Your Vegan Mom

Desmond and Felix on the Subject of Hunting and Vegetarianism

We're reading the Little House books right now, and it's fascinating to see how my vegan kids make sense of Pa being a trapper.  Here's a conversation from the back seat while we went to pick up their pa from the office.  

4 year-old: I’m a hunter riding on a horse.

7 year-old: Do you kill animals?

4yo: Or course not.  (Indignant.)  I’m a vegetarian.

7yo: What do you hunt?

4yo: What do vegetarians eat again?

7yo: They eat cow stuff...milk...cheese...and they eat eggs...and vegan stuff.

4yo: Ok.  I hunt cheese.

7yo: You can’t hunt cheese.

4yo: ..that people drop!  I look for cheese that people accidentally drop. 

On the Road with the Vegans

Stop and Play

We were in San Jose last weekend for the Cinequest Film Festival.  It was spectacular to see Paul and Sean and Kiley's movie on the huge screen in a beautiful theater with a crowd of people that were laughing and crying and audibly digging the movie.  It was so good.  I am so incredibly proud of them.  

It was a whirlwind weekend - I dropped the boys off with Nana and Tapa, grabbed Banh Mi and Spicy Noodle Soup from Tofoo Com Chay and picked up Paul from the San Jose airport.  La Pinata did an admirable job putting on a nice spread after the screening.   It was intensly fulfilling and emotional to spend time with some of the people who made the movie possible and who identify with the story so much.  The food was entirely beside the point, and yet still I noticed.  The margaritas were excellent, the beans were vegan, and with some coaxing they made a tray of vegetable enchiladas with green sauce.  Thumbs up, La Pinata.  

We couldn't find vegan breakfast in San Jose (What the what?  They're must be vegan breakfast in San Jose, right?), so we just grabbed a bagel with avocado and a cup of coffee and hit the road.  We had a day with the whole family in Pacific Grove, which of course, included lunch at El Cantaro, the little vegan Mexican place in Monterey, right up the hill from the aquarium.  And the next day we drove home in time to get Paul to the office in the afternoon.

We continue to practice the drive and eat - stop and play - drive and eat model for family road trips, and apart from the roadside shopping center with the enticicingly muddy field where we stopped (Juicy peaches!  Ha!  The nemesis of the backseat on this trip was two boys coated in three inches of mud.), it was a success.  I had swung by Whole Foods in Monterey for provisions.  We had crunchy apples and excellent sandwiches that consisted of:

Sumano's Sourdough + Vegenaise + Sonoma Brinery's Bread and Butter Pickles + Field Roast Lentil Sage Deli Slices

I'm still thinking about those sandwiches.  Such a good combination.  And almost completely lost on the children - the seven-year-old, my pickle-eater, preferred his without, and the four-year-old ate bread.   

What's your current favorite road food? 

 

Paul

Here's what he's been doing, and the reason I didn't have a lot of time to talk about food before Christmas:

He's on the left.  He's producing his first feature film.  That's our friend Sean on the right.  He's the writer and director of this incredibly personal, beautiful movie.  I am so proud of them.  They just launched a kickstarter campaign to get this project finished.  Check it out.  Pass it on.  Thanks.

I'll be back tomorrow with breakfast.  Or lunch or dinner, really.  I make this super delicious, incredibly easy dish whenever I have a few stray corn tortillas lying around.

2012 Holiday Gift Guide

*Dear People I Know in Real Life, You should probably stop here.*

I was at Veggie Grill on Sunday having one of the best dates ever...by myself.  It was raining outside, and I sat next to the window with my big ol' sandwich and my holiday to do list and the annual food issue of the New Yorker, trying not to eavesdrop on the not-best-date-ever going on next to me (lots of talk of energy and the yin and the yaaang) and being so, so, so very grateful for my husband and the totally normal way he pronounces yang and the fact that he doesn't do it very often.  It turns out that Veggie Grill is having a special right now where you get a free entree when you buy a 30 dollar gift card.  I did that.  Now I want to do all of my holiday shopping in that fashion.  Unfortunately nothing else on this list comes with a free sandwich, but they're all still really, really good: 

Clean Slate: What I neglected to mention last year

I'm cleaning blog house this month.  Here's several odds and ends that I forgot to mention.