I’ve blogged about Cafe Gratitude before (and here), but it’s so good that I’m blogging about it again. For a friend’s birthday over the weekend, we went to see the Gertrude Stein exhibit at the SF MOMA and then to lunch at Cafe Gratitude. It was a super fun day for sure!

We started lunch off right with a bottle of wine. I don’t think Cafe Gratitude served alcohol the last time I was there, but they now offer a few different beers and wines. We had a bottle of the organic chardonnay and it was good.

Another thing that’s different since the last time I was there was a whole selection of cooked foods on their menu. I still got the same thing I always get… the raw enchilada:

And just like always, it was delicious! A friend ordered the raw mac & cheese. I had a bite and it was good:

Another friend got the cooked tamale. I didn’t taste it, but she said it was good, but very spicy. It was so spicy that she didn’t eat most of it.

One other thing that we got to try was the coconut bacon. It’s flaked coconut with some spicy, smoky, maply something and it does sort of taste like bacon.

Next time, I just might get the raw mac & cheese topped with the coconut bacon. Yum!

I know… eww, gross! While I was in the hospital after Amanda was born, I thought it would be a fun idea to review the food that I was served while in the hospital so I took a few photos.

Amanda was born at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, CA. The staff there– nurses, doctors, everyone!– was so awesome. I received the best care and had a much better experience than I did when Emma was born. Emma was born in San Francisco because that’s where we were living at the time. Both girls were born via c-section, which meant a longer stay for me and more meals to review!

When I first checked in to the hospital, the nurse asked if I followed any kind of special diet. I informed her that I was vegan and she put that info into the computer. Actually, I have to confess something here: my pregnancy was not totally vegan. I was so incredibly sick in the beginning that I ate whatever would stay down, which included a cheese stick on 2 occasions. I also would eat baked goods regardless of whether or not they were vegan. I don’t like cheese and I generally don’t like things that contain dairy (it’s all I can taste and it’s gross), but there were a few times when I was desperate. To give you an idea of how sick (and desperate) I was during this pregnancy, I lost 8 pounds at the beginning and had to go to the hospital for IV fluids. I ended up gaining back that 8 pounds plus another 9, for a total weight gain of 17 pounds. By the time I was discharged from the hospital, I was already a pound or two below my pre-pregnancy weight. Now, I’m not bragging or anything here and I still have some weight to lose before I’m comfortable with my body size, but I do want to point out that I was forced to re-evaluate my thinking when it came to food because my body was just not cooperative. I’ve decided that I don’t really like being labeled “vegan.” Yes, I tend to stick to a vegan diet more often than not, but I don’t need the label.

I digress… So when I told the hospital staff that I follow a vegan diet, I half expected a lecture about proper nutrition blah blah blah, but they were super nice and very accommodating. One of the nurses even asked me a about it and we chatted for a long while. And, two or three days into my stay, someone from the hospital nutrition office (the people who plan the meals or whatever– the dietitians, I guess) called my room to make sure that I was getting the right food.

Every day with my breakfast, I would get a vegetarian menu to choose my meals for the next day. Most mornings, I had oatmeal and wrote somewhere on there that I’d like soy milk. I would also generally get a piece of toast or something else like that. Now, I wasn’t so anal as to ask whether or not the bread was vegan. That was more trouble than I was willing to go to, especially since I was recovering from a c-section and taking care of a newborn on my own (the hubby was at home a lot of the time taking care of Emma). The options for lunch were pretty much the same as the options for dinner but I tried to mix it up. The best part is that when my food would come, they would put the menu on there that I had filled out the previous day and write somewhere on there “no eggs, no dairy.” It was very thoughtful, I thought.

I bet you’re wondering exactly what I was eating… here are a few photos. Sorry for the poor quality, but I didn’t have a camera and took them with my phone.

The top is a tofu veggie stir fry that was actually really good. I think I ate that pretty much every day for either lunch or dinner. The bottom is a pasta primavera dish that was also tasty, but I think the sauce may have had cheese or dairy in it. I ordered it one day and it came without sauce, with just plain noodles and steamed veggies. I liked that much more than when it came with the sauce. Like I said, I wasn’t so anal as to check whether or not there was dairy in the sauce. The people preparing the food were doing their best to accommodate my special needs and I didn’t want to make a big deal about something like that.

The night before being discharged, the hospital offers the patient a special meal to share with her husband as sort of a last hoorah. That menu was the least appealing of all because it was stuff like filet mignon and maybe a chicken dish. The vegetarian option was some kind of ravioli and the side dishes were all starches like rice or potato– things that are usually served alongside meat. I never filled mine out and my nurse that day noticed and asked if we had planned to have the special meal. I told her that I didn’t really care all that much and I explained about my diet preferences and that I thought I would get a more balanced meal sticking with the normal food service. Well, she called the dietitian for me and asked them to make us something vegan and they did! What they brought us was just a slightly larger portion of one of the meal options from the normal daily menu, but it turned out to be really good. It was a plate of Indian dishes that I think were all vegan except for the spinach. When I ate it, I wish I would have ordered it during my stay. The special celebratory meal came with either champagne or sparkling cider and a nice salad. Matt got the champagne while I opted for the sparkling cider for Emma to have. She drank it out of the champagne flute and thought it was fancy!

Here’s a picture of our little Amanda now at 6 weeks old, and that’s her big sis snoozing in the background. I really can’t believe she’s 6 weeks old already!

Both my husband and I have family that live in various parts of Oregon.  We were hoping to get a chance for a road trip in July so that we could go visit everyone, but he’s swamped right now with work and so our plans have been ditched.  I was really disappointed because not only will we not get to visit our family, but I had wanted to detour a little to Farm Sanctuary during our drive north.  Well, the other morning I was laying in bed thinking that this week would have actually been perfect for a trip to Farm Sanctuary because (1) Emma starts swim lessons next week and will be swimming pretty much every morning for the rest of the summer (except for two weeks in July when we were planning to take our Oregon trip) and (2) even though June is pretty hot for the area where Farm Sanctuary is located (Orland, CA– about 100 miles north of Sacramento), July and August are way hotter.  So, it was decided then… I packed up that day and drove to my parents’ house in Sacramento and all four of us made the trek to Farm Sanctuary yesterday.

About Farm Sanctuary

Farm Sanctuary, located in Orland, CA rescues and rehabilitates abused and neglected farm animals from factory farms, stockyards, and slaughterhouses.  Most of the animals at the sanctuary were born to be “food animals,” but are now free to live their lives comfortably and safely at Farm Sanctuary’s 300-acre farm.  The California farm is home to lots of cows, a few donkeys, geese and ducks, pigs, turkeys and chickens, rabbits, and goats and sheep.

While public tours are given only on Saturdays from 11 am to 3 pm, from May 8 to October 31, members are invited to visit between 8 am and 4pm every day of the year.  Becoming a member is very easy– all it takes (at a minimum) is a yearly pledge of $20.  Members also receive Farm Sanctuary’s quarterly newsletter and a discounted rate at their cabin.

I was really interested in visiting because it’s important for Emma to understand why we don’t eat animals.  She does have dairy on occasion, but is mostly vegan and my hope is that it will soon be her choice to avoid dairy (which would make her totally vegan) once she is old enough to understand what is involved in producing dairy and that it’s not really all that great for our body.  Likewise, I want her to be educated about where meat comes from in the event that she chooses to eat meat later in life.  I grew up thinking chicken came from the grocery store and asking questions like “are we eating the muscle of the animal?” without really getting a detailed answer.  Knowing her personality, I don’t think she would ever regularly consume meat– and you can’t miss or crave something that you’ve never had– so I don’t think this will ever be an issue, but I would like her to be educated nonetheless.  At this stage, everything is kept very basic and I only tell her what she needs to know in terms that are easy for her to understand.  Besides that, she’s out of school for the summer and fun little educational trips like this are enjoyable for her.

Road Trip

We left Sacramento around 9 am and made it to Orland around 11am.  It was quite windy yesterday, which I was thankful for because that meant it wouldn’t be so hot.  I’ll take wind over heat any day when we’re farm-bound.  Since there is no place to eat at the farm, we decided to first have lunch in town and then make our way to the farm.  I always get nervous about traveling to small towns in the middle of nowhere surrounded by food-animal farms because I’m concerned that finding something vegetarian (let alone vegan) will be quite challenging.  Thanks to Farm Sanctuary’s website, I was armed with a list of veg-friendly restaurants in Orland and I hit the jackpot with the one we stumbled upon.

The first one on the list, Alta Marie’s Bakery, was the place I chose to visit because the Farm Sanctuary description indicated that they carried vegan pastries on a regular basis.  I was hoping to score some… and I liked that they were described as offering vegan items instead of “things can be made vegan upon request.”  I get tired of going places where I can really only order a salad and even then I have to request that it be made without the cheese or meat that normally comes on it.  It gets old.

Alta Marie’s is pretty much right off the freeway and easy to find.  We strolled inside and perused the menu and I was nervous that perhaps they weren’t so vegan friendly after all.  Everything on the menu was meat, meat and more meat.  So I asked the person at the counter what was vegan and she consulted with the owner/baker to figure out what vegan dish could be whipped up based on what they had on hand in their kitchen.  I really liked that they were so accommodating and went the extra mile to make me something as special as the rest of the dishes.  They even knew enough to ask if honey was okay for me since one of their salad dressings did contain honey.  I was very impressed with their knowledge of what vegans eat and don’t eat and really thrilled that they had 3 turnovers in their pastry case that were all vegan (2 pineapple and 1 cherry).

Even though the list was pretty extensive, I settled on their house salad with dried cranberries, fresh strawberries and walnuts added.  I opted for the balsamic vinaigrette (the one that had honey in it because I thought it would be more appealing to my kiddo and I hoped she might want to share my salad), but they do have a raspberry vinaigrette that is all vegan.  I know honey isn’t vegan and I do avoid it whenever possible, but one little cheat won’t get the vegan police after me, I hope.  After lunch, I snagged all three of the turnovers– they were SO GOOD!!!

Alta Marie’s makes vegan cakes and pies if you give them a little notice.  They even make vegan wedding cakes!

We Arrive At Last

The farm is located about 10 minutes outside of Orland and was really easy to find.  Once we got there, I got my membership and we set off to see the animals.  When I was signing up for my membership and the Farm Sanctuary gal was going over the map with me, she said something like “over here are the turkeys and chickens…” while pointing at the map.  Emma then chimes in (rather loudly, as she has no volume control):  “Chickens and turkeys!!  We don’t eat those!!!!!!!!”  It was cute.  The Farm Sanctuary gal responded: “You’re in the right place then because neither do we.  We just love them!”  It was cute.

(Click on each image to see a larger version.)

And here’s some video of the hungry pig who came over to say hi!  Emma had a full conversation with her, but you can’t really hear anything because of the wind:

Rainbow Grocery, located at 1745 Folsom Street in San Francisco is the only place to shop for groceries.  I wish I lived closer (or maybe they would consider expanding and opening another location down the peninsula… say in Redwood City?) so that I could shop there all the time.  I have a very sad confession to make:  in the 3 years that I lived in SF, probably less than a mile away from Rainbow, I never shopped there once.  Why?  Because the line of cars waiting to pull into their teeny tiny parking garage was such a turnoff!  Rainbow now validates parking for some of the garages in the area (or maybe it did the whole time and I never knew).  Anyway, the point is that this place is awesome and you really should make a point to stop by whether you are visiting San Francisco or whether you live there/nearby.

Why is this place so great?  First off, they are a worker-owned co-op, meaning that the people who work there are the owners.  Pretty cool, right?  Secondly, they are very vegan friendly.  There is a huge selection of vegan baked stuff (from local bakeries) like cupcakes, cakes, cookies, scones, etc.  They are also very Raw friendly.  Third, they have the most insane bulk foods section you’ve ever seen in your life.  I did happen to take my camera with me so that I could post some photos of it, but I chickened out at the last second.  I didn’t want to look like a weirdo taking photos of dried beans and rice, so I used my iPhone instead so that I could look as if I were texting/emailing/Facebooking all the while casually snapping photos.  Why I was concerned about looking like a weirdo in SF is anybody’s guess– the town is full of ‘em!!

Most of my pictures are blurry, but you can read some of the bin labels if you zoom in and look closely.  None of these are repeats (photos of the same thing).  I’m not joking when I say that the bulk section is HUGE:  bulk spices, teas/coffee, beans/legumes, rice, pasta, cereals, flours, sugars, candy (lots of vegan ones too), nuts and nut butters, olives, dried fruits, oil, soy sauce…. seriously, if you can think of it, it’s probably in the bulk section.

Above:  bulk candies… notice how many are vegan!  Vegan gummy bear things, peanut butter cups, nut cluster things.

Above: granolas galore!

Above: more cereals

Above: any kind of flour you could ever need

Above: more flours

Above: cereals… notice how many are Raw!  How cool is it that you can get raw granola in the bulk section?!

Above: Rice, rice…

Above: …and more rice!

Aside from the bulk section, Rainbow also carries lots of hard-to-find vegan goodies like Dandies marshmallows.  They stock them all the time!  They also have all kinds of vegan cheeses, even those soft ones that can be spread on crackers.  I’ve never tried them, but I’m impressed that they carry it.  The fruit/veggies section is all organic and mostly locally grown.  The peaches smelled so delicious when I walked by, but I just couldn’t bring myself to shell out $3.50 per pound for them.  Likewise with the plums.  We did, however, stock up on bananas and in addition to being fair trade, they were so sweet and yummy (and comparable in price to my local store or Whole Foods).

The vitamin section is also out of this world, but I didn’t take the time to look through it.  We had been there long enough and my kiddo was hungry and ready to leave.  I could seriously waste hours in this store just looking through everything.

The price of most items was comparable to or maybe a little bit more expensive than Whole Foods.  By that, I mean like the loaves of bread, boxes of cereal, etc. were comparable in price to WF.  The prices on the bulk items is very reasonable, the most expensive items being the Raw cereals at $8 per pound. I know that sounds like quite a bit, but for the Raw stuff that sounds like it’s probably the going rate.

Anyway, the bottom line is– if you’re looking for something and can’t find it at any other store, chances are good that Rainbow has it.  I just wish it was closer!

One of my good friends from Sacramento came to visit me yesterday and we met up for lunch and a day of fun in SF.  We kidnapped another friend of mine and had a really fun girls day.

First Stop: Cafe Gratitude (again!!)

Since I’ve already raved about this place so much, I won’t do it again.  Everything was so delicious!

Next stop: Twin Peaks

The best view of the city is from Twin Peaks.  Just take a look:

It’s always windy and cold up there, so be sure to being a jacket if you plan to go.

Last stop: Wholesome Bakery

I first heard about this place on Facebook.  I’m not sure where exactly.  They just recently opened their retail location and I’ve been pretty eager to try it after reading all about their goodies on their website.  Everything at Wholesome Bakery is vegan, whole grain, high in fiber, low-glycemic, yeast-free, soy-free and cholesterol-free.  I really, really had my heart set on one of their baby pies.

So, we get there (it’s really hard to find because it’s inside a shop that is shared by several businesses).  Their stall or portion of the store is really small.  As it turns out, they rotate their goodies and don’t always have pies or cupcakes or whatever.  I was VERY disappointed that there were no pies at all.  Now it’s all I can think about and I almost bought an 8″ vegan pie at Whole Foods today just for myself.  I resisted the temptation, but I’m pretty sure I might be making a pie here in the near future.  Anyway, I settled on two different cookie sandwich things, just so I could do a review based on trying two things instead of just one.  If I’m being completely honest, none of their goodies really appealed to me.  Nothing really sounded or looked that great.

The top one is a peanut butter chocolate cookie sandwich; the bottom is a chocolate chip cookie sandwich.  Both were pretty crumbly (the peanut butter chocolate much more so) and they kinda made a little mess.  Taste-wise, I preferred the chocolate chip over the peanut butter chocolate, but was disappointed with the lack of chocolate chips to be found in the cookie.  The cream center of both was good, although I have no idea what it was made from.  It was almost like a frosting or something.

Overall, my experience was pretty disappointing.  First it was difficult to find.  Then they don’t have my pie (or really much of a selection at all).  And then the cookies didn’t really blow me away.  Since they just opened and are just starting out, I will give them another chance…. but it probably won’t be for a while.  It made me wish I would have gotten a dessert to go from Cafe Gratitude.

All in all, I had an awesome day with my girls and I can’t wait to do it again!

Yesterday was my birthday and my parents took me to lunch at Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco.  I blogged about my first trip to Cafe Gratitude here.

Cafe Gratitude is a Raw, vegan cafe with locations throughout the Bay Area.  Most of the food is organic and about 1/3 of their produce is grown on their own farm in Vacaville (about 45 minutes away from San Francisco).  Everything is fresh, wholesome and absolutely delicious!!

Dad’s Lunch:  I AM FULFILLED, a large salad of Mixed greens, avocado, carrots, beets, cucumbers, tomato, a flax chip, Parmesan, & teriyaki almonds and hummus (no chickpeas, it’s made from sprouted almonds).  He really enjoyed it and commented on how good the hummus was.  I told him that I had the Cafe Gratitude cookbook and that I would give him the recipe and he said “he was too lazy to make it himself when he could go to the store to buy hummus.”  It’s not quite the same, Dad.

My lunch (Mom, Nana and I all had the same thing):  I AM ELATED, the enchilada plate (flavors change daily).  The “tortilla” is made from spinach and flax and is dehydrated.  It is filled with a sprouted seed filling and topped with spicy salsa verde & cashew sour cream. On the side is Mexican spiced coleslaw, brown rice (not raw; Nana tried the quinoa because she’s never had that), guacamole, and black beans (not pictured, also not raw).  This is SO good.  I’m considering having my leftovers for breakfast.  I think I get this every time I go to Cafe Gratitude.  Next time I might need to switch it up.

Emma’s Lunch: I AM BERRY AWESOME, a cup of fruit topped with house made young coconut yogurt.  While Emma didn’t dig the yogurt (I thought it was delicious), she liked the fruit.  She also ate my whole dish of black beans, some of my brown rice and a smoothie.

My drink: I AM HEALTHY, fresh green juice of kale, celery, cucumber and lemon.  Not the tastiest, I must admit, but definitely good for my body.

My drink #2: I AM GRACE, frosty coconut smoothie made with Young coconut milk, almond butter, dates & vanilla.

For Valentine’s Day this year, my husband, daughter and I went out for pizza and ice cream.  It was a really fun family date night.

We always get pizza from Amici’s since they are the only pizza parlor that I know of to offer vegan cheese.  It’s also within walking distance to our house.  They used to use Cheezly, but now they use Daiya.  I think I preferred the taste of Cheezly over the Daiya, but the Daiya is still good and has the added bonus of being soy free.  Some Amici’s locations even offer a gluten-free crust.

We always go for the Asante pizza, which is crust, vegan cheese, spinach, onions, tomatoes and broccoli.  The nice thing about Amici’s is that you can substitute vegan cheese for dairy cheese on any of their pizzas for at additional cost.  I wish Starbucks was the same way with milk… ahem.  Seriously, Starbucks, you make oodles and oodles of money every year, yet you charge 50 cents to substitute soy milk for cows milk.  Would you really go bankrupt letting the few people who prefer soy milk to order it at no extra charge… especially when drinks cost more than $3 to begin with?  But I digress.

After dinner, we moved down the strip mall to Milkshake Werks which, despite it’s name, always offers a vegan ice cream.  Yay!  I like to think that I played a part in that.  I would occasionally stop in for ice cream only to discover that they didn’t have ANY non-dairy ice creams or sorbets.  Bummer!  I mean, dairy or lactose intolerance is pretty big these days… you’d think that they would continuously have at least one non-dairy option.  Well, in cases like this, I like to email the company or owner with my requests/recommendations, but I couldn’t find any method to contact them via email at the time (and I’m not ballsy enough to call them on the phone… LOL).  Anyway, I resorted to giving them a lame (but honest) review on Yelp, which prompted the owner to contact me, which I responded to with Vegan Dad’s Chocolate Ice Cream recipe, which they now offer all the time (and it’s super delish, by the way).  AND the best part is that I can still show my face in there and they have no idea that it was me.  Hee hee!  I have since updated my Yelp review to give them more stars and praise for their willingness to offer a vegan ice cream since many places don’t care.  They also have sugar free options.

And I know you’re all very curious… I did try this same email-writing tactic with Starbucks to get them to offer soy milk as a complimentary substitution.  It didn’t work and yet I still go there.  Shame on me.  Imagine the impact, though, if all of you do it…  won’t that be a fun experiment.  To contact Starbucks to ask them to offer soy milk for FREE, click here and fill out this form.

Since I haven’t been doing much of my own cooking lately, I thought I’d do a little restaruant review here.  Last night, we went out to dinner with some friends to Cafe Gibraltar in El Granada, which is a little bit north of Half Moon Bay.

On a side note, you’ll notice how cloudy and gray it was.  Yep, it was cold and cloudy in August.  It made me think that most people probably trek to the San Francisco area in the summer months thinking it will be warm and sunny.  Actually, the best time to visit San Francisco/Half Moon Bay area (in my opinion), is March and April and mid-September, October and early November.

Now back to my review.

As I said, Cafe Gibraltar is located just a little bit north of Half Moon Bay.  From the outside, it looks like a small cafe.  The inside, though, is decorated with pretty fabrics and in the back booths, you get to sit on pillows to eat.  It takes a minute to get comfortable, but I found it pretty close to how we eat at home (sitting on the floor around the coffee table).

The menu is pretty big with lots of vegetarian and vegan-optional selections.  Matt ordered the Orzo Perlato Khoriatiko (the risotto dish) and I had the Manti.  Emma had a cheese pizza.

While I’m on the subject of her pizza, I have to gripe for a moment about the one incident during our dinner that really bugged me.  She was sitting in between us.  My husband ordered a vegetarian dish; I ordered a vegan dish and we specifically said “cheese pizza.”  When her pizza came, it had pepperoni on it.  I figured there were probably two pizzas that were made– one cheese, one pepperoni– and they had brought us the wrong one.  We notified our server and he whisked it back to the kitchen and apologized profusely.  Then he brought it back and it was obviously the same pizza just reheated and with most of the pepperoni picked off.  There were still some pieces on there, so we sent it back again.  Our server said “they’ll make a brand new one from scratch.”  Ummm… isn’t that what should have been done in the first place?  If picking off the pepperoni were an acceptable solution, I would have done that myself.

This really annoys me for several reasons:  (1) I hate wasting food like that.  They could have left the pepperoni pizza at the table and our omni dining companions could have eaten it.  (2) Let’s say I had a nut allergy and I order something that’s not supposed to have nuts on it.  It comes to the table with nuts on it and I send it back for a new one.  In that instance, they probably would have made a new dish right away because of my allergy.  A little meat won’t kill me or even set off an allergic reaction, but why is it not given the same level of sensitivity as an allergy?  Anyway, it just rubbed me the wrong way.  While they were making her a new pizza, they brought us a complimentary bowl of their special (vegan) soup du jour.  It was alright.

I don’t have a picture of Matt’s dish, but he ate it all which means he liked it.

Here’s a picture of my dish, the Manti: House made dumplings filled with garlic, onion, chickpeas, local Pastorino Farms Swiss chard, herloo, faro verde, roasted eggplant and ground nuts, simmered in an aromatic vegetable broth, topped with a yogurt garlic sauce and finished with a drizzle of sizzling spiced sumac butter.  Since I ordered mine vegan, it didn’t have the yogurt garlic sauce or the butter.

It was really good and even had whole artichoke hearts in it.  You could definitely taste the nuts in the dumplings.  I enjoyed it enough to eat the entire thing.

Having said that, I would go back to this restaruant, but only at someone else’s suggestion.  I don’t know that I was impressed enough to make a special trip there myself, but (minus the pizza incident) I did really enjoy the experience.

Cafe Gibraltar
425 Ave. Alhambra
El Granada, CA
(650) 560-9039

While out and about today, Emma and I stopped in at a Whole Foods that we’ve never been to before.  It isn’t close to our house, but since we were out that way already, I just decided to do our grocery shopping there instead of making a special trip to the one that is by our house.

I was pleasantly surprised that this Whole Foods had TONS of vegan and gluten-free pastries and cookies.  They also had a juice bar!!  While we were shopping, I “enjoyed” a celery, carrot and parsley juice.  This juice was pretty intense– they had just juiced some ginger prior to making my juice and while the guy offered to clean the machine, I said it was okay.  A little ginger is okay, but this was a little more than I expected.  Oh well.

In the bakery section, I found not one, not two, but THREE vegan donut flavors!!!!!!!!!!  I was SO SUPER HAPPY that I bought all 3 flavors to try.

Crumb:

My favorite by a mile.  Sweet and tasty, but it left a weird aftertaste in my mouth and a weird slimy feeling on my teeth.  Must be all that sugar…

Cherry:

Essentially a cake donut with a cherry glaze on top.  If you look closely, you can probably see chunks of real cherries in the glaze.  It was good, but didn’t taste anything like cherries.  It just tasted really sweet.

Blueberry:

Like the cherry, it didn’t taste anything like blueberries.  But it was good.  Cakey and sweet.

We celebrated my friend, Brianne’s, birthday this last weekend. She had been craving Underdog for quite some time, so she picked some up for us to make at her new place. Here’s Underdog in a nutshell:

UNDERDOG – “The Organic Sausage Joint” is exactly just that. we are a restaurant that serves grilled organic meat and vegetarian sausages on lightly toasted gourmet organic buns. you can dress your sausage anyway you like at our self-serve organic condiment stand. we also offer organic salads, desserts, sodas, juices, drinks, chips, snacks, and candies. Everything we sell is made with natural and organic ingredients. We will never sell anything that contains gmo’s, artificial preservatives, artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, transfats, or high fructose corn syrup. We conduct business in ways that make the least negative impact on our planet by trying to always use packaging, supplies, and disposables made from either recycled paper and/or biodegradable products made from renewable and sustainable resources like corn, potatoes, bamboo, or sugar cane. We recycle as much as we can and encourage you to do the same. We try to always only use non-toxic and biodegradable cleaners. We donate a portion of our profits to local charities. We are the UNDERDOG!

While I’ve never been to the shop, I can highly recommend them based on Brianne’s recommendation and based on trying them at her house this weekend.  They were awesome!  Underdog is located at :

1634 Irving Street San Francisco, CA. 94122
(Between 17th and 18th Avenue, Inner Sunset)

I tried the Veggie Italian and the Veggie-Dog.  Both were really good– so good that I can’t choose a favorite.  I would eat both again.

I made dessert (of course!) and since Brianne doesn’t like cake, she requested Mexican Wedding Cookies.  I couldn’t stop there, so I made a Birthday Dessert Platter of Mexican Wedding Cookies, low-fat Zucchini Brownies and fresh strawberries.  I’ll be offering these through my bakery… if I ever get the website up and running.  I have the domain, just not the time to actually get the website looking good.  That sort of explains my absence lately… business has really picked up and I’m a little worried that it’s taking off faster than I can keep up.  I just need a few more hours each day to get it all done!