland and my bad food cart luck in Vancouver, but I didn’t mention that I have had equally bad (actually, worse) luck with actually eating at a food cart in Portland.  Our trip to Native Bowl this summer was our first successful trip to a food cart, and it was really amazing.  I ate the Mississippi Bowl (BBQ soy curls, rice, coleslaw and ranch sauce) and had a Chocolate Cup (warm chocolate cake and chocolate sauce in a little paper cup!) for dessert. I actually tried to recreate the Mississippi Bowl at home when we got back (using the recipes from the owner’s book, Vegan Diner, which I have mentioned here before). We were wildly successful in our attempts, but it wasn’t the same as eating the real thing at a little table in Portland with my boys.  Behold my photo series:

Sam and I in the seating area. Unfortunately Native Bowl is to my left in this photo, so you can't see it. But, we are cute, so hopefully that makes up for it.

Terrible photo, delicious food. Mississippi Bowl!

My Mississippi Bowl. A better picture, and although it wasn't as good as the real thing, still pretty delicious! Look at those tasty BBQ soy curls hiding under there.

4. Mint - Waitsfield, VT

So, I just typed Mint’s name with a bit of a lump in my throat.  We had a lovely, peaceful lunch at Mint at the tail end of our trip to Vermont – the food was fantastic (I had a tempeh bowl that was better than anything I have ever had at home, and the tofu sauce on that bowl was one of the best sauces I have ever had), the hibiscus cooler was deliciously refreshing in the heat and the restaurant space was so calming and bright and soothing.  The restaurant was located in a multi-level little commercial space beside the river running through Waitsfield and after lunch, we stopped and watched a couple of kids jumping off of a covered bridge into a deep pool beside the bridge.  It was a pretty nice afternoon.  Well, sadly, if you click through to Mint’s website, you will see that when Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast in August, the whole space was terribly flooded and they are now serving lunch out of a church basement while they try to rebuild their space (the pictures as you scroll down the page are really crazy). I really hope they are able to get back up and running, because this was such a beautiful space and amazing food.  Virtual hugs to them!!

3. A Single Pebble - Burlington, VT

This place wins for major underdog of the summer.  Although Chad and I like Chinese food, and there is almost always some kind of Chinese vegetarian option in most major (and not-so-major) North American cities, we NEVER go out for Chinese food. I think because when it is bad, it is so bad (oh, Chinese take-out restaurant in Park City, Utah, I am looking at you).  We had plans to go to a different restaurant, and it was closed for a private function, so we just kept walking around and when we walked by Single Pebble, I recognized it as being on a blog list I had read about good vegan eats in Vermont.  Well, I never.  The food was excellent – non-greasy, spicy in that gingery-garlicky-red pepper flakes way I love, and so so flavourful.  I still have dreams about their Salt and Pepper Tofu.  Dreams, people.  If you ever go to Burlington, you MUST go here.

2. Watercourse Foods - Denver, CO

The #2 spot was a pretty easy choice for me.  Watercourse was in a beautiful, bright, airy space in a lovely part of Denver, and it probably had my favourite menu of the summer.  A tonne of choices, including breakfast/brunch options at lunch, and all vegetarian, with lots of vegan substitution options.  I had a Po Boy sandwich on an amazing roll, with a polenta-encrusted portobello mushroom (WHAT), coleslaw and a chipotle mayo type dressing.  Ridiculous.  The menu here made me want to move to Denver so that I could try everything.  Including the VEGAN CHEESE PLATE.  Yes, that is for real. I am still kicking myself for opting for mediocre pub food on our first day in Denver when I could have been eating a cheese plate.

1. Millenium – San Francisco, CA

This was the easiest pick of the list.  I already wrote about our fabulous dinner here, but suffice it to say, the food was magnificent, the restaurant itself is beautiful and the service was impeccable.  Oh, and Vegan White Russians.  YES.

Black and White Russian.

There were so many honourable mentions (Zudaka in Boulder! VG Burgers in Boulder! Skinny Pancake in Burlington! Leaf in Boulder!), and I intentionally left off a few of our old standbys (Boundary Bay in Bellingham! Pepper Sisters in Bellingham! Vita in Portland!) in favour of new(er) places.

I also would feel remiss if I did not mention two of the very best meals of our whole trip that weren’t in a restaurant.  First, Ryan and Sonia Gallagher hosted us in their super cute house in Portland on our way back from California in June. We had lasagna and salad made with fresh veggies from their garden (so jealous!), we had an assortment of treats from Back to Eden bakery (LOVE this place) for dessert, and most importantly, we got to visit and catch up and show off Sam and see them before their lovely daughter, Naomie, was born in early August.

Sam all tucked in for supper at the Gallaghers. Bring on the food!

Then, on the way home from our travels through Vermont, we stopped in to see our friends, Gilles Barbeau and Lucinda Iglesias, in their beautiful new home in Sutton, Quebec.  We ate hearty bowls of grilled veggie pasta outside under the trees and finished off the evening with fresh, summer berries dripping with the lightest, clearest maple syrup you have ever seen (we even brought a few cans home with us and broke one out for Sam’s birthday).

We are so lucky to have such great friends, who will chef us up delicious and healthy food at a moment’s notice, and welcome us into their homes when we are weary from being on the road.

What an amazing summer of food! And, I haven’t even talked about all of the sweets yet.

(Phew, that was a long Top Ten.  I promise the rest will be shorter.  See you tomorrow!!!)

Many of you will know of my love for the food cart scene in Portland.  I have for many years talked about packing up shop as a lawyer and starting up my own food truck.  Imagine my excitement when, in the spring of 2010, I heard that the City of Vancouver was approving a series of food carts, mostly downtown!

Unfortunately for me, the carts weren’t set to roll out until July 31st, and I was supposed to have a baby on August 12th. I stalked the cart line-up for weeks beforehand, and on the first work day after the August long weekend, I wandered around to all of the proposed locations.  (At least all of the proposed locations within a few block radius of my office. I was 9 months pregnant after all.)

Nothing! Nada! Zero!  There was one lonely, closed-up cart, and every other street corner was empty. Never mind the fact that none of the carts I had previewed online seemed to offer any kind of vegan options, I would have ordered carrot sticks. Or fries. Or a freaking bottle of water! On my last few days in the office, I made some halfhearted efforts to wander around, trying not to look desperate while standing on (swollen) tippy-toes so that I could see if there was SOMEONE IN THAT CART WITH THE WINDOW LATCHED SHUT.  There wasn’t.

Of course, Sam arrived a few days early, and I never got to sample food cart fare.  Any time we made it downtown while I was on leave, we got sucked into spending every non-fussy minute in the office visiting with people and when we did stop for food, I made a point of going to my favourite downtown lunch spot, Gorilla Foods. (I am hoping to post about Gorilla later this month.)

Well, after a few botched attempts over the last two weeks, I finally, FINALLY got to eat lunch at a food cart downtown today.  And it was good!  And it was vegan!!  It was raining and I didn’t have an umbrella and I didn’t even CARE!!!

Food cart love.

The food truck was Off the Wagon, and to be fair, I knew that I was getting good food before I went there today.  They sell their delicious yam and black bean vegan tacos at the Kitsilano farmers market most weekends, and I devoured a pair of tacos for breakfast on more than one sunny Sunday over the summer. But, there was something super sweet today about sitting at my desk, working, and eating good, fresh vegan food for lunch, while it was a dark and wet and grey Vancouver day outside my window.  It isn’t easy to find good vegan eats in the heart of downtown, and on rainy days like today, the walk to Gorilla, or Nuba or La Taqueria a couple blocks further down, is just a little bit daunting (albeit well worth the wet pant legs, foggy glasses and flattened hair).

Look at those delicious tacos. The yellow stuff on top is wonderful, wonderful hot sauce.

I have a few more food carts picked out to try downtown with vegan potential, so we will see how that goes.  The one wrinkle here in Vancouver is that the carts are not allowed to park overnight, and so many of them change locations on a weekly or even daily basis. I got lucky today, as Off the Wagon wasn’t downtown my first week back in the office and so they were off my radar.  Hopefully they will stick around, as I would love to have their tacos as a regular lunch option!

So, there’s this thing called Vegan MOFO. It is kind of like NaNoWriMo, but the idea is to blog about vegan food for a whole month. I have been wanting to participate ever since the first year that it started, and this year is Vegan MOFO V (I suck). This year I really felt like I needed to either do it, or stop dreaming about doing it… but then I chickened out and didn’t sign up for the official list. (Just to give you some context, last year there were something like 700 blogs on this list and they were all linked to a feed so that you could read every single one of them every time they posted. This seemed a little bit daunting to me.)

However, my research has assured me that I can still participate, and so I think I am going to try to do it.  The (highly encouraged) commitment level is 20 posts in a month, which works out to pretty much every weekday.  Do you think I can do it? I would like to think so, but life isn’t always as predictable as I would like.  At the same time, I am feeling like I need to stop thinking about doing things, and at least TRY to do them, whether or not I think I may fail.  This is a really big step for me.

So, starting tomorrow, I am going to try to post every weekday.  My plan is to have some themed days of the week, but I haven’t actually settled on all five themes yet, so you will have to wait to find out what they are. I am considering including “Top Ten Tuesdays”, “What We Ate”, “Wild Card Fridays”, something about Sam and his food, maybe standard vegan ingredients, and also something about veganizing things that I ate “before”.  Some of these posts will be about things I have been working on before this month but just haven’t had time to share on this blog.  I am also open to suggestions – if you have anything at all that you are interested in reading about, let me know in the comments and I will try to work it in.  (Kori, if you haven’t given up on me, I am planning to write something about tempeh, but haven’t yet figured out if I have enough for a whole post just on tempeh!)

Wish me luck – I really do hope that I can pull this off.  In the meantime, I figure I should post something about food. So, here is something really wonderful that I ate when we were in Boulder, Colorado in August.  We were at a restaurant called V.G. Burgers that bills itself as vegan fast food – we had veggie burgers and fries that were quite good, but this hot fudge sundae was definitely my highlight. It was stink hot in Boulder this day, and this was pretty much exactly what I needed after lunch.  It was freaking amazing. Sam and I shared, and as you can see, he approved.

More, please.

(As a side note, when we were at Millenium in San Francisco in June, Sam wanted nothing to do with the fancy schmancy ridiculously delicious mint brownie sundae that I had there.  This old school version two months later, however, was right up his alley. My kind of kid.)

This counts as a post, right?

One of the things on my 37 before 37 list is to bake bread.  When I originally came up with this one, I intended “bake bread” to mean bake a fancy loaf of bread with yeast, that I have to knead and let rise.  Well, cooking around here has become an exercise in “what is the fastest way to get from A to B?”, and so I decided to break out my bread maker and try out a few recipes.

This oatmeal nut loaf, my first test run in at least a few years and definitely my first vegan loaf, turned out pretty great.  Chad has said that he would eat it again (duh).

We have been using it up making deluxe sandwiches – one of them is pictured below.  Slices of homemade chicken-style seitan roast (from Vegan Diner, a contender for my favourite new cookbook of the year), avocado, red leaf lettuce and juicy late summer tomatoes, with a little smear of Vegenaise for me and mustard for Chad.  So luxurious.  The bread is soft and nutty, with a slight sweetness.

I was too hungry to get a decent shot before I bit it into this. Oops. So worth it.

I am going to allow myself to cross this item off of my list, but I am hoping to get to the “real stuff” before my birthday rolls around.  I am also going to try to test a few more bread machine recipes, so that I can try to keep us in healthy bread once things get crazy (back to work two weeks today – we are well on our way!)

I was asked for the recipe, so thought I would share it here.  I adapted it from a recipe that came with my bread machine (a Black and Decker horizontal breadmaker).

Oatmeal Nut Bread (makes one 2 pound loaf)

1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
2 tbsp soymilk powder
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp agave nectar
2 tbsp vegan margarine (I used Earth Balance)
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 3/4 cups white flour
1/3 cup quick oats
1 3/4 tsp bread machine yeast
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

1. Measure all of the ingredients in the order listed into the baking pan. Insert baking pan into breadmaker and close lid.
2. Select “GRAIN” setting and 2.0 pound loaf setting (or other appropriate settings if your breadmaker is different).
3. Start bread machine.  Remove once the bread has fully baked.
4. Allow to cool before slicing.

Note: This bread was extremely soft when it first came out of the machine, so I would definitely recommend letting it cool, or cutting it quite thickly otherwise.  Also, keep your tomatoes separate from the bread (by a layer of vegan mayo, a lettuce leaf or sliced avocado) or it may fall apart on you!

Another note:  The recipe actually calls for you to add the walnuts at a specific time in the bread cycle, but I didn’t want to get up at 5am to do that, so I just added them at the beginning.  If you decide to add them later in the cycle, you might want to chop the walnuts a bit more finely.

Our baby is one year old today! Absolutely mindblowing.

He is a little under the weather today and also has a molar on the way (#1 poked its way through earlier in the week), so we had a pretty low-key day.  We hope to have a more festive evening one night later this week once he is feeling better.

Happy Birthday to our little bear!

Me: Gee, I wonder if he is getting new teeth.
Chad: Either or that, or he is a beaver.

Happy (belated) 11-month birthday to our little beaver!

(Although I have gotten behind in posting stories of our travels due to our busy schedule and sporadic access to the Internet over the last few weeks, I do have a few more travel posts almost ready to go and will try to post them soon.  We are back on the road on Thursday and will again be trying to keep up to date.)

I would like to start today’s post with a small public service announcement. After our fancy dinner the other night, I had a pretty crazy night. My whole life I have had terrible nightmares, but I actually woke up twice having terrible hallucinations. It was one of the craziest things I have ever experienced. I did some research last night and apparently huitlacoche (a corn fungus) can cause hallucinations, in a similar way that it has been speculated that the mass hysteria that led to the Salem witch trials were caused by hallucinations brought on by ergot poisoning (as result of fungus in the community’s rye). In my Google research, I uncovered lots of people complaining (!) that they had eaten huitlacoche and didn’t have any hallucinations, but it seems to be considered relatively common that it can happen. Who knows if that is what actually caused my crazy night, but just wanted to put it out there as something to think about. Although I would probably steer clear of the huitlacoche in the future, just in case, I don’t regret my decision to try it just once!

We packed up and left San Francisco yesterday morning, and although I would have liked to spend another day or two there (and eat a few more meals!), I am also looking forward to some of our upcoming destinations, and I know that Chad is looking forward to running his race already!

Sam in his new Boundary Bay t-shirt. Is it wrong that my ten-month-old child is wearing a beer shirt??

We stopped in Berkeley on the way out to pick up some groceries at the hippie and awesome Berkeley Bowl. Seriously, this place has a huge produce section and the biggest bulk food section I have ever seen. I was only slightly saddened by the fact that they didn’t carry my peanut butter cups, and I am out. [Insert sad face here.] We stopped to pick up a “mid-morning snack” at Cinnaholic, a vegan cinnamon bun shop right across the street from the UC Berkeley campus. They have a basic model cinnamon bun with vanilla frosting that they let you customize with various frostings and toppings. Chad stuck with a basic model, and Mom and Dad both added nuts (Mom hazelnuts and Dad almonds). I of course went a little bit crazy and ordered the “S’mores” cinnamon bun – a basic model topped with chocolate sauce, mini chocolate chips, Dandies marshmallows and chunks of graham crackers. This was an over-the-top, mega-delicious sugar bomb! I certainly couldn’t eat one of these every day (or week, for that matter), but it was a very special treat.

Mom and Dad enjoying their nutty cinnamon buns.

S'mores. Look at those marshmallows. The graham crackers. The chocolate chips. Doesn't the chocolate sauce just seem a little over the top?

We then headed to Sacramende** for lunch at a local pub, the Fox and Goose. This is a place that we stopped at on our last trip through (although we were headed in the opposite direction last time), that is relatively vegan-friendly and serves basic pub grub. Sam and I shared a tofu scramble with avocados and mushrooms and some roasted potatoes. This place allows you to customize your tofu scramble the same way that you customize a pizza, which I think is a fantastic option.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving up to Squaw Valley and are now here in our lovely suite looking out at the mountains. We cooked our own pasta dinner last night, and I was sad to discover that somewhere along the line our poor little tub of Earth Balance got left behind. [Insert another sad face here.]

Pasta Marinara with Garden Vegetables topped with Sauteed Mushrooms and Field Roast Apple Sage Sausages. Yummers.

Walking off all of that pasta in the Village.

Today we are going to head into Reno in between Chad’s race duties.  Not sure how many interesting photos or places we will see today (we are really going to do some shopping, not any interesting gambling or sightseeing), but I will try to catch a few so that we can do at least a short post about it.  In the meantime, here is a bonus shot of Sam having a good old laugh:

** And by Sacramende, I mean Sacramento.  Fans of the show Arrested Development (its loss is still mourned in our household) will remember that when asked by Michael where her child was, Lindsay thought that Maeby was with the debate club on the way to Sacramende for the semi-finals (she was not). In fact, she was overseeing a remake of the Old Man and the Sea for the film studio where she had bluffed her way into a job.  Sacramento will always be Sacramende to us.

 

 

Yesterday we decided to check out an area of San Francisco that none of us had ever visited before – the Mission.  I made up a fresh fruit salad for everyone in the morning, and I mixed it up with a coconut tapioca pudding that I bought at the tamale place at the farmers market on Tuesday (no one else was interested in the pudding, so all the more for me). I remember eating this tapioca pudding two years ago and buying small tapioca pearls so that I could recreate it at home, and then forgetting ever to do it.  Not this year!  Tapioca pudding is back on the list.

The weather yesterday was a bit different than the day before – it cooled right off, and as we were driving through the city, you could see the fog rolling over the hills and down into the city.  The fog just sat there most of the day.  I wasn’t complaining at all, as it gave my poor sunburned shoulders a bit of a break!

We headed from the hotel directly to Mission Dolores and Dolores Park.  There was a big construction project underway at the park, so it wasn’t quite as peaceful or beautiful as it might otherwise be, but we appreciated the big palm trees and the splendid view of the city. It was pretty deserted when we arrived, but when we walked by again a few hours later, it was packed with people having lunch and suntanning on the hill.  One of my highlights was seeing a huge hawk just sitting and hanging out in the middle of the grass.  There were about four or five smaller birds that kept taking little bounces towards it and chirping at it, and it just sat there looking at them as if to say “Please.  Bring it on. I would welcome your challenge.”  Badass hawk.  I love nature.

Dolores Mission

Dolores Park

We then headed over to Valencia Street and walked up about seven very long blocks.  We saw lots of the murals that this area is famous for as well as some very artistic graffiti (unfortunately our photos of the graffiti were accidentally deleted from my parents’ camera).

Women's Building

There were also lots of fun cafes and bookstores all along the street.  We then headed over one block to Mission Street and it was like walking into a whole other world.  People, noise, litter, colour, music – it was almost overwhelming after our relatively peaceful walk up Valencia.  We stopped for lunch and Sam helped me gobble up some tofu scramble with guacamole, salsa, black beans and roasted potatoes.

Dog Eared Books on Valencia

Children's books section - can you see Anne of Green Gables?

Even closer up - it's an excerpt from Harry Potter

There were rainbow flags up all over the place, and it wasn’t clear to me whether this was because of the area’s proximity to the Castro (which we understand is the “gay district” in SF) or in preparation and support for the Gay Pride Parade which is going to be held this weekend, something I would love to be in town for one year.  It was pretty cool to see such visual and public support for this community, even coming from a city like Vancouver that is already pretty LGBTQ friendly.

We spent a few hours at the hotel in the middle of the afternoon, taking naps and reading and relaxing for a bit.  Being the introvert that I am, I always appreciate taking a little bit of time to recharge like this every few days, especially since we are going to be on the road so much for the next few months.  It also gave Sam a bit of a break and chance to play and wriggle all over the place before heading out for a long dinner.

And what a dinner it was.  The five of us had dinner at Millennium Restaurant in downtown San Francisco, one of the premier vegan restaurants in the country.  I hope that you will humour me in doing some gushing over the food!  I wasn’t able to take photos of any of the actual food because Sam was actually more of a handful than he normally is at a restaurant and was quite demanding about getting a share of what Chad and I were eating.  I did get a couple of restaurant shots though – they were dark, but you can get a sense of the warmth of the lighting in the room.

Bring on the fancy foods!

To start, I had one of the best salads I have had in my life, and this is also getting added to the list of dishes to attempt to recreate at home.  It was called the Sea Vegetable and Avocado salad, and it was a whole lot more than it sounds like.  Shredded lettuce; long strands of seaweed (I am unsure what kind but will be doing the research); matchstick carrots, red pepper and daikon radish; kelp noodles; thinly sliced nectarine; thinly sliced snap peas; macadamia nuts dusted with Shichimi Togarashi (luckily I just bought a jar of this exotic spice mix about a week before we left home); a lemony, gingery, slightly creamy dressing; and avocado slices drizzled with a wasabi cream.  I don’t normally like wasabi, but this had the perfect amount of kick to match the rest of the salad.  SO GOOD.   It was light and refreshing and so many interesting flavours and textures. Sam even liked a mashed up combo of the avocado, kelp noodles and nectarine.

For dinner, I had a huitlacoche tamale filled with roasted poblanos and a cashew cheese, with nopales, braised kale and black beans.  It’s funny – I eat so many black beans (probably about five times already on this trip) that it was really amazing to eat a black bean that had such a distinctive flavour, just from the quality and cooking method of the beans. The dish also had a spicy green creamy sauce on the side, but I forget to check what it was before we left.  Delicious.  Everyone had a different entrée for dinner:  Chad had a smoked mustard tempeh dish with risotto (the tempeh was perfect), Dad had a seitan and mashed potato roulade with black lentil salad (my Dad ate seitan! So awesome! He said it tasted like sausage!) and Mom had a maple roasted portobello with gigande beans and crispy fava beans and arugula pesto.   Sam tasted just about everything at the table and didn’t flinch at anything on the dinner rotation.  He also ate the tofu-based bread spread out of the bowl by the spoonful!

Then came dessert.  Mom and Chad both opted for the light “sweet ending” plate of cookies, truffles and fresh fruit, which looked lovely.  I had the chocolate mint brownie sundae and Dad had the chocolate almond midnight, probably Millennium’s signature dessert.  This one we actually got a photo of.  I think he was pleased with it (understatement). Dessert was the one course that Sam wasn’t so sure about – we let him try spoonfuls of coconut cream, which he was OK with, and little tastes of my mint chocolate ice cream, which he was not a fan of at all.  It was pretty strongly mint-flavoured, and I think it was just such a radically different flavour than he is used to.  He also had some of Chad’s fruit and a couple of tastes of the chocolate filling in Dad’s dessert, but I think he was getting tired and full and pretty much rejected dessert.

Chocolate Almond Midnight

I finished my meal with something I have been looking forward to since the last time Chad and I were here:  a White Russian. It was perfect.  This is something that I can never order in a regular restaurant, ever, and so it is such a treat to be able to enjoy one at a place like Millennium.

Perfection in a glass

We got back to the hotel full and sleepy, and I think that the meal was a success for everyone.  I so appreciate my parents being willing to try all of these crazy new foods and be adventurous, and to have fun with it with us!  I am also so thankful to have been able to bring Sam with us and to have shared the experience with him, even though he won’t remember it.  I decided early in the meal last night to take some chances in my own food choices, and pick different dishes than I normally would, and am so, so glad that I did.  What a great night all around!

On Tuesday, we decided to do some of the more standard stops in SF and did quite a lot of walking. It was a glorious day that got close to 90F, quite unusual for San Francisco I think, and, to varying degrees, we all regretted not wearing sunscreen (me more than anyone).  Sam was the only one that was well protected with both sunscreen and the sunshade and cover on his stroller!

Our first stop was one that has been on my list since the last time we were here – the Tuesday farmers’ market at the Ferry Building. The market was a bit smaller than I remembered last time – I suspect that since we are a week earlier this time around and since the weather has been crappy pretty much everywhere this spring, things are just a bit later arriving. We picked up some strawberries, cherries and peaches, and my Mom also grabbed a few fresh peas for us to sit and shell back at our hotel.  We also grabbed some light lunch at the tamale stand at the market – they have several varieties of vegan tamales and Sam and I both enjoyed the roasted butternut squash and black bean tamale that I selected.  Sam didn’t even flinch at the green salsa bits that made it into his share – TOTALLY MY KID!

Mom picking up some English peas from the friendly farmer

Yum, tamale!

I was surprised at the prices at the market – we pay less for most things at our own market back home – and interested to see that there was relatively very little difference between the prices for organic and conventional produce. In some ways, I think this is great if it means that organic produce is becoming more affordable, but also caught the cynic in me wondering if the conventional growers were just trying to catch people assuming that their stuff was organic without checking and thinking that they were getting a better deal than the organic fruit at the neighbouring stand.

After lunch, we wandered around inside the beautiful building and checked out some of the shops as well. It was pretty busy in there as it was lunchtime and it is a popular spot for downtown office workers to pick up a delicious and healthy lunch (so jealous! Vancouver, take a lesson!), but we spent some time perusing the books in the Book Passage, which has a great selection of kids’ books about San Francisco, and picked up some doughnuts for dessert at Pepple’s, a vegan doughnut stand at one end of the building.  I noticed the guy there using his iPad as a calculator and as a credit card machine – he had a little plug-in that swiped the card and an app to process the payment.  Such a great tool for the small business owner – I will be interested to see if this starts to pick up at the farmers’ markets at home where I think lots of people would love to be able to pay with credit cards.

Salted caramel doughnut. Yes, you read that correctly. Whoa. So good.

After the Ferry Building, we wandered all the way down to Fisherman’s Wharf.  On the way, we passed a bunch of the tour operators and overheard one of the guys saying that their Alcatraz tours were sold out until Saturday!  That is crazy!  (We had talked about going at one point but I personally wasn’t really into it – I did a prison tour in Ireland when I was there and actually found it quite depressing and upsetting, and didn’t think that Alcatraz would be much different.)  We didn’t actually stop to do much on the walk down to the wharf, but did do some people-watching and walked out onto the pier across from Pier 39 so that we could watch the sea lions for a while.  There weren’t as many as last time we were here and most were just sleeping and sunning themselves (it was pretty hot), but we did see a couple of feisty guys barking and mixing it up for a little bit.

Chillin' with Dad.

Once we got back to the car, we picked up a couple of freshly made strawberry lemonades at a local cafe that were the perfect end to our walk in the hot sun! We then headed over to the nearest Whole Foods market to pick up some supplies for the kitchen in our hotel room.  I like to try to hit a big market like Whole Foods (or preferably a big independent market) in most larger cities that we go to, just because I am curious to check out some of the cool local specialty ingredients. I had hoped to get to Rainbow Grocery on this trip, but it just wasn’t ever very convenient, and I wasn’t sure that any of the rest of my travelling party, including Sam, would be very excited.  Next time! I did manage to pick up a few more packs of peanut butter cups and some Field Roast apple sage sausages and sandwich slices that I am excited to use in Tahoe (the Field Roast stuff, not the peanut butter cups – they are already long gone).

We headed over to Berkeley at this point and did a little bit of wandering around over there.  It wasn’t as interesting as I remember it being last time, but we had a nice dinner at Herbivore and spent some timing looking around in Pegasus Books.  Then we headed back to our hotel and spent some time hanging around and letting Sam go crazy on the floor.  It is one thing that I have really noticed on this trip – when we spend all day out, he spends a lot of time unable to move freely, either seatbelted into the car, strapped into his stroller or snug in his carrier, or fastened into a highchair in a restaurant.  By the end of the day, he is a little stir crazy, and enjoys crawling and wiggling all over the place and banging his toys around once he has been liberated.

Sam the monkey. My Dad and I laughed so hard at Sam trying to climb all over his highchair.

All in all, a great first day in San Francisco!

Yesterday was our last driving day for a while, and I think we are all ready for the break.  Sam was not a very good traveller yesterday – I had to spend most of the day sitting in the back beside him, resting my head on the side of his carseat so he could “play” with my hair.  If I moved my head away, he screamed.  It was a pretty fun game.

Shortly after we left Fortuna yesterday morning, we decided to drive the Avenue of the Giants.  The AotG is a 30-ish mile section of the old Highway 101 that runs parallel to the current Highway 101, and it is one of the more beautiful drives I have done in a while. Given the time of year, there wasn’t too much traffic on it yet, so it was a very pleasant drive through, with one stop to get out and smell the fresh, cool air and enjoy the relative quiet.  The trees defy description, stretching so tall into the air that you can’t even see the tops most of the time.

Big tree (this one was actually a baby by comparison)

Close-up!

We stopped in a town called Garberville at the south end of the AotG to find some lunch.  It was such a funny little town – on the surface, it appears to be a logging town full of beat-up trucks and saloons, but if you look closer, there are lots of hippie elements, including both the Humboldt County Smoking Caterpillar (complete with Alice in Wonderland hookah-smoking caterpillar on the sign) and the Hemp Connection shop, and a little, super-granola natural foods store and cafe, Chautauqua Natural Foods, just off the main drag.  I loved the natural foods store – it had all of my favourites, including more peanut butter cups!

We picked up sandwiches at the store and drove a little ways up the road to Richardson Grove State Park where we had a lovely little picnic.  The sandwiches were really delicious (miso mayo! cilantro pesto!), and we all enjoyed some crumbly but very good peanut butter cookies.  I was reflecting while eating mine that, ironically enough, most peanut butter cookies actually suffer from an insufficient amount of peanut butter.  Luckily for me, this cookie had no such deficiency!

I know this picture is dark, but it was a nice picture with a good old picnic feel.

We continued south into the Sonoma Valley, one of the three main wine regions.  As you can see, it was hot.

What is crazy is that by the time we were in San Francisco shortly after 7pm, this temperature reading had dropped to 62F.

We stopped into the town of Healdsburg as a break and also to miss rush hour traffic in San Francisco.  There were tasting rooms and wine bars galore, all pretty high-end, and some gorgeous restaurant spaces.  One of the patios was actually surrounded by cool water misters, so that you were continually kept cool while sipping your wine. We perused a beautiful bookshop (Copperfield’s Books) and wandered up the main strip for a while before the heat drove us into Bear Republic Brewing Company.  Yes, I know, what were we doing in a brewpub in wine country?  The beer was cold and the atmosphere was casual, and that was pretty much what we all needed at that point.

From Healdsburg, we headed into San Francisco, and I was reminded as we came in over the Golden Gate Bridge what a beautiful city this is.  Of course, my view was a bit skewed sideways, with a handful of my hair in Sam’s hand as I craned my neck to see around the carseat, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

This is a cool picture, because it is actually a picture of Sam on the Golden Gate Bridge (he is in the car, right in the centre of the picture!)

Down the big hill

Today we are planning to spend some time near the water, starting at the Ferry Building (it is farmer’s market day and I am going to try to get me some strawberries!) and possibly walking on up to Fisherman’s Wharf. I am looking forward to seeing the sea lions again (arf! arf! arf!) and am hoping to pick up some tamales for lunch at the market.  Not sure what the plan is for the afternoon – possibly Golden Gate Park, or maybe a trip up to Berkeley for some sightseeing and eating. We are open to suggestions for places to see while we are here – if you have any, let us know!