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.

Close up of Daiya's melti-ness

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!

There is an ice cream shop right near our house.  I don’t really like going there because every time I do, it seems like they never have anything non-dairy, but thanks to my poor review on yelp, they’ve stepped it up.  Emma and I stopped in on Monday and they didn’t have anything non-dairy then, but I was told to come back on Wednesday for their first-ever soy-based ice cream.

Today is Wednesday.  We went back.  And it was really, really good.  It was frozen so solidly that a smooth scoop wasn’t really possible, but I give them an A+ for the effort.  The taste was good, although it was a little too chippy for me (but that’s hardly anything to complain about).

Milkshake Werks is located at 256 Redwood Shores Parkway in the Nob Hill shopping center.

We also had a taste of a locally-made Root Beer from Devil’s Canyon Brewery.  It was awesome (organic, no refined sugars), but after checking their website, I see that is sweetened with honey.  While I do try to avoid it whenever possible, I won’t be too hard on myself if I happen to have it once in a while.  Anyway, now that I know it has honey, I’ll probably won’t have this Root Beer again.  Honey is food that bees make for themselves, not for us.

This time, I remembered my camera!

I’ve blogged about Amici’s before… they’re one of the only pizzerias on the face of the Earth that offers a vegan cheese, and it’s actually really tasty.  You can sub it on any pizza at no additional charge.  Today, Emma and I went out to lunch because it was nearly 2 and I hadn’t fed her lunch yet.  One of those days.  I had the veggie pizza with soy cheese, which came with tomato sauce, caramlized onions, roasted green peppers, sauteed mushrooms and black olives.  With locations around the Bay Area (and free delivery), I bet you can find one near you!

After dinner last night, we decided to go get some ice cream.  We don’t do this very often, but I was excited to check out Cowabunga Creamery in San Carlos because I’d heard and read that they offer some vegan flavors.  Imagine my surprise when, in their relatively small case of ice cream, they offered two non-dairy options!  The first was a Mint Cookie Swirl made from soy milk, the second an Irish Coffee made from coconut milk.  You may recall that coffee ice cream is my absolute favorite so, naturally, I went for the Irish Coffee.

The ice cream itself wasn’t super creamy or fatty, as other coconut milk based ice creams I’ve had tend to be.  In fact, I was hardly able to taste the coconut flavor.  It was smooth and icy, almost like a sorbet.  It had chunks of oreo-esque cookies in it and was so incredibly delicious.

Pricing was fairly reasonable.  $2.00 for a mini scoop (pictured), but all non-dairy flavors add an extra $1 to their listed prices.  Ice cream is also available by the quart– $6 for dairy flavors, $10 for non-dairy.  It’s not something I would spend money on everyday, but, for an occassional treat, it’s worth it.  I mean, how great is it that a vegan can visit an ice cream shop and have two gourmet flavors to choose from?

Cowabunga Creamery is located in downtown San Carlos, CA at 784 Laurel Street.  You can also host parties here!

After an exciting family meal last night, I have to give Amici’s a big blog hug.  Amici’s is a chain pizzeria/Italian restaurant here in the Bay Area and we happen to have on right down the street from us.  They’ve always offered a soy cheese, which melted so well and tasted so normal that I just guessed it to be non-vegan.  I have ordered it on occasion, even though I had my doubts about it being vegan.  I was so surprised and elated last night when I opened my menu and saw a little sticker in there proclaiming proudly that “our soy cheese is now vegan” that I nearly peed my pants.  What??? Seriously???!

So I ordered it.  And it was FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!  Like way better than any vegan cheese’d pizza I’ve ever had.  I asked our server what brand they use and it turns out that they use Cheezly brand vegan mozzarella.  I’ve never seen Cheezly in any store near me, but I have seen it online at Vegan Essentials.  You can bet money that I will be ordering some the next time I order my vitamins.  I made a point to tell our server how good it was and how much I liked that they had a vegan cheese.  Hopefully the positive feedback will make Cheezly a permanent addition.

Sorry for the lack of photos, but I didn’t have my camera and this was too exciting to not blog about.  I mean, how many pizza places can you think of that actually care enough to offer a vegan cheese?  This is huge!

Earth Day is almost here, which means you only have a few days left to enter this months’ giveaway.

I wish I could take credit for this incredibly creative twist on PB&J, but I cannot.  It’s crunchy peanut butter, slices of granny smith apple, chunks of banana and cranberry sauce.  AND IT’S SOOOOO GOOD!  There’s a little cafe, Specialty’s, in the office park near my hubby’s work.  He goes there occasionally for lunch and today, we all went.  He and I had a veggie sandwich and a cup of soup.  The vegetarian soup today was a roasted red pepper soup with lentils in it.  It was delicious (even Emma ate a bunch of it)!  In the past, they have had minestrone as the vegetarian option and that is also good.  For Emma, we ordered this Peanut Butter & Stuff sandwich and a cup of fresh fruit.  She enjoyed it, but probably not as much as I did.

I’m very impressed by their selection of vegetarian (and easily veganizable) options.  Most sandwich shops you go to have a lame vegetarian sandwich on their menus, which is pretty much just the produce that they normally put on their meat sandwiches.  These vegetarian sandwiches have pizzazz, if you know what I mean.  Prices are pretty reasonable too.

Specialty’s has locations all around the Bay Area (CA), as well as the Seattle and Chicago areas.

We did a bit of traveling this weekend and on our way home, stopped for dinner at our favorite vegan restaurant in San Francisco, Herbivore.  It’s never disappointing to eat there.

Matt had the burrito and I opted for the lentil loaf topped with the red beet sauce.  It was served with mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy and a side of satueed greens (my best guess is chard, but I’m not entirely sure).  Everything was very good!

To drink, I had the “green juice,” which I have to admit sounded super duper scary.  Celery, apple, spinach, parsley, mint, ginger and lime– all mixed in one cup.  Doesn’t it sound a little scary?  Well, I’ll tell you that it’s actually quite good.  So good, in fact, that I wouldn’t mind making it at home, if I had a juicer like this Omega Juicer that can juice leafy greens.  I’m afraid my current one wouldn’t be able to handle the spinach.