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.

Bad cake/good mandoline

I made an unfortunate cake. It doesn't look bad. And it was not so bad that WE wouldn't eat it, but too bad to post the recipe. (The bad photo matches the cake.) It was supposed to be a pear-apple-raisin up-side-down cake but the cake was hard, gummy and heavy — as if it had no leavening. And I know it had baking powder because I noted that we needed to buy more when I added it to the flour. I used my Japanese Benriner to slice the fruit, and the slices were so pretty that I was wishing I'd planned to make a fruit tart instead of an upsidedown cake so the slices wouldn't all be hidden. Since the cake turned out so poorly, this will be a post about helpful kitchen tools, instead of cake. In particular, my handy-dandy mandoline.

I have a Japanese Benriner purchased years ago at a local Asian market. I love the way it makes perfectly even slices of fruits and veggies. It shreds up a cabbage in nothing flat. (It's a little dangerous and will slice your finger if you're not careful and alert. But if you pay attention, keep your fingers out of the way and use the finger protector, everything will be fine.)

I was quite taken by the beautiful pear shapes I sliced up to hide under the cake, and when the cake failed, I decided to focus on the mandoline instead of the dessert. In addition to the straight blade, there are three other blades that look like combs with variously spaced very sharp little teeth. Unfortunately, I'd never tried them! So for this post, I decided to finally see what they could do.

First task was to get them inserted into the mandoline without the long-gone instructions. (Now I know what those two screws on the sides are for!) The main blade stays in place, and one of the "combs" inserts perpendicular to the blade. I was able to create three different cuts—very fine, medium and 1/4-inch matchstick. At first I thought the slices were just coming out as ... slices. But when I touched one, it divided into little strips. I did carrots, cucumber and zucchini.

The Benriner, purchased at an Asian supermarket rather than a kitchenware store, is just about the cheapest mandoline out there. But in spite of its low cost, it's really a great piece of equipment. It comes in several varieties including a "super Benriner" which is a bit wider than the regular one.

I recently sent my daughter-in-law a Borner V-slicer Pro as a gift. After doing a lot of internet research, I found myself influenced by all the stuff I'd read, and I wanted to get her something a little nicer than mine. This seemed to be the best choice for the cost and she seems to like it. However, for a basic, hard-working mandoline that is extremely reasonable in cost, the Benriner is not a bad choice.