How I Became a Vegetarian

Irie and I both submitted our vegetarian stories to a Eugene based vegan site and you can read them here.

Eugene Happenings

The other day our local video/dvd rental shop closed. They had been in business for 24 years specializing in art, foreign and independent films. They were one of the special things about the neighborhood we live in. They will be missed but will live on through the library which is buying up 10,000 titles from their great collection.

On the other side of the coin we discovered the coolest coffee in the world which actually opened last December. This is the coffee shop run by the same local roasters that roast the coffee we drink at home. They are called Wandering Goat. This coffee shop is so vegan friendly that it costs extra for dairy milk and not for soy, rice and any of the other non-dairy options (every other coffee shop I've ever been to charges extra for soy.) As well all of the treats are vegan. We love the location and it has a great atmosphere. Nothing like riding our bike over there for an iced soy mocha.

Serious Coffee

Irie and I are really enjoying our road trip north. We started in Eugene and spent the first night in Portland with some friends. The next day we headed to the Olympic Penninsula and spent a couple of days there enjoying the rain forest and the most north western coast of the continental U.S. After that we took the ferry across from Port Angeles to Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island. We love Victoria. We're enjoying the incredible food and the many coffee shops. One local coffee shop chain is called Serious Coffee and here is Irie in the doorway waiting for our Soy Mochas to be made.



Speaking of soy mochas, Victoria is very vegetarian/vegan friendly. We found the ultimate restaurant: The Reef. The Reef serves Caribbean food and has vegetarian options for almost everything. I had the Tofu Jerk and it was unreal. Usually Jerk is chicken so I've never had it before. Along with the tofu jerk I got some rice and beans and the tastiest vegan coleslaw ever. The Caribbean atmosphere is accented by sweet roots reggae music playing all the time. Rastafarians tend to replace part of a word with the letter "I", for example, "natural" is "ital". At The Reef they used "ital" on the menu to refer to the vegetarian options. We loved this of course.

Today we drove up the coast checking out more of Vancouver Island while taking sort of a knitting shop tour. Tomorrow we head to Vancouver (the city) where Irie will stay for two months doing her yoga teacher training and on Saturday I'll head back to Eugene.

No-Knead Bread: Third Time

I made some more no-knead bread last weekend and it was sooooooo good!

Here it is just out of the oven and you can see the cast iron pot I'm using. The ceramic pot that Karen and Dick so graciously gave us broke in the oven while heating up on the second attempt so we bought the cast iron pot. I guess it's not a good idea to heat the pot with the lid on. Lesson learned.



And out of the pot:



The other change I made this time was to use corn meal in the towel for the second rise. This limited the amount of caked on flour on the crust.

My first loaf of Jim's No-Knead Bread

A New York bakery owner came up with a way for regular people to easily make bread as good as you can find from professionals. An article was written in the New York Times about it and it spread fast. Karen and Dick let me know about it and even gave us the crock pot that we needed. Thanks Karen and Dick! Over the weekend I made my first one and it was incredible. Irie and I ate the whole thing!

Ok, so this was actually my second attempt. The first I attempt I followed the recipe exactly and the dough ended up in the trash. The problem was that the original recipe calls for 1 5/8 cups of water and the dough was too wet - 1 1/2 cups of water seems to be the correct amount and many a food blog confirms that. The other problem was that I didn't realize there was a difference between "Instant Yeast" and "Active Dry Yeast". The recipe calls for the former and I used the latter and didn't activate it in luke warm water first. The result was that the dough ended up too wet too handle and it didn't really rise.

I fixed those problems on my second attempt and made this unbelievably tasty bread:



Here is what it looks like sliced. You'll notice the crispy crust and airy chewy center. What can't be conveyed in the pictures is just how good it tastes.



If you're going to use Active Dry Yeast I read that you should use a 1/3 more yeast than the recipe calls for which 1/4 teaspoon. For this loaf I used 1/4 teaspoon and I think the loaf could have risen a bit more so that sounds right.

Here is a video of Jim showing us how its done:

Vegan wins Ultramarathon twice in a row

A vegan athlete has won the Ultramarathon for the second time in a row. This is supposed to be the hardest running race on the planet. I love stories about successful vegan athletes.

The Green Chefs

The Green Chefs (Eat Green Be Happy) have published a complete online vegan cookbook. The site design is top notch. Got to love it.

The Carrot Cake looks yummy.