Day 5: Santa Cruz to Berkeley

We started in Santa Cruz and had the 'free' breakfast at the hotel (which had the worst shower ever made).

We headed into San Francisco.  We stopped at the Legion of Hono(u)r.  We thought it was going to be some sort of war memorial.  Turned out to be a pretty good art museum.  We spent about 90 minutes wandering through.  We really enjoyed it - despite the fact that neither of us know about visual art at all.

We drove down the hill to Baker Beach and got some awesome shots of the Golden Gate bridge (isn't Cam getting good at the artsy shots? :))

We then headed over to Berkeley.  Stopped at a little vegan cafe for a super late lunch.  It wasn't particularly good, so I won't waste your time with those photos.

For dinner we headed to Herbivore - The Earthly Grill.  It was really freaking good. 

Started with cocktails:

We had the vegan nachos:

I had the quesadillas:

Cam had the orange pepper chicken:

We headed to the Albatross Bar for a few drinks after dinner (it was just down the road from our hotel).  It was a pretty cool bar.  They had games, so we played a round of chess, connect 4 and boggle.  I only won at boggle (Cam whopped me at the other ones).

On day 6 we headed into San Francisco on the train. That's for another post!

Day 4: Pismo Beach to Santa Cruz

We headed out of Pismo Beach at the crack of dawn.  We stopped at a little cafe in San Luis Obispo called Linnaeas.

We had an orange and pomegranate muffin.

It was pretty good.  It was not a flavour combination I would have guessed would work.

We drove north along the Shoreline Highway most of the day.  Saw some pretty incredible views.  (I'll add more photos from Cam's camera when we get home).

We stayed the night in Santa Cruz.  We stayed across the road from a super depressing casino.

For dinner we went to the Saturn Cafe.  We had shakes to start.  I had the mint chocolate chip and Cam had the vanilla.  They were basically melted ice-cream.  (not pictured because we inhaled them so quickly).

I had a 'chicken' burger and Cam had the jalapeno burger:

We split a short stack of pancakes to finish.  NOM!

Day 3: Los Angeles to Pismo Beach

On day 3 we headed out of Los Angeles into Santa Barbara.  We visited the Mission there (it was pretty cool - Mum and Dad, you should definitely visit - it has a religious retreat thingy and a Moreton Bay Fig!).

Breakfast that day was in LA.  We visited Trader Joe's again for Tofurkey.  Damn, even the cardboard was good.

After visiting the Mission, we stopped at Whole Foods to grab a few things for a picnic lunch.

Our heads may have exploded inside the store.  This is a few photos of the cold section:

WOW.

For lunch we had pizza from the in-store food area.  THEY HAVE VEGAN PIZZA.  FOR THREE DOLLARS. 

For dinner we had a selection of Tofurkey deli slices, olives, Daiya cheeze and yummy sourdough bread.  (We didn't get a photo of this spread).

We also headed to the Designer Factory stores at Pismo Beach.  Cam bought so many work shirts (he was excited 'cause now he can get away without ironing for more than two weeks at a time).

On Day 4 we headed to Santa Cruz.  Post to come shortly.

Day 1 and 2: Los Angeles

Howdy  everyone!  This is our belated beginning of Vegan Mofo.

We arrived in LA at about 6am yesterday morning.  The hilarity started when we were lining up for customs.  Their air-conditioning had broken down, so the nice woman from delta was having issues with her colleagues on the walkie-talkie.  I guess you had to be there.  They were complaining that it was hot.  They haven't been in North Queensland in February, so they really have NO IDEA.  Lol.

Anyway, after picking up the car (and getting used to driving on the other side of the road), we headed to Veggie Grill for lunch.

Buffalo Wings

WOW. This place is relatively new as far as I'm aware. It was so good! I had a Chikin' Burger thing, Cam had the Bayou burger, and we shared Buffalo Wings.

Pretty freaking awesome. probably only We managed to stay awake all day (despite not getting much sleep on the plane). We headed to the Snake on Mullholland Highway. Cam tells me it's some sort of motorcycle thing. There were lots of bikes winding up and down the road. Pretty cool.

After checking in to our nice hotel in Santa Monica, we walked down to the pier. So cool! We took a ride on the Ferris Wheel and watched the sun set. Cam got a pretty awesome photo:

We then headed to Real Food Daily for dinner. We've had the Real Food Daily cookbook for many years (and have only made one recipe from it - I'm lazy and a lot of the recipes seem to be pretty long). We started with the Lentil Walnut pate:

I had the Supreme Burrito (it was deliciously cheezy and yummy): 

Cam had a taco:

We shared the brownie bowl for dessert.

This morning we discovered that there's a Trader Joe's right on the next block. So we had Hickory Smoked Tofurkey on sourdough (OMG, that Tofurkey).

Lunch was at Native Foods Cafe in Westwood. This place was so cool! I had a meatball sub. Cam had a bacon cheeseburger.

I'm running out of superlatives to describe how good the food was. We thought we should start a goodly meter for the food. (This was actually the conversation at Native Foods)

Dinner was takeaway from Vegan Thai in Santa Monica. We had Tom Yum soup, Penang Curry, Pad Thai and Mango and Sticky Rice. It was spicy but good.

We're heading out of LA tomorrow, up to Pismo Beach. Woo!

Testing testing

Hi. No excitement today. We're madly preparing to leave on holiday on Saturday. I'm testing out blogger on my tablet. 

In lieu of an exciting food post, please accept the following animal pictures. 

Notzarella Pizza

We love pizza.  I know everyone says that, but we REALLY love pizza.  I make this pizza about once or twice a fortnight.

I've been making this style of pizza for about 4 or so years.  The dough is the VWAV recipe.  I'm super lazy and make it in my KitchenAid stand mixer.  Damn that thing saves me time!

The secret ingredient to our pizza is Notzarella.  In our opinion this is the best vegan melting cheeze on the market.  And it's an Australian product!  I normally get two pizzas out of a block (I grate it all at once and freeze the second half - the dough recipe makes two pizza bases too, so I get to be lazy the second time around).  And in the last few weeks (or so) the block size is up to 300g, so it's even more cheeze!

The other toppings are (all purchased from Green Edge) are: Redwood Cheatin' Pepperoni Style Slices (half the pack), Lamyong Vegetarian Salted Crispy Chicken, and Lamyong Vegetarian Soy Sausages.  I use pizza sauce from the supermarket and add Smoky BBQ Sauce.

I get the best results with the dough when I cook it on a pizza stone.  I preheat the pizza stone in the oven for 25 mins as high as my oven will go.  Once the pizza goes in, I turn the temperature down to about 200C.  The Notzarella usually takes about 25 mins to melt at this temperature, but it may depend on your oven.  You can always finish it under the grill (if you have one!).

Before it went into the oven

After!

If you live in the land of Oz, hunt this stuff down and eat lots of it!  (This is not a paid Notzarella advertisement - I just love the stuff)

Gnocchi with frizzled leeks, mushrooms and truffle oil

I made the biggest batch of gnocchi this evening.  I started out with 2.5kg of potatoes (I knew I should have weighed them at the fruit shop).  Which turned into about 3kg of gnocchi.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the dough - it was huge!

I made the gnocchi specifically to use the truffle oil that we got from Green Edge.  The recipe was based on something I had in a fancy restaurant eons ago.

Things to do next time: work out how to pan fry the gnocchi (the entire bottom of the pan was covered in potato bits), add more truffle oil, fry for longer so the gnocchi gets crispier.

NOM!  I got two gold stars from Cam for this one.  Luckily I have ballet ALL DAY tomorrow (WOOOO!) so I can probably afford a few extra calories.

Can you believe I took this photo on my phone?  Samsung Galaxy for the win!