North Dakota in September

We took a trip to North Dakota in early September to visit my parents. Here are some photos.

No late-fall stay at Grandpa and Grandma's is complete without a walk to Grandpa's gardens (and without taking home boxes of fresh vegetables).

I tried to get one of Anna in the corn, sort of like I got when she was just over a year old. 

Just for the heck of it, here's the one I took back in September of 2007.

Wow, that's really weird to look at those two together. I forget how long it's been.

Anyway, Liam loved running through the corn, too.

Then the corn attacked him!

I really like this next one. You can see Anna in the foreground and then Liam, but way back there is my dad getting eaten by the corn.

My dad scratched Anna and Liam's name into pumpkins with a pole barn nail (and he did the same for the other 7 grandkids and other people's grandkids in town, too). I talked to him last night and all of the pumpkins are picked and orange and ready to go. I wish we were less than 6 hours away.

This is as busy as it gets when we visit my parents' house. Which is why we love going there.

Then we visited some more family in Carrington, ND.

A good time was had by all.

North Dakota's State Dish

I'm on vacation in North Dakota.

I made vegan potato salad. If you grew up an omnivore in the midwest and you are now vegan, you need to make this potato salad. Even if you didn't like potato salad.

I'll post the recipe soon. Then you'll make it. And you'll thank me.

That is all. Sorry for the lack of posts. Like I said ... vacation ...

Denver Trip Part 2: In Which I Write About Where We Ate

So we ate at a couple places in Colorado that I really want to talk about. Now, I don't want to make it seem like we, as vegans, never have options when it comes to food. I can find a place to eat no matter where I am. We don't need vegan or vegetarian restaurants in order to eat out. Even in Grafton, North Dakota I can walk into a Subway and get a filling veggie sub. Easy peasy.

In any town with a grocery store I can buy food to make a meal out of. It's not hard to be vegan. Read that again: It's - not - hard - to - be - vegan. Sure, it takes a little bit of planning and knowledge, but every healthy diet does.

But fortunately for vegans there are places, certain places around the world where vegans feel welcomed with open arms. Sometimes it's just a restaurant that's an oasis in an otherwise dry, dry desert. And sometimes it's a smorgasbord of vegan goodness that is almost too much to bear (like San Francisco, Portland or Amsterdam).

I'd say Colorado is a mix between the former and the latter. Boulder is, as the Coloradans call it, hippy central. So there's bound to be blatantly vegan options there. My sister-in-law had a couple restaurants in mind for us. One was a sit-down restruaunt where she said she ate the best tofu of her life and the other was a ... wait for it ... it's coming ... it's going to blow your effing mind ... a VEGAN FAST FOOD RESTAURANT.

Yes, you read those all-caps, bold, italicized, underlined words correctly. A vegan fast food restaurant. I know! I know!

V.G. Burgers has a standard fast food menu, except the food tastes great, is actually good for you and is 100% vegan. I had the Chili Chreese Dog. It was tasty. It wasn't pound-the-table-and-make-moaning-noises good, but it's fast food, it's not supposed to change your life.

Mrs. Piggy (maybe I shouldn't refer to my wife as Mrs. Piggy?) had the Sunflower Burger. I had a taste. It was awesome. I almost pounded the table. Anna had a bowl of Mac and Chreese and some of my Chili Chreese Dog. I think she liked it.

They're talking about franchising the place, so if anyone out there has a ton of capital they want to throw my way, I'd love to spend it on opening up a VG in Minnesota. Mark my words, if I ever win the lottery, I'm opening one of these restaurants.

That night we went out to eat in Denver at Watercourse Foods, this really great vegetarian restaurant. Seriously, click on that link and check out their menu. Holy crap this place is amazing. We got breakfast take-out from there the last time we were in Denver and also the sister-in-law brings deserts from their bakery when she comes to MN to visit (I know, isn't that nice? We really appreciate it ... hint hint).

But nothing beats sitting down and having a meal in the restaurant. The service is wonderful and the food is super fresh. It was so good, we ate there two nights in a row.

Their seitan spicy buffalo wings are to die for. I will never eat there and not order them as an appetizer. They're the kind of spicy that makes your nose burn when you smell it, but somehow doesn't make your mouth burn ... much.

Also, I had the best onion rings of my life. You'd think that if you've tasted one onion ring then you've tasted them all, but you'd be wrong. These looked like normal onion rings, but the onion itself was grilled or sautéed or whatever they did to absolute perfection. And the breading was delicate, yet held together. I can't believe I'm reviewing onion rings, but they were that good. You know how when you eat onion rings, a lot of time the onion will come out of the breading and then you're left with a hollow ring of fried stuff on your plate and the whole onion in your mouth? Yeah, those onion rings you're eating are crap. There was no chance of that happening to the onion rings at Watercourse. Yum.

Of course, the main courses were great too. I had a Tempeh Burger the first night, which I must say is probably the best veggie burger I've ever had. Oh, and the Quinoa Salad on the side made me rethink quinoa. Seriously, I just cooked quinoa last week for the first time in a looooong time because of Watercourse's Quinoa Salad. Thank you Watercourse.

(Side note, I discovered last week that I can cook quinoa in my rice cooker. This makes me very, very happy.)

The second night we ate there I got the blackened tofu. It was pretty good tofu, the presentation was pleasing, but the coconut cream sauce definitely gave the dish that extra bump toward greatness that it needed. Damn. I'm getting hungry just typing about it.

Unfortunately no photos of the food. When I'm eating out I like to relax, savor and enjoy. Once I take my camera out it adds an element of work to the meal. So ... you'll just have close your eyes and visualize the melt-in-your-mouth onion rings.

This was fun. Maybe I'll review local restaurants in the future.

Denver Trip Part 1: In Which I Show You Photos

So we went to Denver last weekend to visit family. Oh, and I've been editing wedding photos for the last month. And doing some more work on that friend's book I was talking about. So, yeah, that's why I haven't blogged in two weeks. I sincerely apologize to the reader that I have left. Sorry dude.

Well, on to some photos of our trip.

Anna loved the flights. Here's her all excited at the gate in Minnesota. She wanted to get on the plane sooooo bad. We were at the end of a long line to get on the plane and we decided to sit down and wait for the line to shorten. When we did this she started crying. That's how bad she wanted to get on.


I didn't get any photos of her on the plane, unfortunately. She looked out the window as we took off and really enjoyed it. Once we leveled off and all the "taking off" hub-bub was over with she emphatically commanded, "More!"

The first day in Colorado was spent at Anna's uncle Jeremy and cousin Noah's place. Anna loved playing with Noah's toys (and I have to admit, I did too) Noah showed me his super awesome Star Wars Lego game that he plays on his dad's computer. It was sooooooooo cooooooooool!

That first night is also one I will never forget. It touched me in a way that ... well there's no words. It's were I got my first taste of ... wait for it ... the new vegan Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos. There is currently a half-eaten bag in our kitchen (I bought it ten minutes ago). Thank you Doritos. You've just made me (and I assume you will continue to make me) less healthy.

The second next day we hung out in Boulder on our way from Ft. Collins to Denver. My favorite non-food related stop was Left Hand Books on Pearl St. (I'll get to the food-related stops in my next post). It's where I purchased the Marx For Beginners graphic book (not graphic as in nudity and swears, but graphic as in comic book style). I have to admit I know very little about the man and his theories. Where better to start than a comic book, right?

Anna chillaxed at an art store which also had those hanging chair things.


And then she played outside in this rock garden play area. Most of her playing consisted of putting on and taking off her sunglasses. There's just something about kids in sunglasses...




And here's Anna's "I'm fracking adorable and I know it" look. It's pretty rare ... for now.


The next day we drove up to Look-out Point overlooking Denver. It was wiiiiiiiindy as all hell, but it was a nice view.


Anna and her aunt Jessica looking at Denver.


Anna was a big fan of the mountains. She would point and say, "mountains! big!" It never got old. I think the trip, with flying and mountains and everything, really taught her about the concepts of up and down. Now whenever we drive up or down even the slightest hill in the car, she will announce that we are doing so.

At a second stop I walked down some rocks to get this photo ...


... and I guess I just assumed that Anna would want to stay up top, but no, she walked down the dangerous mountain rocks toward me (holding mommy and auntie's hand, of course). Atta girl!


Obligatory Red Rocks photo.


By the way, you can click on any of these photos to view them at a much larger size. If you do that on the above photo, you'll be able to see Denver on the horizon.

And here's the part where I have to break the bad news. Later on this day, it started to blizzard in Denver. As such, our Peaceful Prairie Farm Sanctuary tour was canceled. The animals were all in their barns and if outsiders walk into the barns while they're in there they get spooked and run outside. Since there were blizzard conditions outside, that would not have been good.

So BOO bad weather! But YAY Peaceful Prairie for putting the well being of their animal friends above our uneccesary tour! Seriously, this made me only respect them even more. You should all click on that link up there and give money to them. Now.

So, since we didn't go to the sanctuary we went to the Denver Science and Nature Museum. They had a ton of dinosaur fossils, which Noah loved. Anna really dug them too. Get it? Dug?


It's a little sand-box type thing where kids can "dig" for fossils. Pretty cool.

Stay tuned for the second and final chapter of the Denver trip blog series where I write about the food we ate. I promise it won't be two more weeks.