Recent Great Stuff.

Time to be straight forward. Here's some stuff, that happened recently, that I deem great:

Tomato Season. I ate a tricolor pint of cherry and grape tomatoes for lunch the other day.

The Wednesday downtown farmers market. Mere block from my office.

Hands down, my favorite farmar.

Crazy-gluing that hand down - the Cafe Velo cart.

It's a smaller set up (this one is a bike! Oh, Portland) than the Saturday markets', with 400 fewer people on line with cute crying babies in front of you. Individually dripped cups of Stumptown, you choose the roast! I went with an Indonesian roast this past week.

Soymilk on the counter!!!!

Holding on the farmers market theme for one more addition: Pimientos de Padron. I can't let these go this summer. These were sauteed classicly with olive oil, coarse sea salt and crushed red pepper.

I brought the above peppers to the Try Vegan Week Potluck & Trivia night, along with these cookies from the upcoming Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.

Citrus Glitters

Heading back to test kitchen land, I've started testing for Isa's upcoming 'healthy' book. I am so freaking busy lately, but if I'm making a point to cook at home, odds are it will be her recipes. It's just how life is.

Summer Lovin' Curried Corn Chowder

Moving on from corn, to corn - the down home, smoked corn on the cob from Homegrown Smoker Vegan BBQ. If you've read my Stumptown Vegans review, you know I'm quite fond of them. They've recently labeled quite a few main items gluten free, and I swear, their home cooking style food is better every single time I go.

From corn to......pizza! Because sometimes Hot Lips puts corn on their pizza..... At this week's Yelp Portland Ballroom Bash. Here's Maeve with the vegan foccacia pie Don personally delivered to the table of awesome Yelpy vegans.

The Yelp Elite Hour & Ballroom Bash was super fun! I'm not a huge Hot Lips fan, and I despise their cilantro pesto, but how cool! I was able to get a tomato base slice a bit earlier, fortunately for my tastebuds and sanity, had I been induling in more of the complimentary beverages.

Oh hey, walking across the Morrison Bridge safely for once, thanks to construction, is pretty great. And random.

And really, really great - a veganized Vermecilli Bowl from Huong's Vietnamese cart downtown. He has other vegetarian options that are alright, but I've been wanting to request a vegan version of the pork or chicken bowl for too long! So, I finally did. He even volunteered a summer roll for the eggroll before I could even think to ask. I'm on a rice noodle kick.

It was tasty, and HUGE! And $6! It had fried tofu strips and this strange white gluten, which was good stuff.

All in all, Really Great Stuff.

Vegan Brunch: Bakery Style Marionberry Coconut Muffins

Folks, I'd like to introduce you to the result of last night's relaxing evening in: Marionberry Coconut Muffins based on the Bakery Style Berry Muffins in Vegan Brunch.

Their birth, er baking, topped off my first night home in a long stressful and glorious while delightfully. I started with a ton of housework, embarked into Season 3 of Dexter, hung out with my cats and hit the sack by 10pm! Did I mention delightful? I'm well rested!

These are made with hand picked marionberries I had frozen, lite coconut milk (leftover from a tester for Isa's in-progress 'healthy' cookbook!), almond extract and the addition of 1/4 cup of shredded coconut flakes. I used my 'big' muffin pan, a hand me down from the wonderful Julie Hasson, to bake them in.

Shockingly enough, I never made these during the Vegan Brunch testing last year, but feel free to check out my ultimate testing post here if you're interested in what I did make.

U Can't Touch This Vegan Prom!

Okay, maybe not all these girls circa 1993 are vegan, but the style is there!

Isn't being Vegan the Best?

Isn't being Vegan in Portland the BEST EVER?!?

I'm entirely serious today.

The second annual Vegan Prom at Report Lounge was spectacular, minus an awful fur incident. Just gross. I'm sorry that some folks left, and devastated that a fur coat showed up, and that it may have been intentional.

That's all I'm comfortable saying here.

Moving on, check out some pics below! 90s dance off! 90s hits! 90s themed cocktails! Dress up!

Tasty vegan snacks! Hell yeah, hummus is party food! In Living Color on the big screen!

A ridiculous number of prizes!

Just look at this list of donations/gift certificates:

Yarp?!, Whiffies, Sweet Masterpiece Chocolate & Coffee Bar, It's a Beautiful Pizza, Laughing Planet, Food Fight! Grocery, Herbivore Clothing, Old Wives Tale, Follow Your Heart, Sjaacks Chocolate, Sweet & Sara Marshmallows, Turtle Mountain, Black Sheep Bakery, Go Max Go Candy Bars (Portland based!) Back to Eden Baking Co. - storefront opening soon! with Chicago Soy Dairy Temptation soft serve! and Sweetpea Baking Co. for the delicious cookies!

Super thanks to our TWO vegan DJs - John Vincent and Brendan!

Yeah, vegan community!!

Thank you everyone for donating! And attending!!!!! Try Vegan Week 2009 had a fabulous turn out and Deanna and I had a blast organizing & then attending the Prom to top it all off!

The entire Try Vegan staff deserves applause!

Extra special thanks to Maeve,

for helping out so much, coming up with the theme and wearing a really sweet dress!

Dance off!

First prize went to Simon, Second to Angela, pictured below! They rule.

Dancing!

More dancing!

Dancing happening in moments...

More awesome vegans!

Maeve and Caitlin, sassy and grunge!

Our custom drinks for the evening were the non-alcoholic Carlton: a refreshing fruity lemonade, the Ninja Turtle: a vivacious non-alocholic mojito, the Vanilla Ice: vanilla stoli + orange + soda to get you on the dance floor! and the Blossom: a tropical vodka drink that put a smile on your face, just like Miyam!

There were door prizes galore, two dance off winners (first picture!) with awards for Phat Moves! and Dope Moves!, Best Dressed going to Nick as Waldo and Jack - for looking freaking tight! and our Prom King and Queen were Aaron and Michelle!

Already thinking of a theme for next year.............and making plans for Portland's first Vegan Iron Chef this winter!

Go Vegan for the Cookies!

Roasted Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

(half sprinkled with coarse sea salt)

Lots of Try Vegan Week tabling and Vegan Prom ticket selling took place over the weekend. And at every event I was at, I made sure there were free vegan baked goods.

Sharing scrumptious vegan cookies = just the type of vegan I am.

Altogether, I baked three batches of Isa's new chocolate chip cookie variations, two pans of raspberry chocolate chips blondies, oatmeal espresso butterscotch cookies, citrus coconut glitters and raspberry swirl East Coast coffeecake. Many of those are from Terry and Isa's upcoming Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Wink, wink.

I found a little bit of extra time to chop veggies for kabobs and a giant pan of lower fat new farm mac & cheeze for the opening day Vegan BBQ. The turn out was fantastic!

At the Hawthorne Street Fair

My friend Chelsea tabled all day - she's the author of Flavor Vegan and giving a talk on Vegan Baking tonight at Hungry Tiger Too at 8pm I'm planning on checking out. She knows her flours and egg replacers intimately!

I also sold tickets for vegan prom at the 12th and Hawthorne food carts late night outside of Whiffies deep fried pies (including vegan double chocolate, chocolate creme and savory tofu pot pie), and will be doing so THIS Friday night.

That's also the night of the Vegan Pub Crawl starting at Report Lounge on E Burnside and 11th (same location as prom!!) at 9pm. Maeve and I will be breaking off and heading to the carts for 11pm to sell!

Come visit, eat vegan cookies & buy your ticket - it's the following night!

Purposely underbaked by request (whoa-oh)

espresso oatmeal roasted almond chocolate chip

Oh hey, I bought more vegetables this weekend. Hollywood Farmers Market.

Nice to stop by there! Heirloom tomatoes omg omg omg omg.

One more time! Try Vegan Week is now happening! Check out the schedule here.

Yeah, the U CAN'T TOUCH THIS! Vegan Prom is this weekend!

90s style dance off. 90s music. AWESOME prizes.

vegan food. vegan DJs.

90s pop culture icon named specialty drinks (booze and no-booze)!

There's absolutely a drink called The Carlton.

come with a date, come with friends, come solo!

dress up, dress down, dress grunge, dress to dance!

Downtown Portland: I Dig Sonny Bowl - and anticipation

My latest lunch from Sonny Bowl -

$5. BBQ Soy Curls. Green Beans. Brown Rice. Sauce.

Comforty, wholesomey, lunchy. adorable.

SW 3rd and Stark.

Oh, Hey! PDX!:

• Try Vegan Week starts this weekend! I'm going to go to as many events as possible, and will definitely be at Vegan BBQ at 5pm tomorrow - Tofurkey and veggie bonanza!

• The U Can't Touch This! Vegan Prom is next Saturday night, the 22nd. I'm going nuts listening to 90s classics at work.

• Buy your tickets online or this weekend, late night, at the 12th and Hawthorne food carts - or at the Hawthorne Street Fair (old Daily Grind parking lot at 41st) or Sunday Parkways at Laurelhurst. $10 advance price! We'll have free cookies at the carts tonight! I'm going to try and make something from Isa's upcoming cookie book, of course. Stop by and say hi!

stoked

wedfarmar: Pimientos de padron
Originally uploaded by jdfunks.

Pimientos de Padron from Viridian Farms. Dinner tonight!

Sea salt, olive oil, go.

PDX: Try Vegan Week 2009 is next week!

Try Vegan Week is approaching!

Interested in Veganism?

Interested in meeting more vegans?

Interested in Vegan Ice Cream??

I'll be grilling Tofurkeys and veggies at the BBQ on the 15th, come say hi!

FYI, You can still sign up to get a mentor or to be a mentor here!

Buy your tickets from the 90s style U Can't Touch This! Vegan Prom on the 22nd here!

Vegan Food! Vegan DJs! Dance off! Fantastic prizes! more!!!

I heart you, hawthyfarmar.

Please forgive me for abbreviating the fairly new Hawthorne Urban Farmers Market. Such things are irresistible. It's small and adorable, as is the nickname.

If you read this site last summer or the one before, you know that I'm wild about farmers markets. There are weeks I'd go to three, there are weeks I'd gone to four! With my busy ways, cooking for one and lack of desire to cook during the heat wave this past year, I dropped off the farmar radar for a while, but dude, I'm back.

I put on my shades and ventured for the first time to the Hawthorne Market at SE 41st yesterday. I didn't barter for local veggies (you can!) but I did come home with vegetables, chatted with the sweet gardening gals and felt precious with my mini eggplants in my bag the rest of the day.

Heading east on Hawthorne Boulevard.

Walking into Adorableland.

Skip the goat milk soap, contemplate natural black lipstick and eyeball fresh lemonade. I really dig how intimate this market is.

The haul: banana peppers, string beans, lemon cucumbers, green and purple eggplant, chard. I've already cooked some string beans and eggplant, whoa.

Spotted on my Hawthorne adventure in my own neighborhood (Division/Clinton) - <3 href="http://stumptownvegans.com/2008/06/14/sip/">Sip!

PDX: Oregon Jewish Museum Festival with Veggie Food Carts - First Thursday!

I must confess, I don't think I've ever gone to First Thursday on purpose before. I've wandered into it, and been tempted by events at Backspace, but until this week, I don't recall ever writing down in my planner GO TO FIRST THURSDAY. So this week marks a change - my friend Caitlin is interning at the Oregon Jewish Museum and passed on information about their Mirror Image First Thursday Street Party. Besides a friend's involvement, there will be music, dancing, it's free! and there will be six veggie food carts! If that's not a call for a vegan cart groupie, I don't know what is.

Check our their flier:

The veggie carts include New Leaf Salad, Fat Kitty Falafel, Spud Locker, Staccato Gelato & Voodoo Donuts. Leah from OJM let me know that the vegan sauces are back at Fat Kitty, too! Personally, I'm stoked to finally try New Leaf! Salad is good.

Oh hey, Voodoo Donuts.. Confession #2: I think I prefer their cake donuts.