Date: Sunday, January 31, 2010
Time: 11:00am – 4:00pm
Locali – 5825 Franklin Ave.
All proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders

Locali is donating a portion of their sales that day, and  C’est La V Bakeshop will be donating a portion from their sales this Sunday (January 24th) and next Sunday (January 31st) at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market to Doctors Without Borders.

Bringing something? Please click here and fill in your blank!

But what do I do? Read this!

Event on Facebook (completely with print-ready flyers): Clicky!

The response to the planning for the Haiti bake sale has been thunderous and awesome, and Locali has not only generously offered to host the bake sale, but they’ll also be donating a portion of their sales that day to those in need in Haiti!
Come out on January 31st and get your vegan sweet tooth on!

11 am – 4 pm

Locali – 5825 Franklin Ave.

Keep your eyes peeled at this space for more information, any changes, flyers, etc.

But what do I do? Read this!

Facebook event invite here. Spread it like the herp rainbows and sunshine.

Isa over at The PPK slapped up an idea for a PDX bake sale for emergency aid to Haiti earthquake victims, so I thought maybe LA would like to show PDX that just because they’re the Vegan Hippie Mecca and we’re famously A Bunch of Jerks doesn’t mean that we can’t compassion the fuck out of Haiti too.

So far, we need a venue and more people to bake stuff. My coworker and I are sort of looking locally, in the NoHo area, but all suggestions will be considered.

PPK post, which will probably interest the bake-y types.

Quarrygirl post, which might be more for the planning types.

Some coworkers put in an order to Healthyca yesterday and I couldn’t resist, as I had never tried anything there before. It’s a shame that this place is essentially only open for the office lunch crowd, as I live close by and it would be a nice weekend place to pick up food. Oh well…

Tofu trio (teriyaki, tomato and ginger olive) on a bed of red cabbage, plus two sides (grilled white asparagus and red smashed potatoes.) $9.95

This was a ton of food!

I had never tried white asparagus before, but it was really sweet and tasty. I think it might have been grilled with some balsamic vinegar. The red smashed potatoes were really creamy and good, and even though I never have to season anything I order, I did have to add a little salt and pepper. Still good.

The tofu was really quite good, kinda oily… and I gotta tell you, but the three flavors were not distinct. That’s ok, because the Captain Planet flavor that the tofu flavors combined was tasty. It didn’t kick my ass, but it definitely satisfied.

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After coveting the posts on quarrygirl for months, I finally took the Red Line down to the Sunday Farmer’s Market on Ivar and Selma to check it out and get some vegan soul food from A Taste of Life.

Missed out on the breakfast sammiches, took too much time gawking at vegetables, I guess.

Me and my omni boy shared a dinner plate:

Pot Roast, Kale, BBQ Tofu, Mac & Cheese, Cornbread

Criticism first:

I think that after reviewing the glowing posts about this place, that maybe they were having an off day. I got the Pot Roast begrudgingly, as they were out of Lasagna. My companion really liked the Pot Roast, but felt it could use some vegetables like potatoes and carrots to even out the flavor. I found it too beefy, but beefy flavor is to me as bell peppers are to quarrygirl – gross.

I was so looking forward to the kale. After looking at the beautiful kale in other’s pictures (like here), I’m convinced that I got a bad batch. Our kale was so soggy and overcooked – it was bitter and really, really awful. A sad day for kale, indeed.

The cornbread was really tough, even though it wasn’t super dry on the inside. However, it was still enjoyable because it was sweet and had a REALLY great flavor.

Awesomeness second:

The BBQ Tofu is really quite good. It’s hard to fuck up barbeque, really. My cohort would  have preferred the tofu in smaller chunks, but he’s a coward. I would have liked them more pillowy, but I’m awesome and always right. The BBQ sauce is super flavorful and smoky. Really good.

The mac and cheese is probably the best that I’ve had that I haven’t made myself, which probably makes it all the better. The sauce is slightly noochy, and I think there’s cashews in it – it’s very creamy and doesn’t get clumpy or oily at all. It made for a really good companion to the tofu, especially when the BBQ sauce would get into the mac & cheese. Yum!

All this for $12, and the two of us were stuffed. We also grabbed a giant strawberry lemonade from the lemonade booth for $3. $15 very well spent, despite the few flaws.

In response to Gardeingate, it looks like Chipotle took their vegan customer feedback seriously and is cooking the Gardein separately, as reported at quarrygirl.

Good job, team. Thanks, Chipotle.
(Now bring it to LA, please.)

Anyone that knows me well knows that I’m the invisible vegan; the path of least resistance is the path of miharu. However…

A few days back, quarrygirl made a lovely if not TL;DR post with her open letter to Chipotle in regards to her dissatisfying Gardein experience in NYC. Basically, the short version says “Thanks for the Gardein, but no thanks to the accompanying meat chunks. You would be rad without them.”

Today, an omni friend of mine pointed out that on the Chipotle Facebook page, their customer service guy named Colin was doing a crappy job of handling a Las Vegas customer that was requesting Gardein in their local store.

As you can see, I stepped up to the plate and called Colin out. I get that Facebook is for a younger clientele and it’s cool to be a smartass. However, I don’t think that translates that well to customer service. Maybe I’m just getting old. Whateves.

I also wrote a semi-crotchety letter to Chipotle Corporate, from their website, which I didn’t have the foresight to save as I didn’t think I’d be blogging about it. Lolinternetactivism. About a half hour later, I received this response from their Customer Service Manager, Joe Stupp:

Hey Crystal,

Thank you for writing us, and we are sorry we gave you the wrong impression on our Facebook page. Colin’s and my style of discourse on Facebook is to be a little more informal and a little more dry with our humor because most people writing on the page are just passing through, doing a drive-by with their comments, looking to have a brief bit of fun, etc., hence we do the same in response. You’ll notice that most companies don’t answer individual comments at all on their Facebook pages – the pages just sit there, or the companies just make generic corporate postings ala “Try our new Product X and tell us what you think,” etc. We don’t like to do that – we’re participating with most comments in what we feel is an informal yet personal way that’s unlike other corporations. That being said, we appreciate you letting us know your concerns, and your feedback is always welcome, since we have no intention to offend.

With regard to your request to bring Garden Blend to LV, we haven’t decided to do anything with Garden Blend yet besides the test in our two restaurants in DC and in NY. Since it’s only a test of our own design, it’s uncertain when or even if it will ever reach any other restaurants or any other markets. But we appreciate your desire to have it come to LV, and we thank you.

With regard to that blog from last week, yep, we saw it. But I am not entirely sure who is doing this sort of advising – I think our people are just telling folks the straight up truth about it from what we have determined. Before cooking Garden Blend at our two test restaurants, we scrape our grill clean every time in order to minimize any contact it may potentially have with non-vegan ingredients. Garden Blend is indeed prepared on the same grill as our meats, but it is prepared separately, and when meat and Garden Blend are on the grill together (something that is unavoidable at times), we take great care to make sure there is sufficient separation between them to avoid potential cross-contact as much as possible. We’re not afraid to tell people this, as it is what it is. It’s not so much an advisement against purchase as it is honesty.

I hope this helps, and we thank you for your time and patience.

Sincerely,

Joe

Fair enough.

About a half hour after that, there was this response from Colin and I couldn’t leave it alone.  (I look so butthurt.)

Either way, I’ll still be getting my vegan, guacamole-laden tacos from Chipotle. I doubt I’ll ever care about getting Gardein in that mix; kudos to Chipotle for testing it but I don’t see this one getting off the ground.

Chocolate Mint Melties

I made these for New Year’s Eve and brought them over to the place where we were celebrating that evening. I made these with regular AP flour, and probably could have used to add a little more oil and maple syrup just because the batter was a little more dough-like than it should have been – I could have ended up with a rounder, less brownie-like cookie.

Dreena’s not kidding when she says to only bake these for 11 minutes and to be careful with them – I thought for sure that I wouldn’t be able to get them off of the wax paper (I need to switch to parchment) and the bottoms were very slightly burnt. However, once the cookies cooled off, the slightly “cajun” part was completely undetectable. I’ll take that as a win.

Trader Joe’s came through on the mint chocolate, so I didn’t have to go to Whole Foods or Henry’s to pick up a bar of the mint Endangered Chocolate. Trader Joe’s has something at the moment called Dark Chocolate Mint UFOs (or something similar, I’m not near the bag and I’ll have to fix this later if I’m wrong) – basically large vegan chocolate mint chips. If you look at the picture, you’ll see that there’s a half chip on the top of each cookie. Yum!

My omni friends said that they were really great and (I hate using the following phrase) that they don’t taste vegan at all. Word.

Recipe from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. Dreena has kindly shared her recipe here.

Green Goddess Garlic Pizza

Homemade pizza crust, roasted garlic paste, pesto, basil-tofu ricotta, broccoli, garlic, spinach and capers.

I’ve missed making this! It really does kinda take forever, and it takes a ton of bowls, but it’s still worth it. I do prefer to make my pizzas whole wheat, but I only had AP flour in the house – oh well. This time, I omitted the green olives and replaced them with capers – thanks zpizza for the inspiration! I’m not sure that the spinach really brings anything to the table, but when  you have a pizza this full of olive oil, more vegetables is probably a good idea.

You can make the pizza dough the night before if you’re so inclined, but I’d prefer making the pesto and ricotta the night before. It may be a good idea to roast the garlic beforehand as well. Since I enjoy this recipe so much, I think I might try to make some less labor intensive pizzas in the future. With the exception of the pain in the ass making the dough is, I really don’t see why I should ever order pizza out again.

This is garlic flavored love.

Recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance. Isa has the recipe for the Basil-Tofu Ricotta here.