Veg Hawai'i: Part II of III: Tofufreak eats O'ahu

Sorry for so few pics on this island; I got lazy :P Plus, many times, my food was narrowed down to boring choices like the ubiquitous BOCA burger or (even a veggie sandwich that was just lettuce, ketchup, mustard, and onions on a bun!!!! gahhhh!) and things of that nature, so I just took whatever pics I could.

Check out this hilarious pic my brother got! It looks like their spirits are coming out, lol!

Gasp! The horrors!!

We spent a lot of time driving around, so lots of times, we had snacks on the car to satiate our hunger after the activity(ies) of the day. I used to love eating puffcorns or whatever those puffy popcorn-esque snacks are called, so I was pretty excited upon eating Veggie Booty. It is really quite delicious! It's made with spinach and kale too so that's a plus! ^_^ AND........I finally got to try Tofurky and Soy jerkies! Tofurky is DEFINITELY the better choice, as soy jerky has a weird aftertaste. I also bought some roasted edamame, 'cause that stuff is just SO GOOD. Yeah, if you haven't tried it before, I highly recommend you go and try that NOW!!!

This was a bamboo roll at some random Japanese place that we went to. It was pretty good, consisting of avocado, cucumbers, assorted roasted Japanese veggies, nori, and some other stuff wrapped up in the ever-so-chic soy wrappers that seem to be all the rage now.

You might be wondering, "Tofufreak, what IS that?!" Perhaps you remember my last post in which I spoke of the ramen-type noodles. This was a different flavor, made in the coffee pot on our last morning in O'ahu (clever, I know ^_^) This version has dried chinese mustard greens with dehydrated seitan that rehydrated once the water was added! hehe; it was very exciting!

Check out that fruit! I love Hawai'i for this reason. The pink glass in the back is ..... FRESH GUAVA JUICE! It is so amazingly good and difficult to describe. This was my breakfast everyday at the hotel we stayed at. Called "the healthy" breakfast, this plate of fruit+juice cost...... $17. Seriously. It actually would have been cheaper to go out and buy the fruit and juice, but oh well.
Sorry for the shortage of pics! Kaua'i has the Lotus Root pics which will make up for these!

Veg Hawaii: Part I of III: Tofufreak eats the Big Island

Because my family went to three islands, I will do 3 separate posts on our travels/eats. Hope you guys enjoy!

Here is a picture depicting the pre-trip excitement that my brother and I both shared! haha. This was taken on the airplane on the way to Honolulu.

Au Bon Pain Mediterranean wrap, (I believe) no feta, please! Oh, and a bag of potato chips too. Nummy. There was some kind of hummus and sundried tomato spread or maybe it was a roasted red pepper spread or something. I don't know. At any rate, it was pretty good! (Dallas/FW Airport)
Lookie what I found at the airport store! ABC Company's Vegan cookies! I was super excited and wanted to buy one of each flavor, but I restrained myself and limited my selection down to this lemon poppyseed cookie. It was really really good! Too bad I can't seem to find them anywhere else other than the Health Food Store.

Pickup dinner that I ate around 10 PM upon arrival in Hawaii. Cold noodles and veggies with sauce. Good portions, good price, can't recall the place.

This is my first lunch on the Big Island. Pretty boring. Inari sushi with a seaweed salad. We bought this from a Foodland or something like that.

For our official dinner on the Big Island, we went to Huggo's. I can't remember what this was called, but it was just ok. It consisted of grilled onions, portobello mushroon, asparagus, a black bean and corn salsa stuffed tomato, and a wild rice pilaf with a balsamic reduction. Meh-ish. The view was really lovely though.

Since we lived in a condo, we were able to store things in the fridge and cook! We took advantage of that on several occasions for breakfast. Here are examples of what I had for brekky:

This was basically my breakfast most mornings on the Big Island. Plain, but good. Plus, it was lower in calories so that I could indulge later in the day!

Apparently my uncle rarely cooks, so this noodle soup was an extra special soup! My relatives brought Ramen-type noodles from Taiwan. They are completely vegan, not fried, contain no MSG, and are perfectly delicious! We added tofu blocks and bean sprouts. Mmmm!

One thing that I loved about Hawaii was the fresh fruit. It was all so good! This is (very) fresh papaya. SO DELISH(with lemon squeezed on top)!

After going hiking (I think) we stopped by Hilo to find lunch. I can't believe we came across this place by chance! This is probably the best place on the Big Island. I loved and will love Abundant Life Natural Foods for the rest of my life.

This cookie that you see here is undeniably one of the best cookies in the world! I kid you not! I literally would go back to the Big Island just to get this cookie! It was soft, moist, nutty, oaty, chewy, wheat-free, dairy-free, egg-free, sugar free, and YUMMY! yea. sigh... Oh yeah, the shake in the back is a carob shake. (I though of VeggieGirl when ordering) :)

This is the grilled tofu salad of some sort. I believe my uncle got it? I don't know. At any rate, it was good.

My parents ordered this East Meets West Sandwich, which consisted of tofu, sprouts, vegenaise, and some other stuff. My mom liked the tofu lots. :)

I ordered the ginger tempeh burger. This, to date, is probably THE best burger I have ever had. Really good.

On our last night, we went to Sansei Sushi. They have some veggie options, as well as karaoke, if you're interested in such things. Here's what I had:

Blah. Miso soup. Pretty Average.

HAHAHA! This cracked me up so much! My relatives are Buddhist vegetarian, so they don't eat onions/garlic/green onions. Apparently that's all this dish had on top, so they brought out a block of pure, unadulterated, naked tofu!

I finally had a chance to try natto! I thought of Kamutflake girl when I was ordering this natto maki. :) I forget what the other roll was. In the back is some veggie tempura.

This is the grilled veggie roll with grilled squash, carrots, zucchini, and shiitake mushrooms.

These were the cups that they used for tea. The same advice was printed on the back in Kanji Japanese/Chinese. Clever, no?

And here I shall leave you with these words of wisdom. Tune in next time for eats on Oahu!

Hale, Sweet Hale! Home, Sweet Home!

Yes I am finally back! I'm sorry to announce, however, that due to impending projects due at school (i know! it's crazy! i had one day of recovery from the 6 hour time difference and then school started!) I must take a temporary leave. I couldn't leave you without anything, so I decided to let you see the awesome drinks my family members and I got. I don't think all of them were vegan (some had cream, I think). I had a virgin ambrosia (2nd drink). Anyhoo, I'll get around to posting all about my trip ASAP (hopefully on saturday. I have a LOT of catching up on your blogs to do). See you all again soon!

Not here. Just kidding! But seriously.

I had a (vegan) luau party last night, and so I absolutely had to post the pics before I left! Here we are, the fab (albeit blurry) four.

We had so much food, it was crazy. All of it was awesome though. ^_^

For dinner, we barbecued skewers. They were really good, and we all had fun stabbing veggies and tofu and chickenless strips onto them poles (can't you tell it's summer by my use of horrible english? haha).

BEFORE DINNER! This was an everything skewer. On it were zucchini, summer squash, teriyaki marinated chicken-less strips(haha, tricked the omni's with this one!) and tofu, mushrooms, and pineapple.
Oh-so-good.

I loved the tofu the way that it was marinated (random teriyaki sauce that I made with pineapple, soy sauce, brown sugar, mirin, chili, garlic, and a splash of water)! It was really, really good. In fact, when we were skewering, my VERY omni-friend said "I'll try some tofu..." (with certain hesitancy), but then after she took a bite, I asked her if she liked tofu, to which she replied, "I like tofu the way YOU make it." (*claps and cheers in her head*) Hey, I'm not tofufreak for no reason. ^_^

AFTER DINNER! haha, actually this was before I REALLY finished eating. In this picture, there are only 5 skewers. But by the time ACTUALLY finished, there were more like 8. haha.

Guess who made vegan ice cream and vegan pizzelle cookies-turned-ice cream cones! That's right! ME! ohhhhh yum! The ice cream (from V'con) flavors were chocolate and vanilla bean(I used vanilla paste so you could actually see the specks of seeds, though the picture doesn't quite show it). But anyways, both flavors are quite delicious. I think my favorite is the vanilla, though, because the chocolate used melted chocolate which didn't quite blend right which resulted in a slightly less creamy chocolate-flecked ice cream. Next time, I'll probably end up using cocoa instead of melted chocolate.

For breakfast, I made brownie waffles from V'con and also Hello Kitty waffles (from VWAV)!

These are the brownie ones, in case you couldn't tell. ;)

Meet My Melody, Hello Kitty's bunny friend. Aww, so cute!

Hello, Kitty! Hello Kitty! Here she is, in all of her waffle-y, carb-y glory.

Aren't they so cute? These are the teddy bear ones. I have no idea what his name is, although I have a feeling that I used too.

Okay, this really will be my last post until I get back from Hawaii. So for real this time, see you in two weeks!

I'm a carbie girl, in a carbie world: scallion pancakes, Pattycake Bakery, and homemade danishes!

In preparation for my trip to Hawaii, let me show you all the foods I have been eating to help me look my best(drumroll please!):

Inspired by the King Arthur Flour blog, I followed their basic guidelines and made some of the yummiest scallion pancakes!

Guess who went to Pattycake Vegan Bakery!!! ME!!! I bought a snickerdoodle(ginormous), an everything oatmeal (also ginormous), and a mint chocolate whoopie pie! They were super good, especially the whoopie pie which was extremely moist.

I recently made my first laminated doughs, which magically (ha! yeah right) turned into awesomely delicious pastries for my ever expanding waist line and thighs and abdominals and.. well you get the point. They were fattening, and therefore; delicious.

This was the first version that I made; blueberry lemon. Like the pinwheel shape?

These are the almond pastries. The filling was an almond cream made with chopped almonds. Yum!

Acchhh! This is so not helping me get ready for my vacation (I mean,think of all the things that I haven't posted i.e. those secret chocolate chip cookies at midnight *ahem*), but whatever. See you all in two weeks!