Turns out I still haven’t been everywhere in Seattle there is to be. I don’t know why this surprises me; I still haven’t been everywhere in Portland there is to be, and I live here almost all the time.

This last trip north was (yet again) with my Vida Vegan partners, Jess and Janessa, to scout locations for an event. In between looking at way sexy locations and not so sexy locations, we ate things and drank things and looked at yet other things.

That’s a Bloody Mary next to a photo on my phone of the very same Bloody Mary. I was pretty excited.

Our first night we grabbed some food at Highline, a vegan bar with a photobooth. It’s not fancy. The bartender told me so. He told me how not fancy the place was when I attempted to order the garlic toast I saw all over the friggin’ menu (like salads and entrees served with garlic toast). “Oh, no, we don’t have garlic toast. We’re not fancy or anything. It’s just a bar.” But it says garlic toast. “No, no, we’re not that fancy.” But it’s all over the menu. “No, we’re really just a bar.” I was not going to convince him that he had garlic toast.

So I got this sandwich made out of pretty buttery toast (all it would take was some motherloving garlic powder and it’d be garlic toast!) and teeny breaded soy patties. Not exciting, but it did the trick. Know what else did the trick? My first Bloody Mary ever! It was garlicky and basily and tomatoey and fantastic. Other not-fancy eats were Jess’s fried pickles (surprisingly delightful but I could only eat a few), and the sandwich that put Janessa off the Daiya for a while, a fakey tuna melt.

The photobooth was also a letdown. Then again, Michele in any photobooth is a letdown.

The next morning we hit Herkimer for coffee and Mighty-O doughnuts. Yum and mee. Bonus, they had bags of espresso there that was ground wrong for their machines so it was super cheap! Still worked in my machine just fine.

I cannot tell you how much restraint it took to not eat this for breakfast instead. Onions and poppy seeds, the ultimate combination! I’ll get you next time…if you’re vegan. No, I couldn’t ask if it was or not, because then I wouldn’t have an excuse to walk away.

We were just down the street from Sidecar for Pigs Peace. Not that we aren’t blessed with our own vegan grocery store or anything, but Sidecar is somehow exotic and exciting. Maybe it’s the sales tax. I bought some Biscoff spread and blue nail polish (is there any other color?) and a tiny Field Roast cheese ball for a friend, and I cursed myself for not having a cooler. I would have bought so much more, including square Tofutti pizzas that probably aren’t that great but they’re square, breaded Field Roast pieces, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t get down here.

We needed a quick nosh before our meeting at the Library, so we made our way to Bang Bang, where the star of the show was Jess’s mac-n-cheese. I had a bagel with just enough plain Tofutti on it to prevent a war, not enough to make me smile. I don’t know why I prefer heavy cream cheese on my bagel; I mean, I’m against most condiments, but there’s something about a schmeary bagel that is so, so satisfying to me. I shook it off, enjoyed the hell out of my iced coffee, and prepared myself for the open-air harassment on the walk back to Pike Place. (Jess has walked this walk many times and said it’s gotten better. Hard to believe, but okay.)

Before our dinner date, we needed a place to sit and gush about how much we love the Seattle Public Library. Look at this thing. This is a public building, where homeless folk can pee and three blogger-dorks from Portland can host a tech seminar. (What? More info to come soon!)

So on to Bimbo’s. The whole reason we went there was for the photobooth in the separate bar in the basement, and it didn’t open until later so we got ourselves a bucket of chips and ordered some drinks. I asked about the Bloody Mary mix, which was sadly not vegan, but the bartender said she could come up with something from scratch. Love it. It was spicy and well-rounded and refreshing, and it was fish-free! When the bar with the photobooth finally opened we ran down, got our photos snapped (they turned out better than Highline’s), and crossed our fingers that my car had not outstayed its prepaid parking welcome. (Missed it by about 10 minutes, but no ticket!)

Meeting us for dinner at Teapot was Vegan Moxie’s Dawn and VeganScore’s Anika, both superfantastiche ladies. We talked events, causes, food—you know, veganlady chitchat. And we ate. And that’s what I’ll leave you with, the food. I don’t remember what all we ordered, but here are a few dishes. For the most part, whatever you order will be grand. It’s not fancy (in a different way than the Highline isn’t fancy), but the people are nice, the atmosphere is delightfully quirky, and you’ll fill your belly but good. The perfect pitstop on your way back to Portland from Canada—or the other way around, I suppose.

APRIL
Sunday, 4/22: The Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale: Portland Edition
11am-4pm at Mississippi Marketplace
Vegan bakers from all over Portland are coming together to raise money for Portland Animal Welfare, Friends of Trees, and Team Rubicon’s tornado disaster relief project. Buying a cupcake never did so much good.

Sunday, 4/22: Vida Vegan & BridgePort Exquisite Beer Dinner
6pm at BridgePort Brewpub
The BridgePort chefs are putting together a 4-courser for us. 10% of the ticket sales go to Merciful Maiden Critter Haven, and everyone goes home with a little goodie bag. Order your tickets now or you will miss out.

MAY
Saturday, 5/12: Vegan Convergence 3.0
1pm-5pm at Colonel Summers Park
It’s a giant potluck. Seriously, a giant potluck in the park. Get some sun and eat some mystery salad with some kind of grain!

JUNE
Saturday, 6/16: Vegan Iron Chef: Scrambletown
2pm-4:30pm at the Dining Room at Taborspace
Open amateur/pro competition to see who’s got the best scramble in town. Spectators get to sample the scrambles. If we learned anything from the last open competition (Operation HotDish), this thing will sell out super fast. Check out VeganIronChef.org.

Saturday, 6/23: Race for the Animals
8am in Lower MacLeay Park
Fundraising run/walk 5K or 10K. I volunteered for the first one a few years ago and it was crazy packed. I can only imagine the crowd has gotten bigger. Register today, and I’ll see you there (in what capacity I have no idea).

I betcha Mr. Yuk hates vinegar too.

Let me begin by saying I have a friend who drinks pickle juice and we get along just fine. Don’t confuse my lack of love for a thing with a lack of love for the people who do love said thing.

Vinegar is what you use to clean mirrors and copper and lady parts*—not for eating! I know I’m not alone in my belief that it just tastes like a preservative and that can’t be good. Unfortunately, because of my tied-to-the-spinal-cord hatred of vinegar, pickles are tricky.

I love the idea of a pickle. Spicy, garlicky, crunchy—these are some of my favorite things. But those fantastic foodtraits are almost always holding hands with that extra “Who put bile in my sandwich?” flavor. Even the fancy ones gross me out; we’re just going to pretend the non-refrigerated, neon-green, wilty fellas don’t exist.

Luckily, because Tom will eat just about anything, I’ve been willing to try a few new brands, and not one but TWO have won me over. Ladies and gentlemen and everything in between and outside of that, let me introduce to you two perfect pickles:

Bubbie’s

There’s no vinegar. No vinegar? No vinegar. The secret’s in the brine, folks. The slogan on the lid: “It’s the cloudy brine that makes it ‘Bubbies,’” and it is cloudy. In the murky depths of this jar comes a bright, zesty, crunchy gem. Also, I can get them at pretty much any grocery store around. Bonus: These jars are also the perfect instant canisters. Why? No vinegar! Zero pickle smell, even in the lid.

MoonBrine

This is a brand-new one for me, and it’s the one that prompted me to share my thoughts on pickles with you. It is vinegar based, but maybe because it’s so jam-packed with H-O-T that I don’t notice it. They’re small-batch pickles from a company that’s just up and moved from Boston to Portland. (Welcome!) It’s a pricey jar, but these guys are so flavorful that Tom and I can each use half of one on a sandwich. I’m not about to drink the juice, but MoonBrine suggests keeping the brine when your pickles are gone, to use in marinades, dressings, and cocktails. Sounds pretty smart.

So there you have it, two pickles I super love, not that you asked.

*Disclaimer: I don’t use vinegar on my lady parts, but if I did it’d be none of your beeswax.

I love that this is our middle-of-the-week, no-time-to-cook, don’t-care pasta dish. It takes about as much time and effort as that spaghetti with Ragu you just might have grown up with.

Step One: Empty contents of this jar into a skillet. Add chopped-up kale and extra garlic if you feel like getting a little fancy.

Step Two: Open freezer to extract packaged gnocchi from the sea of apple halves (for future breads-n-cakes), burritos, and Gardein products. After cutting package open, dump contents into boiling water for a few minutes. As for the gnocchi, I really like this Rising Moon Organics frozen stuff. It can be pricey, but I try to pick up a few when it’s on sale—it’s frozen, so you don’t have to worry about it. I’ve had bad luck with the packaged, shelf-stable gnocchi, but it could be me. Gnocchi’s tough, you know?

Step Three: Toss gnocchi in sauce. Split into two bowls and cover with nooch. Then catch up on laundry or whathaveyou.

It’s been a couple of months, and my adopted teal kitties are getting along just fine with the old housekitty. I really wasn’t worried.

I hate to assume everyone’s already heard about The Teal Cat Project, so I’m gonna talk atcha, and you can choose to listen or not. Basically, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and friends collect unwanted cat tchotchkes, give them a pretty coat, then adopt them out to new homes, donating the cash to organizations that help real, live kitties.

Chance are, if you go to the site right now (whenever that is—hey there, the future!), the kitties will be all gone. When the folks at Teal Cat HQ get a litter together, they go fast. My advice to you is to follow them on Twitter or Facebook so you can snatch one of these sweeties before everyone else.

You can help in other ways. You could buy a t-shirt (they run small, so size up unless you got it and want to flaunt it), just straight-up donate some cash, or pick up whatever crafty items they currently have. Art prints, plushies, note cards made with so much love! Or…

Buy some chocolate! Right now, Lagusta’s Luscious is selling these toffee tabbies, donating 50% of the price to Teal Cat. And yes, I do happen to be in the middle of rounding out my order. (Shipping’s like 10 bucks, so I plan to make it worth my while.)

Can you donate a kitty? Absolutely. The Teal Cat Project wouldn’t be what it is without donated tchotchkes. They’ve got some guidelines, like no new dollar-store or valuable kitties. If you find one at a garage sale or thrift store for under $5, perfect. Kitties you’ve had since before you can remember (like my sweet little Snowball in the opening photo) should stay with you—they’ve already got their forever homes.

I’ll leave you with one last piece of advice: If you really want a kitty but can’t afford it, post a link on your mom’s Facebook page with a comment like, “Boy, I sure would love to help out this group by buying a kitty,” or “Sure, you SAY you love me, but…” Works like a charm. (I love you, Mom, and would never ever dream of manipulating you unless it’s for a really good cause!)