Squirrel’s Vegan Kitchen

5 years ago…

And today…

Last weekend Jim and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary. We were young when we got married (I’d just turned 21 and Jim was 24) and we got married hastily. We met in online (we lived in the same city), which wasn’t as common a few years ago, and we lied about how we met for a long time because of the stigma attached to it. We were both very sensible, responsible folks and when we met, we fell in love quickly. At the time the progression of our relationship seemed fine to us, but totally freaked out our family. We were married one day before the 6th month anniversary of our first date. Craziness! It was probably only because of our shared histories of being sane, responsible people that our families didn’t have us committed! Looking back, we laugh at it all now. But neither of us have any regrets. Some people are together for 10 years and are never sure if they want to marry the person they are with. We knew after a month. Every relationship is different. Now with 5 years under our belt I think we’ve redeemed our sanity points with our families.

We decided a road trip was in order, so we planned a secret trip to Seattle. While we have both friends and family in Seattle, we wanted to spend some quality time together and to do things on our own agenda, so we snuck away to Portland’s big brother to the north.

We started our road trip in Portland, at the famous NoPo waffle cart, Flavour Spot.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- yum! A large vegan waffle, wrapped around 2 veggie sausages and spread with a delicious maple spread.

Our next stop was in Tacoma at the Bridge of Glass. I have been a Dale Chihuly fan for years, which can seem a bit cliched in this region, as it’s Chihuly’s home base. I love it. He was raised in Tacoma, and was part of the building of a large pedestrian bridge that crosses the highway and attaches to the Glass Museum, decorated with Chihuly’s all the way across.

A section of the bridge. The two large pillars featured huge pieces of the blue-green glass that looked simlar to the beach glass that you find buried in the sand.

A panel of the bridge’s ceiling. One side of the bridge has a full ceiling filled with Chihuly’s Sea Forms, backlit by the sun. This was one of my favorite panels because of a beautiful glass artichoke. I think it’s too small to see it here.

Next we drove to Bremerton, from where you can drive your car onto a ferry and take that to a port in Seattle. It’s a common way to get across for people who commute, rather than going around all of the inlets in the port area. Jim lived in Seattle 10 years ago and this was the way he went to work every morning. It was a fun experience and a beautiful way to enter Seattle (rather than sitting in a traffic jam and grumbling for a couple of hours!)

This was the view from the boat: the Seattle skyline.

By the time we finally got in, we were starving, having only eaten our waffles that morning and splitting a muffin I had baked. We checked into our hotel (we stayed at the Mediterranean Inn in Queen Anne) and cruised over to Teapot Vegetarian House. They are actually an all-vegan Asian cuisine restaurant. Sorry the pictures are so dark!

Satay skewers with peanut dipping sauce. SO good. Their seitan-ish faux meat was marinated in a slightly coconut flavored marinade.

Wontons. I love wontons, but my favorite are cream cheese filled. I doubt I’ll be having those any time in the near future, until I visit Green again in Phoenix, but these were very tasty and filled with a yummy veggie filling.

I had the Chik’n and Broccoli, which is an old stand by for me and this was probably one of the best vegan versions I’ve ever had.

Jim had a veggie and mushroom low mein, which he really enjoyed as well.

The food was great. The prices were a little higher than we would spend on regular dining, but it was an excellent choice for a treat.

This was the view of the Space Needle from the roof of our hotel Saturday night:

The next morning we went to Cafe Flora for their breakfast buffet. Cafe Flora is one of two more upscale places to eat in Seattle, the other being Carmelita’s. Carmelita’s has more of an upscale look, but their vegan options were a big disappointment when Jim and I went and they lived up to a lot of bougie food stereotypes, as well as bad “this is what vegan food is” stereotypes. Thankfully, Cafe Flora is a little more grounded and a lot more vegan-friendly.

We started the meal with tea and coffee and these amazing vegan cinnamon rolls, with a warm maple cinnamon sauce on top and drizzled with the best vanilla icing I’ve ever had. They were stuffed with apples and pecans. Heaven.

I had a mushroom and sweet corn tofu stramble, with fresh dill, roasted potatoes and coffecake on the side. I took a little bit of the dill off, but it was wonderful.

And the winner of the “Most Amazing Meal” in Seattle award was Jim’s scramble- pesto and artichokes, with thick slices of cool heirloom tomatoes on top. It was incredible, I will be ripping this idea off at home and soon! Jim didn’t like living in Seattle, but this scramble was good enough to make him reconsider it.

We also stopped by one location of a local chain of bookstores that I love: Twice Sold Tales. Along with having tales, they also have tails- each store has a couple of in-store cats. It’s fun to walk around and see scratching posts everywhere and chairs covered in cat hair. One kitty, a fat orange tabby, was very happy to see us and we spent a while giving him some love.

While there, I found a book I’ve been wanting to pick up: Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure. It’s a book full of pressure cooker recipes. So far everyone I’ve looked at has been vegan. It’s a spendy book normally, about $30, but I was able to get it for $13 used. Score! With fall in full-swing I’ll be using this often.

The weather was wonderful, sunny and clear, and we couldn’t have asked for a better weekend (well, except for a longer one!) I hope you all had lovely weekends as well!

* A note about Portland- Someone asked in a recent comment if it’s as rainy as everyone says it is in Portland. I get asked this all the time. Here’s the thing- Seattle is really, really rainy, foggy, etc. Portland, while close in terms of region, is different. Yes, we get rain. But it’s not like how people think. In most regions of the country you have rain in spring, sun in summer, rain in fall and snow in winter. In Portland we have rain in spring, a beautiful moderate dry summer (no rain for months, honestly), rain in fall and, because it doesn’t get cold enough for snow, rain in winter. It will snow for a day or so, one time over the course of the winter. But winter time is warmer here, in the 40’s and 50’s, so it’s not snow weather. It’s really no different than other parts of the country, in terms of precipitation, it’s just that the precipitation doesn’t change form. I compared the national weather in Minneapolis (where I grew up) to that of Portland when we moved and Portland has more days of sun per year than Minneapolis. Also, when it rains, it’s not like heavy, falling rain like it is a lot of places. It’s more like some overcast clouds with bouts of misting rain. It’s really not bad at all. I think the association of rain to Seattle, and Portland’s proximity, make people assume the same about here.