Last Sunday I got together with a bunch of friends to have my birthday brunch at the Flames Eatery in downtown San Jose. Even though brunch was at 1pm, I was still exhausted from the night before. The night before was the final bout of the season for the Silicon Valley Roller Girls (SVRG, the league that I coach) and it was a double header. The league gave me the best gift I could have asked for; a win for both SVRG teams (bout recap here).

I love the Flames because they have something for everyone. I ordered hashbrowns, tofu scramble with avocado, and a bottomless mimosa! The Flames is known for their mile high cakes but sadly they don’t have any vegan ones. However, the staff of the Flames surprised me with a birthday fruit cup! Everything at brunch was wonderful and I totally had to take a nap when I got home.

Hanford made me a special birthday dessert. He mixed all my favorite desserts together to create the ultimate birthday dessert. He first mixed salted dark chocolate into vanilla Soy Dream ice cream. He then went out and bought some plain vegan cake donuts. Finally he made a Marker’s Mark Bourbon and maple syrup reduction. He then mixed them all together to make a ice cream donut sandwich. Awesome.

Yeah, Halloween is only a couple of days away and I am in full planning mode. My friend Mark is having a killer Halloween party at his house on Friday. It’s probably going to be a smaller party but I still wanted to make something rad as a party favor. Heidi from My Paper Crane posted an excellent blog entry on some party favors that she made for her Halloween party this year. I LOVED the idea and decided to make some candy poison bottles for Mark’s party. I first downloaded some the poison bottle labels that Heidi suggested and then photoshopped fun names into them (ie. “Holt’s ‘Kill All’ Solution”, “Panda’s Pharmacy”, and “Hanford Lemoore, Pharmacist”). I then Mod Podged the labels onto different bottles that I found at Costplus (they were on sale, woo hoo). Finally, I filled the bottles with vegan candy (pictured are bottles filled with regular and Halloween themed Dots).

Also, if you want a current list of vegan Halloween candy then check out this VegNews article (this is the most up to date). Several of Peta’s Halloween candy lists are out of date and list some candy as being vegan when they are not. As a warning, anything candy that lists “Confectioner’s Glaze” should be investigated.

One of my new favorite businesses in San Francisco is Miette Patisserie and Confiserie. I first read about Miette on The Black Apple’s Blog and I knew that I had to make a trip there! Even though I doubted that this cake and candy store had many vegan options, the decor of the place looked too cute to pass up. I dragged Hanford to Miette’s Hayes Valley location (they have multiple locations in San Francisco) last weekend and I was wowed with all the different vegan options. They not only had Go Max Go candy bars (swoon!) but they had lots other vegan candy I have never even seen before!

Crystal, one of the shop girls, helped me find a plethora of vegan candy options. She is also owner of Violet Sweet Shoppe; so she knows her vegan goods! My apologies for the jankie photo of the candy I scored but I took a quick picture so I could start chowing down on my candy. The most odd thing that I purchased was a tie between the dark chocolate “sardines” (sardine shaped dark chocolate) and the licorice dark chocolate lentils (think m&m’s that have a licorice flavor). They both seem alittle odd but they both tasted good!

The candy picture (listed clockwise) is: vegan salt water taffy, vegan gummy stars, dark chocolate “sardines”, handcrafted vegan salted caramel and chocolate, vegan chocolate/caramel/nut bar, vegan chocolate and lavender bar, and the licorice dark chocolate lentils. I highly recommend checking out Miette if you are in San Francisco and want to score some quality candy!

Donna Diggler and I went to the San Fransisco Craft Fair last weekend. This year it was held at Fort Mason in the larger pier pavilion. The pavilion was crammed with tons of talented vendors and I was totally overwhelmed as soon as I stepped foot into the fair. Donna and I scampered from booth to booth finding cute little treasures and handmade wonders. I very much enjoyed Cakespy, The Black Apple, and Twinkie Chan’s booths (I bought Twinkie Chan’s tater tot and pickles pillows). I was disappointed though that there wasn’t any vegan food vendors; like they usually have at the Bazaar Bizarre. We built up quite the appetite running around the fair, so Donna and I went to have Lunch at Weird Fish in the Mission District of San Fransisco. Melisser, the Urban Housewife, met up with us for lunch; which was really rad because we haven’t seen each other in a year (I have been really lame at getting out of the house).

I had previously been to Weird Fish on a date night with Hanford, but it was a nice change going in the afternoon. The restaurant wasn’t crowded at all and we got to super fast service. Hanford and I went on a Friday night and we had to wait over an hour and we ended up being crammed into a pretty small table (moral of the story: go to Weird Fish in the afternoon). Anyways, Donna and I split an appetizer of vegan Buffalo wings (seitan with buffalo sauce and vegan ranch) and I ordered the vegan fish & chips (soy-batter and gluten free seitan with vegan ranch). I have ordered vegan Buffalo wings at many other restaurants but Weird Fish is the only place that I know of that has vegan fish & chips. The idea of vegan fish & chips is totally odd but what do you expect when you go to a restaurant named “Weird Fish”?!?!? Everything was really tasty and I highly recommend ordering the ginger lemonade too!