Well, since my last update, the on that consisted primarily of French fries and soda pop (and starvation) over the course of several days, things have been quite a bit better. On Friday, after I picked up my partner at the Milwaukee airport, we went out to Olive Garden in Madison.

Now now, I know the Olive Garden may sound a bit bland, but I’ve lived near one (and the commercials) for my entire life and never had the pleasure of venturing inside. We showed up pretty late (about 10:30 pm), so we were the only ones around, but we still got great service. The waitress completely understood the vegan thing and let me bug her about things like the garlic breadsticks ingredients and went out of her way to check about things that even I hadn’t thought to ask about (sometimes I forget to say no dressing on salads, but she came out and asked me beforehand!).

Anyway, the olive garden gets a thumbs up from me for their service and their linguine with tomato basil sauce, and it wasn’t too expensive either.

Saturday was just as tasty, but only included one quasi-meal and one huge snack after starving all day long. I spent my day manning a booth and giving a horrible talk at hybridfest (you can read a bit about it here), and forgetting to either buy food or eat. That night I was invited out to a blue grass thing down on the University of Wisconsin campus, so I got to take a nighttime spin on my bike, a first ever for me in a bike friendly city like Madison. The point of this story is to comment on my midnight stop at a nameless grocery story, where I was able to pick up some Peanut Butter Zig-Zag, Amy’s burritoish complete meal thing, and some sort of vegan buffalo wings.

You’ll have to excuse my descriptions, but I was too caught up in the deliciousness to take pictures or remember what I was eating. What I do remember, however, is the great vegan meal that Eric, the HybridFest coordinator, had made of up more. Mushroom quinoa, they said. Best $10 meal I’ve ever had (and I still need to pay him for that!).

Anyway, sorry for the endless ranting. Now that I’m on the farm for a bit, I’ll git some good recipes or say something meaningful to actually keep ya’ll interested, :).

Well, WordPress deleted my first post (and all the heart and soul I poured into it, so hopefully this one works and I don’t forget anything, though I may be a bit briefer.

Anyway, I’m on the road again, but this time as a representative for my site, EcoModder.com. This weekend in Madison, WI, there is a get together called HybridFest, which is pretty simply a convention for people who care about green automotive tech.

I’m ooking forward to exploring some of the vegan options around town in Madison, but I’ll give you a quick rundown of what I’ve (not) accomplished so far:

• The day before leaving (wednesday) I ate nothing but frozen french fries and Dr. Pepper (I’m not kidding)
• On Thursday I had a burrito for lunch and some ice cream before leaving
• I left at about 3 pm and before my first rest stop at 11:30 pm I’d managed to eat nothing and drink 3 sodas
• At the Burger King rest stop in Ohio I ate a King Size order of onion rings and another King Size order of fries, and got a Mountain Dew Code Red
• Feeling sick, I stopped at 4 am in Indiana an had some Burger King hash browns (eww) and slept in my car until 5:30 am.
• After that refreshing nap, I plowed onward and made it to this Panera in Madison at 9:30 am, where I had two orders of what you see in the picture and totally stuff myself.

I definitely felt lucky to find a Panera so close to my hotel, but I wish I hadn’t eaten so much! However, I’ve got plenty of good tips about vegan food in Madison so hopefully I’ll be able to turn it around, ^_^.

Just the other day I posted about how, since I’ve been home from college, I’ve lost interest in what I’m eating. I really should post more often, but I first wanted to thank you for all of your comments, and then note that I am at least a little bit back on track.

I was a little distracted in my quest, at first, by a trip I made back to Dartmouth in order to sock in some good cycling with my new bike over the weekend. If there is one thing I can say that both cycling and veganism have taught me, it’s that you have to love what you’re doing to really be able to do it. I won’t bore you with pictures of my bike or stories of afternoons spent cycling, but it’s really interesting how quickly you can get bored of it when you shoes suck and make your feet hurt. Veganism, I feel, is the same way. If I were eating gruel I would probably not last very long as a vegan.

Anyway, at Dartmouth I didn’t have my usual fare, and rediscovered both eating out and eating dinners of chips and salsa. Coming home I felt a little refreshed, and decided to mix it up at little bit, at least with some burritos and at least not eating the same thing two meals in a row.

The thing I love about burritos is that they can be as simple or as complicated as you like. I usually keep it simple, with just rice and refried beans, though sometimes I will toss in some potatoes, carrots, peas, vegan cheese, or whatever else that’s sitting around and looks like it can cook itself easily enough. Does anyone else have solutions like that?

Well, nothing much exciting, but at least an update that I’m not dead. Hopefully I’ll have a good recipe for you in a day or two!

Having not spent a term home from school since I started (last summer I was in Japan), I never really got used to being vegan and always having to cook for myself.  Sure, cooking for myself is easy, but at the frequency of two meals a day it can get a little troublesome trying to find new things. My solution during break was always the same thing: cook pasta for lunch and pasta for dinner. Usually the same kind and always in the same way.

Well, since I’m home for good (3 months) this time, that’s just not going to work out. Especially now that I’m cycling, it’s become rather boring and nutritionally unsatisfactory to eat nothing but pasta day in and day out. Every so often I’ll mix it up with things like gnocchi, but at the base of it, I’m not really escaping the problem. In fact, the oven right now is full of baking tater tots, which, along with unsweetened ice tea, will suffice for my 2pm lunch.

Now that I’m “becoming” an “adult,” I’m faced with those terribly important problems of shopping for groceries and cooking with variety. I certainly can’t cook my favorite recipes every day because there will be repitition, but on the other hand, I’ll have to know what I want to cook so I’m not going to the store to buy ingredients every day. What is a boy to do?

Anyway, starting today I’m going to work on getting my nutrition back on track, and I hope to share that with you folks. Mehbe it’ll work out fine and I’ll no longer be bored to death with what I’m eating, and mehbe it won’t, but that remains to be seen! Does anyone have advice for a fledgling adult like myself?

I just got out of school recently and just now I’ve been going through some of the recipes that I’ve got sitting around and either have fond memories of, can’t wait to make again, or can’t wait to make the original chef make again. The first thing I’ve come across is a cake and icing recipe given to me by a school administrator. One day she made these cupcakes for a potluck and I feel like I’d been hit in the face with deliciousness. Of course, I need to find a special occasion before I can go out and make them again, but this recipe definitely should’ve been shared ages ago!

I don’t really know where this recipe comes from, but if you recognize it let me know so I can give due credit!

Now, keep in mind that the recipe is actually for cake, but these definitely will always be made as cupcakes as long as I’m involved.

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Ganache Frosting

• 1 cup unbleached white flour
• 1 cup pastry flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons baking sode
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup raw sugar
• 1 cup soy milk
• 1 cup maple syrup (this must be why I like them so much)
• 1/2 cup safflower oil
• 2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Chocolate Ganache Frosting

• 4 cups vegan chocolate chips
• 1 cup vanilla soy milk
• 1 tablespoon brewed coffee
• 1/4 cup maple syrup

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then mix together.
3. Pour batter into cupcake pan and bake for 35 minutes or until the “toothpick test” comes out good.
4. Mix icing ingredients in a double boiler until chocolate chips are melted, then let cool, blend, and stick in the fridge for an hour.
5. Ice away and enjoy

I hope you all like this as much as I do!
Image: twid

Just as a follow up to my previous post on vegan relationships, I thought it would be worth noting that I am once again dating someone, but this time a non-vegan. She is definitely health conscious (probably more so than me), and very aware of where her food comes from. She believes in organics and all that, and even has her own chickens and such up at her home (not at college though).

I totally respect that idea of being conscious of what we eat, and I think the fact that she’s already that way, but never was a vegetarian might make her susceptible to converting to the dark side, but I don’t plan to push it very hard, to be honest, :).

Perhaps I sounded too cynical in my last post, but I definitely think finding love in non-veg*ns is possible…as long as the partner enjoys your cooking!

Sometime last week I decided it would be pretty sweet to host a potluck for some people from my vegan group and some friends, but didn’t get around to sending out the blitz (like email, but different) until Thursday, so I was kind of wondering if it would come together. As you can see, quite a few people showed up, as well as three more who aren’ t in the picture because they left early and another who came late.

Oddly enough, it was just me and a bunch of women, plus my roommate who isn’t vegan but just decided to mooch off our food, even though he was convinced he couldn’t be full without meat (he was rather full, though). The guy who came late was a guy, so it wasn’t completely one sided, but most of the time is seems like all the vegans and vegetarians are ladies, has anyone else noticed this?

I’d planned on making a new kind of lentil soup, but unfortunately all my kitchen stuff seems to be missing (reason unknown) and I only had one pot, so I made the tried and true lentil soup that I really love, along with my famous vegan chocolate chip cookies, which I’ve told we the best things there. Other people made chickpea salad, some sort of walnutty salad, enchiladas, and some other stuff I’m not remember right now, but right now I’m pretty overstuffed. Hopefully I can get some of those recipes later! If I can, I’ll be sure to post up.

Does anyone else ever throw a vegan potluck now and again? If so, do you invite non-vegans, as I did?

Let me start by saying that I did not pay for this…but rather, I was invited by General Motors to a showcase of a new engine technology so that I could right about it for some other blogs I write for (on environmental technology and fuel economy). So, by no means am I wasting on such decadence.

That said, I was a little worried going into it about how it would mesh with the whole vegan thing, so I am glad to report that I have very favorable findings. I only spent one night there, so I only really got in two meals, dinner and lunch. For dinner we (my girlfriend accompanied me) ordered room service from the day menu, even though it was 11:05 PM, just past the end of the standard day menu period. I got Penne Pasta without pesto and cheese, and she got some sort of panini filled with meat and horror, :P. The service was great, and my order was not messed up in the least.

The Penne, for its part, was amazing. It may have been 22 bucks + tax and tip (thanks GM!), but it was still delicious. You can see it in the above picture, but I doubt any picture can really do justice to something so fulfilling hitting your taste buds after eating nothing since lunch time.

When the next day had rolled around and the conference ended (the day of the posting), I found myself staring at a salad for lunch wondering what had happened to that vegan lunch they had said something about. After just a few minutes of discouragement, I was brought a special plate of what appeared to be delicious food. I certainly couldn’t finish it all, but I really enjoyed it. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but take a look for yourself:

So, all in all, it was a good conference, the Ritz was ridiculously extravagent and shocking to someone like me, but they also were careful and courteous, and renewed my faith in finding vegan options on the road.

Does anyone have any vegan hotel stories, whether fanciful or horrible?

Sorry for eating half the bagel, but I was really hungry and forgot about taking the picture halfway through.

Anyway, after a bike race at Tufts, I took the opportunity to meet a good friend of mine down the road at David Square, where she took me to this very nice, rather bustling cafe. The people there put up with me not knowing what I wanted to eat, and what’s more they even had vegan muffins (of the chocolate variety).

The muffin was super tasty, and it was all I could do to not buy a big, fat, vegan cookie with it. That said, I highly recommend Diesel Cafe to any vegans wandering around Cambridge.

No better place to store food than on a window sill, right? It keeps it close to me as I study in bed, but without cluttering up the actual bed - genius!

Once the great sugar debate is settled, it’s clear that you need plain rice cakes and some sort of organic or natural peanut butter. That said, let me take a minute to praise Teddy Peanut Butter for being THE BEST PEANUT BUTTER EVER!

Not only is it natural (you can get organic too, but not with fake money at the on campus store), but the oil doesn’t separate at all, which makes it uberconvenient for the road. What’s more, it’s fairly inexpensive for good quality peanut butter.

I discovered this snack a while ago, but just rediscovered is a good road food while away for cycling. I urge you all to try it out, it’s both light and satisfying, and probably won’t make you too fat.

Does anyone else have some great rice cake snacks?