Good Food

Vegan Pizzeria in Seattle

14 years
by in Restaurants

Wow. Oh, wow.

Last night we were in Seattle, and it’s not that Yakima doesn’t have good restaurants, it’s just difficult to find places that serve vegan food here. So, in anticipation of our trip to the big city, I spent about half an hour last night looking at reviews and menus for vegan friendly restaurants in Seattle. That in itself is so different from Yakima, where finding a menu online is a rare treat. I had a few different restaurants picked out, depending on how we felt around dinner time. We decided on Pizza Pi, a 100% vegan pizzeria.

One of our favorite restaurants in Portland is Vita Cafe, and one of the things I really appreciate about it is that it has something for everybody: I can get a vegan veggie burger, and they also serve free range, hormone free beef. I appreciate that I can take anybody there (even veganphobics), and that the meat they do serve is produced in a more responsible manner.

That being said, it’s always an amazing experience to go someplace where I can order absolutely anything on the menu. And last night was no exception. We started off with a vegan cesar salad, and “cheesy” breadsticks with four different dipping sauces: marinara, ranch-style dressing, creamy white garlic sauce, and spinach and artichoke dip. The salad was good, if a little spartan – just chopped romaine, croutons, dressing, and pepper.

The breadsticks, though. Wow. I don’t think I could ever go back without ordering the breadsticks. They made the breadsticks by rolling out some of there pizza dough, sprinkling it with some herbs and “cheese,” and slicing it into long strips (an idea that I’m going to remember next time I’m doing homemade pizza). I wish I knew how they did their sauces, because they were great. The marinara wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but it was very good. The ranch was good, too, but again, nothing too extraordinary. What really got me fired up were the creamy white garlic sauce and the spinach and artichoke dip. Those two were obviously pilfered from the vegan gods. I have never tasted such delectable vegan sauces.

We also ordered a No-Meatball Sub, which is the kind of thing that is just plain fun to order as a vegan. The veggie sausage they used was really well seasoned, and the sandwich was huge and delicious.

And, of course, we had a pizza. Ours was a small pesto, pepperoni, garlic, and broccoli pizza. The crust was great, and just what I like: plain, thin, and crispy. And one of the perks of ordered the breadsticks was that we had lots of dipping sauces for the edge of our crusts. The pesto was good, though I think I’ll try the pink sauce next time, which is a mix of their marinara and white garlic sauce.

To finish it all off, we had a raspberry ice cream sundae, whipped cream, cherry on top and all. The raspberry sauce was really good, but the ice cream they used wasn’t one of the better kinds I’ve had. Still, in all, it was very good and fun to be able to eat.

The people working at the restaurant were very friendly and attentive. The ambience could be improved by a little more lighting, but as it is, it has a good hole-in-the-wall pizza-shop-on-the-corner feel, which has it’s own appeal.

We will definitely being going back here, probably every time we visit Seattle.

UPDATE: Finally got the pictures off the camera, so here’s a picture of me two-fisting the raspberry vegan sundae:
Vegan sundae

Baby Led Weaning

14 years
by in Nutrition, On Parenting, Relationships, & Family

Today, we set aside our worries about messy eating in favor of ‘baby led weaning.’ I had never heard of the term when Ashley brought it up last night, but it’s a simple enough concept: let your little one discover food.

We have been trying food with Edie for about a month and a half now, and although she readily goes for the spoon of food, she usually recoils after the food gets in her mouth (Exhibit A). We’ve tried sweet potato, avocado, brown rice, rice cereal, banana (that illicited the funniest response – you would’ve sworn we fed her a lemon!), apples, pears and peas. Our usually method was:

  1. Cook and/or mash up the food, with or without mixing in some breast milk
  2. Dip a spoon in
  3. Either move quickly enough to get it in her mouth before being intercepted by her hands, or hand her the spoon and hope she decided to put it in her mouth

I haven’t been too worried about it, but our pediatrician mentioned that iron becomes important around 6 months old (a subject I’m planning on investigating). Mainly, we’ve just been trying out food because she has shown so much interest in our food over the past couple of months.

Last night, Ashley started reading about baby led weaning, and after reading and talking more about it, we decided that it made sense and felt right to do with Edie. Edie has given us a lot of feedback that she doesn’t like being – I’m trying to think of a good way of putting this – manipulated. Ever since she’s had good control over her limbs, she’s resisted getting dressed, and I think we were getting similar feedback from spoon feeding her. We have some teething biscuits that are the only food she’s really gone for so far, but she’ll only suck on them if she can hold them. When I try to put it up to her mouth, she draws back to look at it and take it from my hand. Our main concern with letting her have it herself is that she’ll break off a chunk and choke on it. But when she has bitten off chunks, she always spits them out, and she has such a strong gag reflex that I don’t think we need more than the normal amount of parental vigilance while she’s eating.

So today we let her go for it on her own (with both of us watching carefully for any signs of choking, of course). Ashley cut up a chunk of pear, and put in front of Edie along with part of a teething biscuit. She picked up the pear, felt it a little bit, and took it right to her mouth. She still put a sour face on, as usual, but she tried it a few more times. And the teething biscuit went well, also.

The clean-up wasn’t too bad, although I did have to spend a bit of time getting teething biscuits out of Edie’s hair. She’s taken to holding things up to her ears a lot lately, like she’s listening to a shell, or (as I like to joke) like she’s receiving transmissions from space (and I hope I don’t regret saying that, because I’m well aware of the potential problems that it could indicate), and the food was no exception. And teething biscuits turn into plaster after they’ve been mixed with saliva and dried.

I’m curious to see how this goes, and I have a good feeling about it. It’s one of those techniques or experiences that, as a parent, just feels right and makes good common sense.

Raspberry Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

15 years
by in Good Food, Recipes
Raspberry Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

Raspberry Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

Safeway had local raspberries reduced for quick sale today and I couldn’t pass them up. Then I got home and realized that I had a whole flat of raspberries that were all ripe- just touching them turned them to juice. We’ve been on a bit of a protein kick lately, so I decided to try to do something with peanut butter (because obviously the protein in peanut butter completely counteracts all the carbs in the raspberries, sugar, and chocolate…).

I couldn’t find quite the recipe I wanted, so Ashley and I started with the ‘Raspberry-Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars’ recipe from ‘Vegan With A Vengeance‘. It doesn’t call for peanut butter, but a little serendipity helped out: we ran out of soy yogurt, so we subbed in peanut butter. The recipe calls for holding out some of the blondie batter and putting it on top of the raspberry topping, kind of like a cobbler. I’m more a fan of crisps and crumbles with the oatmeal streusel style topping, so I adapted a recipe from ‘Sweat and Natural‘ to go on top. Here’s the recipe:

Raspberry Layer
2 1/2 cups fresh raspberries
3 Tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup cold water
1/3 cup sugar

Blondie Layer
3 3/4 cups flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup plus 2 Tablespoons canola oil
2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

Crumble Topping
1/2 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
3 Tablespoons canola oil
3 Tablespoons maple syrup

You’ll also need 1/2 to 1 cup chocolate chips (depending on how much you NEED chocolate).

Preheat your oven to 350º, and lightly grease a 13×9 pan.

For the raspberry layer: combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a low boil. Reduce heat and simmer for ~5 minutes, or until thickened.

For the blondie: combine wet and dry ingredients separately, then mix together. The dough should be stiff, a bit like peanut butter cookie dough.

For the crumble: combine dry ingredients, then add wet ingredients. Use your hands to help the mixture crumble.

To assemble, press the blondie dough out into an even layer in the pan. Spread the raspberry filling on top of the dough, then sprinkle with 1/2 the chocolate chips. Use your hands to crumble the… uh… crumble on top of the raspberry layer. Sprinkle the rest of the chocolate chips on, and bake for 40-45 minutes. Let it cool for ~20 minutes before you cut into it. Enjoy!

Duck Omelettes

15 years
by in Good Food, On Sustainable Living

Last night for dinner we scrambled some eggs from our friends’ duck Olive. We mixed in some fresh tomatoes, pesto, and buffalo mozzarella. We are blessed in the pacific northwest to be surrounded by local farms, but this was the first time I’ve ever eaten eggs from someone I know.

To be honest, I was a little uneasy getting ready to crack them. It made me kind of squeamish to think of them coming from the body of a living creature whose face I had seen. But once they were in the bowl, they just looked like big chicken eggs. I was actually surprised that what I think of as fairly different kinds of birds have such similar eggs. I wonder what unfertilized robin, crow, and hummingbird eggs look like inside.

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to shift my diet more toward locally produced foods, so I was happy to make that connection. Also, Olive’s caretaker asked for the shells back because she eats them, so one less thing in the waste stream. (Our local trash company just started accepting food scraps in with the yard debris bins, but they only take produce, no animal products.)

I’ve also been enjoying lots of fresh local berries picked by friends, and thinking about trying out some preserving this year. Summer’s going by quickly though…

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