Monday, October 27, 2008

a day off

What does a vegan girl do on her day off during Mofo?

First she takes a little trip to South Burlington to visit some places she hasn't been in forever even though they are only 5 (or less) miles away.
I managed to blow $100 but it was fun. I went to Barnes & Noble and it was almost like they knew what books I hadn't gotten yet because Borders doesn't have them and I haven't been shopping online. I couldn't get everything of course but they had 5 or 6 books that I would have bought without a second thought. I couldn't really blow tons of cash (ha!) so I went for lower priced ones so I could get 2. You see my logic here? I picked up A Vegan Taste of Thailand and The Artful Vegan. That's pretty good restraint right? Then I walked a little further along to Healthy Living. I haven't been there since they moved to their new location and everyone keeps saying it's really nice, cool stuff, yadda yadda. Ok, they were right. City Market downtown Burlington has a lot of cool stuff but Healthy Living also has some cool stuff. Both places are good as they each have things the other doesn't. I limited myself to things I can't get downtown and of course tried to show a little restraint.
-Vitasoy Holly Nog (they also had Chocolate Peppermint so I'll need to go back for that)
-Unsweetened MimicCream
-Maine Root Sasparilla
-Grapeseed oil Veganaise (lots of people say this one is better and I usually only get the regular kind)
-So Delicious Coconut Milk Yogurt in plain, Strawberry Banana, & Raspberry
-Plain vegan gel (I want to try and make trifle like my husband remembers from home)
-another book The New Now and Zen Epicure (it's like they knew I had been looking at this book for a while or something, bastards!)
-smoked sea salt
-peanut butter filled prezels
-ginger beer (the good stuff, from England)
I feel like I just sent myself a care package, a heavy and expensive one. Healthy Living is definitely trying to woo me. At City Market they have a little cookbook section with veggie, omni and local cookbooks. Vegan books are light and they never have Isa's books there (I've had mixed results in requesting stuff). In Healthy Living there she is, looking out from the cover of Vegan with a Vengeance and look on another shelf and there's Veganomicon peering out over the top of a Moosewood cookbook of some kind. I fixed that by moving the Moosewood book. I stupidly keep looking and see the Zen Epicure book and just had to get it.

Actually the whole reason I went to South Burlington was to check out the mall for our holiday shop I'll be helping to set up in a couple weeks (yes the holidays are actually almost here) and I figured I'm already here may as well spend all my money.

What does she do next?
Reclaims her kitchen!
Before:
After:
Working full time and blogging like crazy can have the effect of letting things get away from you. The dishes were piling up. Lex was helping a little but it just took a good couple of hours of focused attack to clear it up.I am most proud of the rack and shelves. Not that a had a good before picture (maybe you can tell from the old kitchen post) but now all of my spices are organized and together (kinda). The bottom racks are full but tidy and navigable. Books are all straight and nice. Jars all straight and nice. Ah well, I'm liking it anyway. And yes, that's a jar of pickled onions on the floor. My husband is strange. Right next to it is a big ol' bag of shallots. He wants to make pickled shallots which are much better than pickled onions according to him. We need some malt vinegar though and I can't find any anywhere. Anyone have a bunch of malt vinegar they would like to send to me?

12 comments:

Amanda said...

Your kitchen is a very close relative of mine..they look so similar! I love how you have your mason jars out like that (probably because I do too!).

Organization..ahhhh..feels good!

Léna, said...

beautiful parlour!!!
also congrats on posting so many blogs in such quick succession.

Anonymous said...

You can't get malt vinegar in the states?!? Shocking~ I'm not sure I could survive without it.

aTxVegn said...

Great shopping and cleaning!

Virginia said...

everything is so neat and organized! looks like a productive kitchen!

Carrie said...

awesome buys! i love your pantry and spice rack....they look so neat and organized!

Michelle said...

ah, healthy living! i remember that place well! my gradschool office mate would take me with him once every 2 weeks or so! and this was before city market opened (opened RIGHT after we moved!) and so we used to walk to the old north end to the coop!

we just made sushi the other night, and i checked my nori later and saw i bought it at healthy living! ha ha! guess that stuff never goes off!

i love all your legumes and book pictures! i keep meaning to take some and then don't!

Lindsay I-F said...

how is that so delicious coconut milk yogurt? i have been wanted to try it but unfortunately Hunger Mountain is greatly lacking in the vegan non-dairy yogurt dept. and i haven't made it to healthy living for a shopping trip in awhile

Anonymous said...

Beautiful kitchen! I'm so jealous of your awesome clean-up job. Mine will be clean and back to working order soon enough!

Lily Girl said...

Those look like before and after pictures of my kitchen... :)

Amey said...

wow, I'm seriously impressed at your cleaning and re-org. My kitchen is always on the edge of imploding. Although I have gotten better about doing the dishes.

Also, i have Artful Vegan and I really like it. One thing I started doing when I get a new cookbook is to use search.blogger.com to search on the title of the book - then I can see pictures and read about what people have made from it. it's really helpful!

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