Erewhon Valentine’s Day Adventure! February 19, 2010

On Valentines Day I was taken on a super exciting adventure to what could just be THE ultimate grocery store.

Erewhon

Erewhon is located in the West Hollywood area of LA, and boasts a wealth of delicious, nutritious vegan, raw, gluten-free, low-sodium etc and organic produce, sandwiches, meals, pet food, vitamins/ supplements, superfoods, beauty products and speciality items. For the meat eaters, they stock organic/ free-range/ hormone-free etc meats which are certainly better for your health and the planet’s/ and to a degree the animals, though being a vegan (for ethical as well as health and environmental reasons) nI obviously don’t consume meat but it’s nice to know that if they’re going to have it, it’s at least nit your usual factory-farmed, antibiotic-fed kind.

Erewhon also features an impressive smoothie/juice bar, everything of which I read on the menu I of course wanted to try immediately, but alas didn’t as we were on a tight schedule of errands and exciting bits and pieces, including an interview with Brendan Brazier, professional athlete and author of the excellent, excellent Thrive: The Vegan nutrition Guide,  for RawOnTour later in the day, but more on that in another post!

Here’s a few of the sights along the way followed by, of course, the delicacies we decided upon for the day:

Cacao butter by ELF foods. Yum. I had to take a picture of this, because recently when I was in Anaheim for the NAMM show I was introduced to the bass-player who played for this singer whom I just met. The band were all from Texas. Part of my introduction was something along the lines of “This is Pandie, she’s from New Zealand. Make her say the word ‘Texas’.”

The bass-player looked at me for a moment and then (before trying to make me say Texas over and over) asked, in all sincerity, “Oh, are you an elf?”

Lately it appears that Peter Jackon’s Lord of The Rings Trilogy has been following me everywhere and whatever I do I simply cannot escape! So of course in the grocery store is no exception!

Lucuma Powder, a great mineral-rich alternative sweetener

Kelp and dulse, mm delicious seaweed!!!

Trailmixes and various sea salts

And hemp seeds, simply delicious in everything, a staple of my diet, hemp is absolutely fabulous. Brendan Brazier talks about why hemp is so great for us in my interview with him coming very soon.

Now on to the lunch!

The sandwiches to start:

Avocado Sandwich on gluten-free bread with veganaise and a side of coleslaw

While I’ll save going into detail about the whole gluten-free/ wheat-free/ allergy/ intolerance type thing for a later and more intensiv post, I can’t eat foods that contain wheat or I’ll get incredibly, incredibly sick. This means of course, nothing with white flour in it such as most traditional breads, cakes, cookies, pizzas, pastas and more. Therefore even though I enjoy eating as close to 100% raw most days as I can, when a place offers sandwiches made with gluten-free bread…well I am all over it!

It was super delicious in there with all kinds of avocado, greens, tomato, carrots, sprouts, and as mentioned above, the veganaise. Veganaise, if you’ve never had it, is a vegan version of mayonnaise. It’s pretty damn good. I had to ask for the veganaise, so be sure to talk to them about it if you go there and are vegan, because otherwise you may end up with the real deal mayo and that tasty lunch will be ruined!

Yum!

Also in case you were wondering the coleslaw contained no dairy or egg products either, just some good old olive oil. Thanks Erewhon!

What he ate:

Now my Valentine is not really an actual vegan, he’s just mostly a good sport who eats little to no meat but for a bit of fish, and is not too fussed about the whole dairy/egg issue but tries to keep it healthy, so he got the same thing as me, the avocado sandwich but on sourdough bread (which contains wheat/gluten and probably some dairy) and with mayo, a great option for a non-vegan/vegetarian that’s still super tasty and full of greens!

The drinks:

Zola Acai: We saw these things in the big cooler fulllll to the brim of water of a thousand different kinds and juices, smoothies and infusions galore. For some reason, amongst all the others, these ones called our names. And they were pretty tasty too.

Mountain Valley Spring water (mine)

Mountain Valley Sparkling Water (his)

Our selection of raw choc/energy bars (don’t worry, even raw Vegans get to enjoy Valentines day chocolate!) I actually ate the I am Strong bar before/ after my workout the day after and wow it produced tremendous results with regards to my energy and performance. I had a couple bites 40 mins before, and the rest 20 mns after. The taste is quite spicy which I wasn’t expecting but I would definitely get it again. The One bar was a delicious raw vegan dark choc, and I don’t believe I tried the Indigo nights bar myself, but the Gnosis power choc…

This stuff was great! It was full of things like hemp,  maca,  goji berries and the key ingredient: love! It’s amazing to try a chocolate that’s actually good for you and makes you feel fantastic, wow! Its taste is more on the darker choc side than say a milk choc flavour so it has a little bitter hint to its sweetness, but I rather like that. Mmm!

Such a great adventure, and that was only the first half of the day, fear not I shall be updating you on the delicious dinner I had next very, very soon. Tonight I am heading up towards San Francisco for the weekend. I can’t wait to see what exciting sights, and sounds, and sweet feeds will be found there to feast upon!

Vegan Dinner Feast from Wholefoods! February 4, 2010

As I mentioned below, I freaking LOVE Wholefoods Market! There are just so many good things for a Vegan, and a mostly raw one at that, like myself to choose from! I literally want to eat almost everything in the store. In fact I have a hardtime making the decision of what exactly to select. Luckily for myself and others suffering from this terrible, terrible condition of “can’t pick just one thing it all looks soo good!” there is a dream solution.

The salad bar!

Wholefoods have a fantastic salad bar and hot food bar, with all sorts of soups and tofu dishes and curries and greens, and grains and..and..and… Oh God it’s making my mouth water just thinking about it! So you can have your (hopefully vegan) cake and eat it too, you can get a box and shove all kinds of different things in there to feast upon later! And not only that…as I discovered last night, on Wednesdays at this particular Wholefoods in West Hollywood (I’m not sure if this would pertain to all Wholefoods in the area/world? I’ll have to look into it), they have a deal. Yes there’s a sale on salad! Amazing! You can eat on the cheap and still be healthy! (something that had just been suggested to me as a good blog topic to take on- thanks for the tip!) Both the salad bar and hot food bar are going for $5.99 per lb! As opposed to $5.99 for some stuff and $7.99 for other stuff. You can go ahead and mix and match to your heart’s content!

And so mix and match I did 😉

Taking full advantage of this sweet salad sale and hot meal deal I threw all sorts of rices and tofu curries, dhals, hummus, arugula, greens, cucumber, tomatoes, and other tasty bits and pieces to come up with this:

The ultimate Vegan Dinner Feast:

It’s a veritable sampler of all things good and vegan!

Of course after all that deliciousness, my dinner date and I had to, of course, finish off our meal with something delicious…or should I say… some things! Below we have some water from home! (yes that’s Eternal water from New Zealand, so good and such a sexy bottle with beautiful koru designs on the side!), a banana, an orange, a great delectable mess of berries – strawberries, blueberries, rapsberries, blackberries – everything!, and the piece de resistance – a raw mint cacao ganache from Cru,  Silverlake (purchased at Wholefoods though – this restaurant itself is fantastic, I will be sure to blog all about it’s awesomeness soon!). Too good! There’s also some olives in there too which were incredibly tasty though not quite for dessert.

This cake is so good that you would swear i was deadly. It is rich and tasty and oh so chocolatey! But what’s even more killer is the fact that is completely 100% raw and vegan! It’s actually good for you! No dairy, no wheat, no refined sugar, no hydrogenated oil, all organic ingredients – and yet it tastes almost better than the “real” thing!!!

Oh Cru, how I love you!

Mandarines, Raw Cacao Butter and more at Wholefoods Market!

One thing that you must know about me is that I love Grocery Store Adventures. Yes I know that may sound a little strange, but a trip to the grocery store, any grocery store no matter where or which one is always full of exciting discoveries. I love to explore those aisles and see what kind of weird foods I can come up with to find out about or incorporate in my next taste sensation.

Now, the creme de la creme of grocery stores, for myself at least, has got to be the one and only Whole Foods Markets chain. Visiting Wholefoods is like a first trip to Disneyland when you’re 10 years old – only better. I walk in there and literally want to buy everything! Tonight when I stepped in there to purchase some delicious feeds for dinner I saw this cute little fish box full of mandarins and was mesmerized. It’s cute fruit for sure.

And then in the “raw foods” section of wholefoods (yes they have one of those, I’m so excited!) i discovered they now stock raw cacao butter which I’d never seen in stores before, yum!! Imagine the magic you could make with that stuff! More tales to follow of my West Hollywood Wholefoods grocery store adventure !