What do vegans do after ...

What do vegan bloggers do right after they have a great time attending a vegan bloggers conference, and discover that a bunch of fellow bloggers are practically neighbors? They form a vegan bloggers meetup group, of course. The first meetup was quickly organized to occur while there were still some out-of-town fellow bloggers in the Seattle area, after attending VVC in Portland. For example, Christy Morgan was in town to do a book talk on Thursday evening for her beautiful new cookbook, Tasty Bites.

The first meetup was planned to occur after Christy's talk, so she could attend. Wanting to support Christy on her tour, I invited Mr. EV, and friend-and-future-vegan Wendy, to accompany me to Third Place Books for the book talk and food samples.

The ride to the bookstore was a little more exciting than we had planned. Mr. EV kept glancing in the rear view mirror and mumbling something about an strangely aggressive woman behind us. She kept beeping her horn, and then started tailgaiting us. She kept this up for a couple of miles and I began to voice concerns that something must be wrong with our car. Has a tail light fallen off? Was a tire going flat? She was starting to make us all nervous, when suddenly she pulled alongside our car on the right. She rolled down her window. I rolled down my window. Then, with a face flushed and bloated with anger, she screamed, "DO ME A FAVOR AND LEARN HOW TO DRIVE IN RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC, YOU DUMB F**K!!! She raised her finger in salute. I rolled up my window.

We were a bit shocked by her rage. After a moment of silence, I suggested we all yell "you dumb f**k" a few times to break the spell she had cast, especially on Mr. EV, who felt really disturbed and violated. We spent the rest of the drive trying to calm him down. Sheesh. At least there wasn't anything wrong with the car ...

We made it to the bookstore, met Christy, listened to her book talk and ate yummy chewy trail mix bars that she had made.


The meetup before the band started playing.

After Christy's inspiring talk, we zipped over to Highline restaurant and bar, in Capital Hill. In case you don't know, Highline serves well-executed, possibly unhealthy but delicious, vegan comfort food. Unbeknownst to any of us, especially the lovely Brittany who organized the event, a band (a very loud band) was scheduled to play that night, and the meetup was eventually forced to change venues. We stayed long enough to pick up some food (I got fish and chips), and then headed out.

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Cool coils



I've been wanting a spiralizer for a long time, and apparently so has Rose, because we both seem to have gotten one practically the same day! Of course she beat me to a post because I'm always running behind. The gadget we both bought is the Benriner Cook's Help. You can see mine with a carrot in it behind the piles of spiralized veggies. I went a little crazy spiralizing everything that I could. The zucchini were the easiest while the carrots and beets required some amount of pressure to go through the blades. Benriner also makes a more expensive horizontal spiralizer (about $75) that may be more efficient at cutting harder vegetables, but the cost difference swayed me towards the less expensive version.



My first salad had a dressing of tahini and umeboshi, and a sprinkle of cheesy kale chip crumbs, and was delicious.



This version is topped with tzatziki sauce, which was leftover after making baked oil-free falafel with tzatziki sauce from Christy Morgan's Blissful Bites, and sunflower seeds. Mmmmmmmmm.