As an early Mother’s Day gift, on Friday I took my mom out to dinner at Au Lac, a popular Asian themed vegan restaurant in my area.  They specialize in raw, which is good, but not really my thing.  We got a soy beef steak with asparagus and brown rice, fried tofu with pepper, and kung pao chicken.  I don’t normally eat so much soy, but this was a special occasion

They were out of their awesome choconut xtacy dessert, so we tried a rainbow fruit type thing, and I got an avocado parfait.  It was seriously delicious.

My main reason for taking my mom out to dinner was to get her in the area of a particular Barnes & Noble where there was going to be a book signing by the vegan chef for Ellen DeGeneres.  My mom likes to watch the Ellen show, and earlier in the week he was on there talking about  his new cookbook, Vegan Cooking for Carnivores, that was coming out and I said I would get it for her for mother’s  day.  So when I was going to go to the bookstore to pick it up, I saw he was doing a book signing.  What a coincidence!

It was a lot of fun and the  chef is really nice.  I ended up meeting his wife and son, who were very nice as well.  The cookbook has some incredible recipes, and is now my favorite cookbook….and finally…..a vegan cookbook written by a guy!

Check it out, the recipes are seriously great.  All in all, it was a really nice Friday night.

A coworker has a Bacon avocado tree, and she brings me a few each month.  They are the most delicious avocados I have ever had.

They are large, and the “meat” is a wonderfully creamy, buttery texture and flavor.  My favorite avocado by far.

Yesterday I was feeling under the weather, so instead of going to the Yule celebration with the Pagans of the Dale group, I stayed home and relaxed.  Well…..kinda relaxed.

I took some time to get some much needed cleaning in, and ran a few really short, quick errands.  Molly was a firecracker the whole time.  She was so excited that it was cleaning day and probably the new toys and perch helped with her excitement as well.

She was hopping from one place to another, supervising my activities and providing some correction if I was doing it wrong….

“silly human dis is how u clean, ima show u how iz done”

So….thanks to Molly, I now have a clean computer desk, and Molly has a clean cage and some new toys and a fancy new bendable perch

And the other birds……they just watched with amusement, played with their new toys, and at dinner time they got warm mashed sweet potato with oats, broccoli, kale, veggie pasta, carrots, corn and quinoa.

Kashi with a beak full of sweet potato

They have really good vegan cheesecake.

Just got back from the Internet Librarian conference in Monterey.

It was a fun trip!  Got to eat lots of good food, but unfortunately I forgot to take many pictures.  Here’s one of the potato gnocchi I had on the first night I got into town.

It was delicious!

Took this picture with my good friend, at a rather sad and dark time for the both of us.  We had just lost a friend and we needed to get out and take our mind off things.  I like this picture because it reminds me that even when things aren’t so happy, there can still be good, if bittersweet, memories.

This has nothing to do with the purpose of this blog, aside from the fact that the friend we lost was vegan, but just wanted to make an entry to say that good friends are the best thing in life!

Made this a few weeks ago.  Very tasty!  I have made it before and I have made a post about it before, but it was a few years ago so I figured I could get away with sharing it again.

Yup….very good indeed.

Vegan cooking and black metal….together at last!

For Easter I got the spring Wellington from Native Foods.  It was so good!

I can’t wait for the next holiday to get this!

I ordered a spring wellington from Native Foods for my Easter meal.  It looks delicious, I can’t wait to try it.

While there, I indulged in a vegan cheese cake.  So good!