Milwaukee!

Milwaukee was so much fun! We called it Diet Chicago, because it was a lot like Chicago, but without a lot of the stress. The street names are the same, the architecture is similar, and it is cold. Driving and parking was easy, and we had very little trouble navigating around. It was great! Milwaukee is also a great place for being a vegan! So much to choose from! Here are some select digital pictures from our trip:

The first place we stopped was Alterra Coffee. It was so cool! It had great vegan choices and a nice atmosphere.

Derek got this breakfast sandwich.

I got this baked oatmeal. It was so good!

Alterra on the Lake used to be a water treating facility, but now it is a really rad coffee shop. We were trying to show how deep the floor was.

This was our tour of the Lakefront Brewery. It was kind of lame, but we had fun. Beer tastes pretty gross to me, but I didn't tell them that.

From the hotel

The Palomino--the best vegan bar food everrrrrr.

Milwaukee (out of order)

Barbecued seitan and tots at the Palomino. Totally vegan!

Rib sandwich and mashed potatoes. Vegan again.

The Milwaukee Public Museum. We saw the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was alright. The best thing about the museum was the butterfly room!

This eagle landed on Derek.

I met this cat named Scraps. She really reminded me of Gran. Also she reminded me of Bailey and Kirby if they fused into one cat.

At the Comet Cafe, we had a lovely vegan brunch. This was mine- vegan biscuits and gravy with a tofu scramble and hash browns. It was so good!

Derek's Vegan Benedict. It was just like mine, except there was a little vegan sausage on top. It was also very good.

Derek checking out the assortment of Wisconsin cheese. Although I was a dedicated vegan during the trip, we got some cool cheese slices to take home and make sandwiches.

Another shot of the indoor market.

It was a very nice, interesting, and relaxing weekend. We had a great time and I would like to go back.

Stuff

It feels like 400 things have happened in the blink of an eye. I'm doing a lot of stuff and in a little bit of time. I work around 32 hours per week at Starbucks, and I am realizing how tiresome that is. It is still a great place to work and I love my coworkers, but I am getting ready to open my own place. I am learning a lot and I think that I will come away from this experience with a lot of new knowledge and an appreciation of a slower-paced life.

In an attempt to clean up the floor where there were still boxes full of books, I decided to make a bookcase. Craigslist was not supplying me with a bookcase that I liked, so two Sundays ago, I dragged Derek to Home Depot to design a bookcase with me on the spot and purchase all the stuff we needed.

Here is the bookcase in mid-assembly

TA-DA! The beautiful finished product. We are very proud of it.

My friends came to visit! Here we are in Grant Park. This is the only picture I took on my digital camera of the group. It was as if we said, "Okay, group picture! Cancers wear yellow and get on the ends and act goofy!" Marie and I do things alike a lot.

At the Earwax Cafe, the ladies and I indulged in some local hand-crafted sodas. Mine is the ginger ale. It was good, but not as good as Oogave's ginger ale.

I think it was the Saturday after they left, I made Derek his favorite breakfast food, which is French Toast. Well, he likes chilaquiles a lot, too. But we'll call this his favorite just for fun. Anyway, it is cranberry walnut bread from Whole Foods with a vegan batter and baked cinnamon apples with a fruit salad. Vegan and delicious!

As I write this, Erika is learning how to play the bass. She is already so good at it! We're gearing up for this migration to Nashville, where we won't have a bass player. Erika could easily become our bass player. She is natural at it and she wants to learn, so she's on her way. Karyn came with a drum, and I'm listening to them jam.

This weekend we're going to Milwaukee, and I'm excited about all the vegan food we're going to eat! We're going to see the Dead Sea Scroll, go to the brewery, maybe see a play, and definitely eat vegan. I've found a bunch of places online and I'm stalking their menus already. I can't wait to go here http://www.thecometcafe.com/COMETmenus.html ! I want the vegan gyro or the vegan BLT. I've saved up my tips for a couple of weeks for this weekend, and I'm very much looking forward to going. I talk about food so much. Derek thinks that I am a foodie, but I shun the term. I don't know why. There is nothing wrong with being a foodie. I just don't want to be one.

I'm going to get to bed soon. I got up at 3:30 this morning for work, and although I napped a little this afternoon, I am still sleepy. I'll be getting up at 6:30 tomorrow, so I want to get enough sleep to sustain me through an 8 hour work day on my feet. I'll update again after Milwaukee!

Not many pictures

This post has the potential to be pretty lame. I have had my camera with me nonstop, but I can't seem to remember to take pictures of anything.

This weekend, we went to Decatur. The car ride was really fun with Derek, Erika, and Jeph all in the car. We ate lunch with their grandparents in Mattoon, IL at Cracker Barrel. I have only eaten in Mattoon twice, but both times, I have ordered a seemingly vegetarian meal at a restaurant and I have gotten meat. His grandparents must think I am extremely high maintenance. But seriously, who puts ham chunks in lima beans? Either way, we had a good time.

Later that night, we all went to see a movie. Chloe, Jeph, and Erika went to see Alice in Wonderland, but Derek and I don't want to see the movie. They all left disenchanted. Derek and I saw Shutter Island, which was pretty good. It actually has been a hot topic of discussion between us since we saw it, and we keep realizing how good the movie really was. We want to see it again so that we can watch it through while knowing the ending. We think there is a lot more to the movie than we realized the first time.

This is Chloe, Derek's mom's dog. This is not the same Chloe as the other Chloe, who is human, a Leo, a singer for Little Sisters, Jeph's girlfriend, and a new vegan. She is awesome. So is the dog.

Speaking of the human Chloe being a new vegan, we decided to cook for the Porter clan. She is very on top of her veganism and has done a lot of research. The physical benefits have already pleased her, and she is very enthusiastic. We made vegan lasagna, garlic bread, and dessert. I didn't get a picture until we had already devoured part of the lasagna, but here it is anyway. We cooked for all three Porter kids and their mom.

The tofu spinach lasagna tasted much better than it looks in this picture. The room was dark and my flash made the lasagna look too shiny. It was delicious, though!

This was the dessert. I whipped up a baked apple mixture and we served it with vanilla Rice Cream.

Last night, Derek and I went to Handlebar in Chicago. It is a bar that only has pescatarian food. That means that they don't serve meat except for fish. Oh, here is some information: vegetarians do not eat fish. Pescatarians eat fish, but no meat. IF SOMEONE SAYS HE OR SHE IS A VEGETARIAN AND HE OR SHE EATS FISH, THAT PERSON IS NOT A VEGETARIAN. That person is a pescatarian. It is offensive to vegetarians when people are so unclear.

So anyway, we got vegan barbecued seitan sandwiches. They were enormous! I mean, it was definitely a challenge to eat them!

This picture barely does justice to how huge the sandwich was. When I put it in a to-go box, it looked like I hadn't even eaten any of it. I just ate off one of the top corners of the bread, and I was done. We will have these again for dinner tonight.

That's all I have right now. I have to go to work now. Georgia, Marie, Lydia, and Jerrica are coming on Monday and I am ecstatic!!

Mo' pictures

Where did I leave off? I guess it was before the bachelorette party and after Lady Parts. Well, I went to the bachelorette party and had my first experience singing karaoke alone. I'd done it before in France (Total Eclipse of the Heart and Don't Stop Me Now with Rosie and Derek!) but this was my first solo experience. I sang Lola by the Kinks, and although Blair told me that she couldn't hear me at all, Jessie seemed happy that I sang her a song about a transvestite at her party. I didn't stay very long at the karaoke bar and I got home at a very reasonable hour.

My friend Maria, who I met at Second City (but she is also from AL) came to the Piercing Music show last week and she took a few pictures. I'm stealing them from facebook.

The end of Wrecking Ball

The whole band!

Saturday, Derek and I went to a cafe for breakfast. We are going to start doing that on Saturdays. Breakfast usually isn't a terribly expensive meal, and we want to check out as many independent cafes in Chicago as we can before we move. This week we found one that was very Mexican themed, so the breakfasts were bean-heavy and pretty spicy. We talked about opening the cafe/space in Nashville and got very excited. Derek went to Josh's bachelor party later that day and I cooked for my friends from work to come over.

I was cutting up veggies for vegan nachos, and Moose wanted to model the cilantro.

About to make guacamole!

The mountainous vegan nachos. I was stupid and didn't take any pictures of my guests.

A couple of nights later, I made Happy Herbivore's Soy-Free Mac & Cheese. I didn't make it soy free, though. I don't need things to be soy free. Anyway, maybe it's because I don't eat a strict vegan diet, but things that try to mock cheese just annoy me. It tasted empty. I added some Earth Balance margarine, some Liquid Smoke, more garlic, and more soy milk. It still wasn't doing it for me, so I dumped some parmesan crumbles in it. Vegan no more. But I could eat it, so that was good.

Last night I had several friends from Second City come over for a vegan French dinner. It was so much work getting all of the food prepared, but it was fine because I didn't have work yesterday. Here is my spinach tofu quiche. I was pleased with how it turned out. My friends brought bread and wine and Derek got us some brie and camembert cheese. That part wasn't vegan, but I don't even want to play around with a French dinner without brie or camembert. Puh-lease.

The thing about actors is that when you turn a camera on them, they get silly. Here is Maria looking very silly and Katie looking very mad.

Carissa, Emily, and Rachael

A few people couldn't make it, and I was sad that Derek didn't get to meet them, but it turned out to be a very reasonable number of guests at the table. I made too much food, but that'll feed me for the rest of the week. We had a great time. I think I'm going to take a break from cooking for the next few days, though. Too much going on and too much money already spent on groceries! I'll clean up what I already have here.

I am working for the rest of the week and then on Saturday morning, Derek, Jeph, Erika, Emily, (not the one pictured above) and I are going to Decatur to visit their parents and grandparents. I still have some Christmas presents for Derek's parents, so it'll be nice to finally give them to them. I want to look for a smallish vintage bookcase for all of my books, which are still in boxes in the corner. I think I may end up making a bookcase and painting it myself. When I have time, which won't be anytime soon.

My Pentax camera has been in the shop for 8 weeks now, even though they told me it would only take 3-5. I called yesterday and they said they are still looking for a part, but I want my camera back before the end of this month. We are going to Milwaukee and I want to take cool pictures.

I guess that's it.