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Posts Tagged ‘travel’

5 Sep

Labor Day Weekend in Milwaukee

Posted by Kristen in Non-veg Restaurant, travel, Veg Restaurant. Tagged: Milwaukee, travel, wedding, Wisconsin. 2 Comments

Our former neighbors had their wedding reception in Milwaukee last weekend. We went up on Friday night, grabbed a drink at the hotel (the Yard at the Iron Horse Hotel, great cocktails) and made it an early night. I had to run 20 miles the Saturday morning. When we checked in, a package from Rent the Runway was waiting for me with two beautiful designer dresses from Moschino and Versace Collection.

I had a great run Saturday morning along the lake and up on top of a hill covered withbeautiful houses and parks. After the run, H and I walked over to Verduras Tea House, a vegetarian cafe with vegan options. I ordered the Italian sandwich and a refreshing Rosewater Lemonade.

We met up with our friends at Alterra and grabbed a latte, heart-shaped foam art in honor of the wedding. We went to the location by the lake. It has a great coffee shop vibe, but unfortunately, we didn’t get to hang out there very long.

The reception started at 7:00 and I wore this amazing Moschino dress. Rent the Runway is a great resource if you have a habit of buying fancy dresses that you only wear once. It’s hard to sift through the silk dresses, but there are plenty of vegan-friendly dresses on the site. This one was listed as silk on the Rent the Runway website, but it didn’t feel very silky and the Moschino website doesn’t say it’s silk (it’s also on sale on the Moschino website if you want to buy this gorgeous dress at the bargain price of $1,158).

Scary eyes!

The lovely bride and groom

The girls, post-reception.

There wasn’t much for me to eat at the reception, which was kind of a problem after running 20 miles that morning. Fortunately, the hotel offers a tofu scramble for breakfast, which is just what I needed Sunday morning.

For lunch, we went to Classic Slice, where we went after the Milwaukee marathon. I ordered the Anne Curry. It was good, maybe not as good as the pizza I had last time, but it was different and a little spicy. And look- they even have nutritional yeast to sprinkle on your pizza!

6 Dec

Taiwanese Breakfast

Posted by Kristen in travel. Tagged: breakfast, Taipei, Taiwan, travel. Leave a Comment

Except for our time at the Holiday Inn in T’aichong, we ate a traditional Taiwanese breakfast. Our first day in Taipei, the in-laws went to Fu-Hang Dou Jiang Dian (阜杭豆漿) and brought us back sweet and savory rolls, fried dough sandwiches and non-dairy milk (soy and rice are available). This place is wildly popular and you have to get in line early because they sell out. The in-laws spent 30 minutes in line the first day, all on the restaurant’s second floor. But on Sunday, the day I woke up at 6 to go with them, the line was down the stairs, out the door and to the corner (down the block!) It was at least an hour wait. We didn’t have time for that, so we went across the street. They ordered me a piece of fried bread wrapped in sticky rice with pickled veggies, soy milk and a sugar filled “ping” (pastry). I couldn’t eat the pastry, so I saved that for dinner (The only negative of the trip was being sick on Sunday and confined to my hotel bed in a Chinese Theraflu daze, which meant missing the traditional Taiwanese market, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Sunday dinner).

Monday morning, while still in bed for the 15th hour straight, my in-laws went out for breakfast, this time arriving before 6:00 a.m. Foiled again! The restaurant is closed on Mondays. Instead, they brought back a steamed vegetable bun (which H ate half of before declaring it vegetarian) and seaweed wrapped sticky rice.

There was one last chance to visit the famed Taipei breakfast establishment before leaving Taiwan. A morning flight on a rainy weekday meant we needed to be ready for the 6:10 bus. My mother-in-law arrived at 5:20, 10 minutes before the restaurant opened and was still 16th in line! The good thing about not being able to get breakfast from Fu-Hang Dou Jiang Dian was that I knew how much better it is than the other places. There is a reason these lines are crazy. Like the first morning, I ate a veggie filled roll and a sugar pastry (and that is why I woke up at 4:30 to run on the treadmill, even though it meant asking the front desk to unlock the gym for me).

5 Dec

Taiwan – Day 6

Posted by Kristen in travel. Tagged: Taipei, Taiwan, travel. Leave a Comment

We spent the day at the National Palace Museum looking at ancient artifacts from China. We started with a special exhibit of religious sculptural art. Other exhibits included rare books and documents, Qing dynasty furniture, curios, painting & calligraphy, jade and the insanely popular jade baicai (cabbage). The collection is impressive and the descriptions are well written with decent detail. My only complaint is the crazy amount of tour groups. They are loud and pushy; a woman at the jade cabbage being the most ridiculous. I was reading the description and she pushed into me and kept pushing until she knocked me off balance. The detail is impressive, but it’s just a cabbage with a bug.

Photo credit: http://www.wantchinatimes.com/newsphoto/2011-03-26/450/B96093CH_2011資料照片_copy1.JPG

The building itself is impressive.

We escaped from the tour groups at Sanxitang Teahouse. Inspired by a Chinese teahouse, this modern cafe on the 4th floor has a great view and a full page of vegetarian dim sum options (all without egg). I ordered steamed buns, dumplings and vegetarian meatball with cabbage (in honor of the jade bai cai). To drink, we had Oolong Tea.

For a museum cafe, it was pretty good. The dumplings were my favorite.

3 Dec

Taiwan – Day 4

Posted by Kristen in travel, Veg Restaurant. Tagged: Taipei, Taiwan, travel. 2 Comments

Back in Taipei

I woke up at 4:00 again. I waited until the sun came up and went out for a run. There were several more runners around the park this morning. We had strict instructions not to eat much for breakfast, because we were headed to a restaurant that serves a special kind of soup dumpling. Of course, that’s not available in vegan, but I still had some delicious food at Din Tai Fung. Dumplings (my favorite!), noodles in a sesame sauce, peanuts, and 2 kinds of greens.

After lunch we went to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and watched the changing of the guards.

Then we walked over to Taipei 101. The lower level is a high end mall, which we skipped. We went up to the observatory and stayed until after the sun set. It wasn’t a very clear day, but it was a decent daytime view and a pretty night view.

For dinner, we tried a vegetarian restaurant! We got a couple tofu dishes, Kung poa chick’n, meatballs, noodles and the obligatory greens. It was quite good and conveniently located behind our hotel.

After dinner we drank the millet wine from Sun Moon Lake and ate persimmons.

2 Dec

Taiwan – Day 3

Posted by Kristen in travel. Tagged: Lukang, T'aichung, Taiwan, travel. 1 Comment

Basically, T’aichung has been our base for exploring central Taiwan. Today we took another bus ride to Lukang, where H’s dad used to live. A “small” city of 85,000. Lukang was once the second largest city in Taiwan and an important port city for trade with China. When we got off the bus, we walked around town looking at several of the city’s numerous temples and the elementary school that my father-in-law attended.

We stopped at a famous Lukang bakery for some treats.

We had trouble finding a sit down restaurant and the woman at the bakery recommended US Coffee Shop. It is a weird combination of coffee drinks, French fries, Korean food and spaghetti. I ordered the mushroom noodle soup. The place definitely had authentic US portions; my soup was huge. Pretty chopsticks.

Our final stop in Lukang was the Lukang Folk Arts Museum and Ding Family Mansion. The former residence of the powerful Koo family, it now houses a beautiful collection of clothing, accessories, furniture, art, and dishes.

My mother-in-law bought some vegan bread for me in the morning and I ate some of that for dinner, because we were all too tired to go out. It is from Cafe 58 Degrees and has seeds and dried fruit in it.

1 Dec

Taiwan – Day 2

Posted by Kristen in travel. Tagged: Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan, travel. Leave a Comment

I woke up at 5:00 this morning and couldn’t fall back asleep. I waited until the sun came up and ten went for a run around the park next to our hotel. My rough calculation had the loop at a little over a kilometer. I ran around 5 times and once inside the park. I got several strange looks, but I was just glad to be running. I also found a track, so I might try that tomorrow. For breakfast we just ate at the hotel (FYI: corn flakes and super hot soy milk is not as delicious as it sounds). H’s mom brought everyone Starbucks, which was 100 times better than the instant stuff in our room.

After breakfast we walked around T’aichong Park. H’s parents once took a day trip here when they lived in Taipei and went out on a row boat, but we just watched some old men feed fish and turtles.

In the afternoon, we took a bus to Sun Moon Lake. It was a little hazy, but still a pretty area. We took a boat to two different spots. We got lunch at the first stop. I had mushrooms and lotus shoots. It was okay, but the best thing at lunch was the spicy boiled peanuts.

We did some shopping after lunch. We bought some mugs and coasters at Tai-Hwa Pottery. We also bought some millet wine and tasted the famous red tea.

Our last stop was the Sun Moon Temple.

Back in T’aichung, we had hot pot for dinner. They divided the pot in two: one meat broth and the other veggie. You go through a buffet of raw veggies and pick out what veggies you want. Another table had bowls for mixing sauces. I don’t remember liking hot pot very much, but this was good.

29 Nov

In Transit

Posted by Kristen in Uncategorized. Tagged: Airport, Tokyo, travel, United. Leave a Comment

So United doesn’t offer vegan meals anymore. They offer non-dairy vegetarian meals, which they cannot guarantee are actually non-dairy. I brought along a couple Clif bars just in case. The first meal was a chickpea and sweet potato curry with Israeli couscous.

The dressing did have whey in it, so the salad was out. The curry was edible.
The snack was a couscous pita sandwich. Yes, you read that correctly. A pita stuffed with couscous. Vegans love carbs! The last meal was baked apples with a big ball of dough and a side of applesauce. The dough was not edible, so I ate applesauce and apples. Nice thing about international United flight: free wine.

We had a 3 hour layover in Tokyo, so we got some sushi. I imagine it’s just as authentic and delicious as a Chili’s at an American airport. I was pleasantly surprised to find a veggie roll and some vegetable nigiri. And most important: protein from edamame.

Pretty good for an airport meal!

24 Oct

Vegan Ice Cream & Smoothies at O’Hare

Posted by Kristen in veganmofo. Tagged: Ice Cream! Ice Cream!, O'Hare, travel, veganmofo. 5 Comments

Luckily, our original plane to Vegas lost a wing (or perhaps it was a less serious mechanical issue, I wasn’t paying attention) and our flight was delayed almost two hours while they glued it back on/found a new plane. The delay allowed me to try the vegan soft-serve ice cream at B-Smooth Smoothies. It’s connected to Burrito Beach (which has decent veggie burritos and burrito bowls). B-Smooth’s vanilla non-dairy soft-serve can be served in a cone or blended into a smoothie. It was delicious. I hate the compliment “it’s so good, you don’t even know it’s vegan,” as if vegan food is bland and boring. But I fell into that thinking last week. The ice cream was so good that I was worried it wasn’t vegan, so I wrote an email to Burrito Beach. The VP of Operations kindly replied to my email:

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in B-Smooth! Our non-dairy ice cream mix is in fact vegan, as are the fruit smoothies.
Thanks for being patient!

Best,
Jeff

Thank you, Jeff! And B-Smooth for providing vegan treats!

B-Smooth is located in Terminal 3 in a food court between the H and K gates.

22 Oct

Meat & Potatoes at Switch Steak

Posted by Kristen in Non-veg Restaurant, veganmofo. Tagged: Encore, Las Vegas, travel, veganmofo. Leave a Comment

Even with only 3 appetizers and 3 entrees, it took me a while to decide what I wanted. For me, one of the nice things about being vegan is having only one option at a restaurant, so I don’t agonize over making the wrong choice. I doubt there is a wrong choice at Switch Steak (besides the entire meat menu, of course), but I was quite happy with my selections: vegan Caesar salad and vegan meatloaf with mashed potatoes.

The salad was my favorite part. It’s probably been 15 years since I had a caesar salad.

I believe the meatloaf is some kind of Gardein concoction, although that is not stated on the menu. It was served with a tomato sauce and roasted veggies. I never really liked meatloaf in my pre-vegetarian days, but this was delicious. Mashed potatoes were also tasty.

21 Oct

The Buffet at Wynn

Posted by Kristen in veganmofo. Tagged: buffet, Las Vegas, travel, veganmofo, Wynn. Leave a Comment

I’m back in Vegas at my favorite vegan hotel mogul’s resort, the Encore. Last time we were here we avoided the ubiquitous buffet. Our friends wanted to go to one for brunch, so we agreed to The Buffet at the Wynn, where at least there would be vegan options. The buffet was huge and there was a decent amount of vegan options (vegan, vegetarian and gluten free items are appropriately labeled). I was definitely stuffed at the end and that’s the point of a buffet, right?

First, breakfast: buckwheat pancakes with blueberry compote and fresh fruit.

Next, lunch: veggie sushi, Asian slaw, mediterranean ceviche, 4 bean enchilada and chips & salsa. The slaw and ceviche were my favorites.

And finally, dessert. There were two vegan desserts: chocolate chip cookies and candy apples (three if you include fruit, but I had that for breakfast). Even with pecans, the chocolate chip cookie was delicious (I usually don’t like nuts in my desserts). The candy apples were pretty, but they were too sweet. A couple bites were all I needed.

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Suburban Vegan Stories of Survival in the Land of Meat & Dairy

Posts Tagged ‘travel’

Labor Day Weekend in Milwaukee

Taiwanese Breakfast

Taiwan – Day 6

Taiwan – Day 4

Taiwan – Day 3

Taiwan – Day 2

In Transit

Vegan Ice Cream & Smoothies at O’Hare

Meat & Potatoes at Switch Steak

The Buffet at Wynn

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