seattle!!!

this past weekend, sarah and i went down to seattle! my friend kirsten was celebrating her birthday and we wanted to shop for + eat lots of new or favourite things!

on saturday, we ended up in the u-district and we stumbled upon a farmers market and there were so many different kinds of cucumbers! it was amazing! i had to try the lemon cucumber. it was like biting into a crisp apple but with the refreshing, cool taste of a cuke. (and today i found them at the farmers' market at main street station! yippee!)

i started my saturday with a really green smoothie (apple and banana and greens) and a shot of wheatgrass at chaco canyon. it seemed like the drinks came quite quickly and we were on our way for shopping soon after that. a nice surprise!

for a late lunch, we went to thrive where they were super busy at 2pm and the cafe's till paper machine got jammed and 45 minutes into our wait, they realized they didn't have our order. thankfully my juice had already been started so i got to drink that first... (i had the smallest size of refresh and it was perfect!)

i also had ordered something pretty easy and quick to prepare (and share) so that worked out well. i got the large thrive platter with onion cashew dip, lemon tahini (couldn't taste the lemon so wasn't sure about that name) and nacho dip. i think sarah preferred the nacho and i preferred the onion one, though i got a bit sick of the onion taste. i was grateful for wrapping this up to go to eat later as i didn't end up really having dinner!

we ended up walking into PCC, an organic grocery chain store, when we were in freemont and i couldn't resist getting earth cafe's "who's your daddy?" raw cheesecake (a super sweet carob mousse - i couldn't finish it, which is something new for me!, it seemed high in agave which gave it a nice caramel taste but super sweet taste) and sarah got "big daddy" peanut butter marshmallow chocolate from theo (which isn't vegan or raw but they do have vegan bars!). i hope sometime to do a tour at the theo factory where we had also bought some chocolate.

oh, here are the cucumbers as displayed for a table surprise! aren't they incredible? oh and i guess technically the biggest one isn't a cucumber but a melon, but i guess cukes and melons are pretty close in relation...

so this is my snack cupboard when i got home! isn't it glorious???

happy day's half moon macaroons have been the only disappointment so far. i opened them yesterday to share with paul (um, perfect! 1 cookie each!) but he said they tasted bad and then i tried and it tasted fermented. i can deal with too sweet or not sweet enough but that piercing sour aftertaste? um, no thanks! gah. so they are in the garbage. so sad!

but! the hail merry macaroons (chocolate and blonde!) i got at the whole foods down there are the best i have ever had! i generally don't like blonde macaroons but i think having the almond flour and vanilla in these just makes them so incredibly melt-in-your-mouth delicious! jodie had advised me to look out for the tart as she found it in whole foods when she was in tucson recently. seattle's WF didn't have those, but thankfully they had these! and i brought the chocolate ones to the beach yesterday when jodie and lisa were fiending for chocolate :)

the only thing i don't like is that on the list of ingredients, the chocolate ones list maple syrup first! there can't be more maple syrup than coconut can there? and it says dark cocoa. cocoa means processed chocolate - cacao is raw. super confused. but who knows.

i tried go raw's ginger super cookies (pretty good but i would prefer more ginger kick - maybe it's because they use the ground dried ginger rather than whole) and pizza flax snax (good). my favourite of go raw's line still remains the spirulina bar (with banana and sesame seeds). and i miss their old logo. is that silly?

ah and you have to see this fearless raw chocolate bar (exploding coconuts). there's a bite mark because they donate to "changemakers" suggested by their consumers.

i prefer zimt despite the cute packaging and thin bar of this one. maybe it's just because of raw cane sugar being on the ingredients list! not quite the 'raw' bar i was expecting. sure the sugar is raw, but i guess i expect raw treats to use fruit sweeteners or stevia. and now i notice it is technically labelled as rapadura and looking around on the ol' interweb, it is touted as one of the better of the manufactured sweeteners. i will have to look into it some more! how have i not heard of it before? the whole cane sugar thing just throws me off. what is the difference between it and sucanut or brown sugar or palm sugar? what is all this stuff? i guess when i don't really understand what something is or how it is made, i don't wanna eat it!!!

well, anyways, my weekend in seattle was a complete food success. and well, the best weekend i've had for awhile! i can't wait to go back to seattle again, hopefully soon!

korean middle school cafeteria winter-styles day 20

my last full day at the school... i finished off my last package of rawgles, sliced some banana on top of my chia cereal (i have enough for tomorrow), and the salad was nice like last night and i added *roasted* nori again. i'm bringing home a full package of my raw nori. i just couldn't be bothered to make sushi much this time!

 my head chef friend presented me with a carrot rose... it tasted extra amazing. i miss eating carrots. i don't have much more than a few strips in a salad when i'm here!

 lunch... one lady working in the cafeteria said the kimchi was vegan but my head chef friend later told me it wasn't. i didn't expect it to be so i hadn't eaten any but took some to be polite. carrots and cukes were exciting! plus the last of my oil and vinegar atop of the salad with the last of my garden pesto crackers! and a banana snagged from breakfast. YAY!

 dinner.. a strange pairing... there was hot pot with fish intestine and such in it which of course i didn't partake in. the salad was served up in spaghetti which ended up being a sweet and red pepper paste spicy sauce that was animal free. i put 1/2 of the remainder of my sundried tomatoes and rawmesan on top expecting it to be the pasta sauce i had before. but it was fine. and i had taken the *roasted* nori - i ended up wrapping it in the leaf i picked up with the oranges. then i finished off the olives i brought, with help from friends ^_^ i gave one to the head chef to try and he couldn't finish it!

korean middle school cafeteria winter-styles day 9

getting ready to leave for seoul for the day!!! 

but here's yesterday...

the pineapple was GLORIOUS! and chia cereal and salad with *roasted* seaweed...

 at lunch i was super excited to see carrots and cucumbers... i was just commenting on how i was missing carrots especially since i think i'm getting pale while i'm here. anyways... so then my head chef friend comes up and sees what i'm eating. i decide to show him my "vegan passport" again so he can see, in korean, what i eat and don't eat (though technically i don't eat the white rice in the cafeteria so that must have been confusing for him) so then he is worried that all the people i work with are strict veg like me and they have been eating all these random animals this whole time but i explain it's just me but i have come before so i know what to expect and i brought food. well, he's not convinced so i'm to give him a list of things i do eat on monday and he said he can prepare some things for me? super curious. he ended up bringing out warm tofu and a spicy soy sauce with veggies and nuts for me. my friend ate 1/3 of it but there was still a lot and i wasn't hungry for the rest of the day! gah. 

i made some quinoa in my room and i'm curious about that. kept it in my "fridge" (near the window sill) to keep for this morning. so we'll see how that is!