Vegan Vegas Vaycay

Ahhh Vegas. The land of crazy happenings. Where Michael Buble gets his food quicker than me and not betting max on a Wizard of Oz slot machine means the difference between winning $500.00 and $353,000.00.

But I'd rather not think about that. Moving right along...

Rob the Husband and I were thrilled to spend Weekend 24.0 in Vegas celebrating the bff's birthday. We knew eating Kind in Vegas was going to be a challenge, as practically all of the nicer restaurants there serve foie gras...even the ones that boast stellar vegan options.

Here comes the foie gras rant...ready...GO!

Foie gras is such an unnecessary, pointless, cruel product. There is just no humane way to force feed a duck with the intention of engorging its liver to ten times the normal size, and I can't fathom why any restaurant would feel the need to have it on their menu as a delicacy. Any talented chef shouldn't need to have such a controversial product blemishing his or her menu.

Rob and I have been boycotting foie gras for years now, avoiding eating at any restaurants that serve it. Unfortunately, it seems as though Every. Friggen. Restaurant. in Vegas serves it.

This was at Julian Serrano at Aria where we stayed. Some good looking vegetarian options on the menu, but come on, foie gras CREAM?

Pointless.

Lucky for us, Wolfgang Puck does not serve foie gras (yay!), and he has restaurants a plenty in Vegas. On our first night there (Friday 24.0), we met up with the bff and her husband at Lupo at Mandalay Bay. Rob had made resos earlier that day while we were waiting in a 90 minute border line up. He had inquired about vegan options when he called, and I guess they made a note of this, because our server was prepared with vegan suggestions that weren't on the menu.

Even the breadsticks guy advised us to stay away from the white bean dip for the breadsticks, as it was made with bacon fat. Lucky for us, the olive tapenade was animal product free, and the breadsticks were just goodtimes.

We have the same picture from her birthday in Whistler the year before.

We like breadsticks.

It was at this point that we realized Rob had left the sd card for our camera at home, so I didn't get a pic of my delicious beet salad (minus the cheese), but borrowed the bff's camera for my delicious pasta pic...

It was a lot prettier when they put it down in front of me before I ate half of it. Not a whole lot of selection when it came to vegan options here, but they were very helpful and knowledgeable and happy to oblige. And this pasta was seriously delicious.

Saturday 24.0

Rob was never a big buffet guy to begin with. He is a grazer, and doesn't eat much in one sitting, so buffets were never a smart option for him. They make even less sense for us now, considering we can't eat the majority of the food they set out, so we had totally written off the idea of buffet dining in Vegas. However, upon checking into Aria we were informed that we had two free buffet breakfast/lunches, and you can't beat free, so we gave it a go. 

The Aria buffet was a bit of a let down in the vegan option department, but like I said, it was free, and you can't beat free. The sushi was nice and the asian noodles were really good. We deliberately came for brunch instead of breakfast, because we knew we'd be screwed for vegan breakfast options. Oatmeal anyone?

This was our first buffet experience since crossing over to the vegan side, and it was hilarious watching people load up their plates with craploads of meat, totally disproportionate to what you would see at a sit down meal, just because they could eat as much of it as they wanted (and meat's the most expensive thing after all, so let's cram as much of it into our systems as we can...screw the salad).

I never used to gorge on meat when it came to buffets, but I'd definitely score an extra piece or two (or five...or eight) of bacon. It's just so weird seeing it now...makes me want to hand out a copy of Skinny Bitch with chapter 4 (The Dead, Rotting, Decomposing Flesh Diet) bookmarked to everyone with half a foot of meat piled up on their plates. Ahhh, the crazy vegan perspective.

We spent a lovely day shopping (hellooo Anthro)...

...went back to our room to soak my sore feet

(oh hello Anthro bag full of sale items)







...and met the bff and her husband J at Craftsteak for her birthday dinner.

Craftsteak is restaurant that I would normally avoid because of the foie gras, but it wasn't my choice and I wasn't going to miss my bff's b-day dinner,

so I saw eating there as an opportunity to be super nice and tip super well and then leave a pleasant suggestion about removing the FG from the menu.




It turned out that I had nothing to worry about, however, as I was very pleasantly surprised upon receiving the menu to see that the foie gras was nowhere to be found.

Now, I don't know whether they took it off temporarily or whether their menu changes seasonally or whether I was just stoopid and couldn't find it, but I was Soooo. Very. Happy. to see that it wasn't on there. Score.

J was especially excited to be at Craftsteak because he was going to be breaking his 6 month meat-free streak. And break the streak he did...but that story deserves a blog post all its own :)

With the arrival of our lovely vegan friend Mags and the pescetarian Aquaman, we ended up with a 1:1 vegan ratio at our table.





Was this carnivorous steakhouse up to the challenge? Indeed they were...

Because the menu here is a la carte, we were prepared going in to just order a few sides and try to make it work, but they offered a vegetarian platter (easy to veganize by eliminating the butter), which put together a sampling of a whole bunch of their sides, allowing more variety on each plate. And it was delicious.

The chef himself came out after our meal to say hello, and he mentioned that they get a ton of requests for the vegetarian platter, explaining that everything on it is selected to provide a range of tastes and textures to keep it interesting. Swell.

The sorbet for dessert was swell too.

We also had sorbet at Lupo the night before...seems like sorbet is the default vegan dessert option of choice for most restaurants. Lovely though it may be, it does get redundant.

All in all, 'twas a swell night. Dinner was lovely, David Copperfield was crazy amazing, Gold Lounge was goodtimes, and gambling into the wee hours of the morning was cut off prematurely by the realization that we had to wake up for church in the morning.

Sunday 24.0

Brunch buffet again...this time at Luxor.

They had a few vegan options...you know...hummus, tabbouleh, baba ganoush...it filled us up.

 I was pleased to see bok choy there. Yay greens.

But now confession time. I effed up. Big.

Worse than cheating with the Millenium Falcon. Worse than my Cali roll faux pas.

I ate meat.

See that brown stuff at 1:00, upper right corner, between the rice and salad? I thought it was bean adobo.

No. It wasn't.

Stupid beef and bean starting with the same letter.

Anyhoo, after a day of watching Lion King and shopping (during which I bought a hairshirt to wear as punishment for accidentally eating the beef adobo...until I realized hairshirts aren't vegan), we met up with our troupe for dinner again, this time at La Cave at Wynn. We knew we wanted to eat at Wynn because of its vegan initiative (yay Steve Wynn going vegan!), but a lot of their restaurants still serve foie gras, so Rob sourced one out that did not have it on the menu, and had a variety of creative vegan options.

The dishes were tapas style, so we ordered a few...

Salt Roasted Beets, Vegan Cheese, Pistachio

Mushroom Tortellini, Arugula, Tomato "Cream" Sauce (soooo good we ended up ordering two)

Fiery Artichoke, Roasted Red Pepper, Olives, Marinara Flatbread

Gardein with Celery Root Puree, Lemon Caper Sauce

Great food. Huge table.

My only complaint about La Cave is their complete lack of vegan desserts. I mean, if you boast a menu with great vegan options, why the hell wouldn't you offer vegan dessert options? Even Lupo and Craftsteak at least had sorbet. This place had Nothing. 

Wynn dining verdict: Huge Win for dinner. Epic Fail for dessert. Would go back in a heartbeat.

Monday 25.0

Our last day in Vegas...yay cabana rental at Liquid! Our own pool and they bring the food and drinks to us...does it get much better? I think no.

My apple and endive salad...subbed out the cheese and subbed in a lemon vinaigrette. Heaven.

Speaking of heaven...

Yah, I could stay here forever.

Alas, 'twas not to be. We had to say farewell to our friends and head on over to the airport (after Rob surprised me with my Stella Falabella), where we got fb updates about their beautiful, classy, amazing dining experience at Sensi, 

...while we too had what I'm sure was an equally classy, amazing dining experience at the airport...

Sensi could easily be one of my favourite restaurants in the universe if if wasn't for the stupid Sonoma Foie Gras on their menu. Because my friends are awesomesauce, beautiful people, they thought of the ducks during their dining experience there and took the opportunity to plant a Kind seed...

Love them :) The ducks love them too.

Our Vegan Vegas Vaycay ended off on a pleasant yet unexpected vegan note. Rob went to get some snacks for the plane, and came back with vegan cookies from a smoothie bar. Go figure.

And they had a nice little message to go with them:

I agree with the cookie wholeheartedly.

My Stella Falabella

I went to Vegas last weekend without a Stella McCartney Falabella Deer Flap Shoulder Bag, and thanks to the Rob the Best. Husband. Ever., I came home with one :)

Yes, Rob the Husband will now go by his new moniker, Rob the Best. Husband. Ever.

Actually, that takes too long to type. Screw it.

The journey to my Stella Falabella was long and frought with peril (ok, not really...unless you look at my current bank statement), and it began many moons ago (more like six months ago, but whatever).

Back in January, when I decided to take steps towards flirting with a kinder lifestyle, one of the things I was struggling with was rationalizing the concept of never eating meat again. Allow me to give you some insight into what my animal product consuming self was thinking at the time:

Limiting meat...sure. Giving it up entirely....insane. After all, I'd be doing this first and foremost for ethical reasons, and I wear leather, so how does it make sense to give up meat if I wear leather and sleep under a down-filled duvet and retire to my study every night to admire my collection of moose heads? 


It's kinda dumb, right? Ergo, so is the idea of giving up meat. 


That settles that.


Unless...


Oh shit. 


Shitshitshitshitshit.


No more wearing animals or sleeping under them or admiring their decapitated heads on my wall. 


Shitshitshitshitshit.


Then my animal product consuming self tried to approach this predicament from another angle...

Leather Is Not Bad. I would never wear fur, of course...fur is just evil. But leather is efficient. It's about not being wasteful. Use the whole cow. Otherwise you'd just throw the skin away and what good would that be? After all, I eat cows, so it doesn't make sense not to wear them.


Unless....


Oh shit.


Shitshitshitshitshitshit.


The whole eating cows thing was a rational justification for wearing them. It was such a natural part of my life and upbringing....I eat them, so what's wrong with wearing them? And of course I want the real leather shoes...much better quality after all. Of course I want the real leather purse...fake just looks cheap.

But it didn't make sense. If I wanted to live a kinder life, I'd have to recognize that it involved more than eliminating certain things from my diet. I'd have to eliminate certain things from my closet and household as well. And that sucked. I'm surrounded by a lot of animal products.

It sucked even more when I had my Petunia Piglet epiphany around Valentines Day and realized that I really didn't want to ever eat meat again. I started feeling a bit guilty about all the stuff in my home (and closet, especially) that came from exploiting an animal.

But then, right on cue (I tell ya, timing has been on my side in this Kind lifestyle shift), I came across something Alicia said: Use what you have, and don't buy any more.

I was totally down with that. I could still strut in my Cole Haan boots, lounge on my leather couch (I'm currently typing this while sitting on my leather kitchen chairs), and wear my ivory tiarra...I just didn't need to buy any more.

I started looking up vegan designers, and was instantly drawn to Matt & Nat and Stella McCartney. I got super excited when a few days after learning about them, I found a Matt & Nat purse at Winners.

Score!

This has become my every day purse, having replaced my go-to leather purses. I am still deciding what I want to do with them. In the aforementioned Alicia post, Alicia states that while she will buy secondhand stuff that has leather in it, she's not comfortable sporting something that screams, "I was a dead animal." I totally get where she's coming from here, as I'm really no longer into wearing my leather jacket or purses.

Yah, I love my Matt & Nat :)

And this brings me to the story of my Stella Falabella.

Stella McCartney, of course, is vegan. For her contemporaries in the high fashion industry, using fur and skins is the norm. Stella is definitely one of the pioneers of her industry, applying a philosophy based on ethics and sustainability to her clothing and accessory lines.

I heart her :)

I was super excited to discover that there was a Stella McCartney store in Vegas, cuz we were going to Vegas for the bff's b-day. AND we were staying at Aria at City Centre, where Crystals was located, where the Stella McCartney store was.

Perfect.

So on Saturday 24.0 Rob and I moseyed into the Stella store, where I was immediately drawn to a gorgeous pair of nude pumps...but I knew I'd get much more use out of a purse, so I moseyed over to the purses and fell in love.

There were SO MANY beautiful bags, large and small. I couldn't pick which one I loved most, which ended up being a non-issue really because even the cute little ones were all beyond my tax bracket. I stuck around and touched and caressed and fondled the bags in what I'm sure was an inappropriate manner, hoping to find an elusive sale sticker or something. Finally, dehydration from drooling set in, and we left the store, saddened that I wouldn't be giving one of the Stella Falabella bags a good home.

Rob and I discussed the possibility of winning a sweet slot machine jackpot before the end of our trip and coming back for a bag, and while we certainly enjoyed our share of ups on the casino floor, on our last night in Vegas we ended up retiring to our room $230 down (boo).

I tried to put Stella out of my head and enjoy our last day in Vegas poolside, and succeeded. It's amazing how a little eating and drinking and swimming and tanning with awesome friends can distract you from thinking about spectacularly gorgeous vegan purses. As we went back to the hotel room later in the day to grab our bags and leave for the airport, I didn't suspect anything when Rob said he needed to run to the gift shop.

I organized our bags and waited in the room for him for about 20 minutes, until finally he showed up with a huge smile on his face holding a bottle of Voss water. I didn't remember the gift shop carrying Voss, so I was a little like, "What the eff? Where'd you get the Voss?"

Then he gave me a kiss and said, "I got it for free. Don't hate me. Go open the door."

So I opened the hotel room door.

Holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit.

There was a tan and brown Stella McCartney shopping bag on the floor right outside the room. Apparently you get a free bottle of Voss when you buy something there.

Holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit.

I couldn't believe it. Seriously, I couldn't believe it.

I freaked out for a few seconds as he took pictures of me making some really unattractive faces while I was opening the bag.

And finally, I was in possession of the MOST GORGEOUS Stella McCartney Falabella Deer Flap Shoulder Bag.

I love this bag.

I love that it's vegan.

I love that it's classy.

I love the contrast of the soft material and chain detailing.

I love that an animal did not have to die for me to enjoy it.

I love that it's made by a designer who is going against the grain of her industry with her commitment to animal and eco-friendly fashion.

I love that my husband picked it out.



I love having Rob on board for this Kind journey. It makes it easier and so much more enjoyable to do it together.



And while he didn't have to buy me the MOST GORGEOUS Stella McCartney Falabella Deer Flap Shoulder Bag to retain his status as the Best. Husband. Ever., I certainly won't hold it against him.

By the way, I was totally kidding about the moose heads and ivory tiara.

Or was I?

Whistler is Awesome

Hayley from the Whistler Vegetarian Society wrote an awesome blog post over at Whistler is Awesome, encouraging Whistler-ites (Whistler-ians?) to take on Meatless Mondays. Whistler seems like a perfect place to embrace this idea...it's full of active, outdoors-y, health-conscious people who seem progressive enough to want to go in the direction of healthy, sustainable eating, and Meatless Mondays are a great place to start.

For the last 15 years or so, my Meatless Mondays have been Flesh-Free-Fridays. I started attempting to abstain from eating meat on Fridays in high school. It's a Catholic thing. When I met Rob the Husband shortly after graduating, he joined me in this Friday fasting. We were never hard core about it...if we were at a friend's place for dinner and they were serving meat, we'd eat it. But if we were eating out at a restaurant with decent meatless options or eating at home, we'd really make the effort to stay away from the meat.

I remember some days it being such a pain in the ass to try to stay away from meat. Coming up with meatless options was painful, especially since Rob didn't like seafood. I really had a hard time thinking outside of what I knew (because meat is the focal point of every dish, of course), and we would end up eating rotini covered in cream of mushroom soup most Fridays, which got really, really boring.

I'd even be reluctant to eat Caesar salad because I didn't want to eat it if I couldn't sprinkle it with a crapload of bacon bits. I'd end up feeling deprived.

I look back on that time and think about how inconvenienced I felt when I couldn't eat meat. I totally get where people are coming from when they are reluctant to participate in Meatless Mondays.

I didn't do it for health-based or ethical or environmental reasons. Mine was a more religious, spiritual motivation...an act of self-sacrifice. But then again, I was completely oblivious to the environmental factors involved. And these factors are HUGE. The information available now is much more accessible and much more compelling, and if people just opened themselves up to that info, the global implications of meat consumption would motivate people to start shifting towards the Plant-Strong route.

It is possible to shift your way of thinking. I think back on my attitude towards food 6 months ago and I am amazed at how little I knew or cared.

The information is there. We have a responsibility to ourselves and our kids and our planet to give a shit.

More power to Whistler if they take Hayley's blog post to heart. Whistler is awesome and Whistler Vegetarian Society is awesome...and they used two of my food pics for the blog post so of course I think that's pretty friggen awesome :)

Awesomeness all around.

Rant: Faux-Meats vs. Faux Meat-Eaters

And now my mini-rant-that-isn't-really-a-rant, entitled, Vegans and Processed Faux-Meat Products and the People who Question Whether We Should Eat Them Because if We're Really Opposed to Meat Why Would We Eat Something That Looks Like Meat or Tries To Resemble Meat and is Still All Processed and Not Super Healthy and Junk.

I've encountered some lovely, well-intentioned people along my vegan odyssey who have questioned the concept of faux meat...you know..."sausages" and "bacon" and ground round and cold cuts and jerky and veggie burgers and "chicken" from companies like Yves and Tofurkey and Gardein. Some people wonder whether it's not just better to eat real meat or cheese instead of the faux meat and dairy substitutes that are processed and probably not super-good for you anyways. Others question why I would want to eat something that looks and kinda tastes like an animal product.

Well...

Processed faux-meats definitely fall into the "once in a while" category. Processed food in general is Alicia's Nasty Food #4 (after meat, dairy, and white sugar). But every so often I'm totally down with throwing some Gardein in the oven and melting some Daiya on a Tofurkey sandwich (ok...maybe I break out the Daiya a bit more frequently than "every so often"...it is soooo gooooood).

Now that I'm moving beyond the "flirting" stage of the vegan life, I try my darndest to mainly eat whole, nutrient-rich, plant based foods on a regular basis: veggies, fruits, grains, beans, etc. (as well as lots of dessert...that part of my life definitely hasn't suffered since my Kind conversion and I have no intention of going hard-core superhero yet).  And in the past six months, I've likely eaten more whole, healthy, plant based foods than I have in the past six years, so regardless, I know I'm winning, even with the occasional processed food indulgence. Maybe even bi-winning...I know the Charlie Sheen wave has long since passed, but ima try to keep riding it just a bit longer because I really love the term bi-winning.

It might just be my next tattoo.  

Like many (if not most) vegans, I'm a convert. I grew up eating meat and dairy, and the vast majority of my meals were created around a meat item. Veggies and grains were always a "side", and if I couldn't finish my meal I was encouraged to at least finish the meat...that's the expensive part, after all, and there are starving children all over the world who never get to eat meat.

And of course my finishing the meat on my plate directly helps them.

Plus, every time you leave meat on your plate, a fairy dies and an angel cries and a kitten goes blind.

It's true. Any Polish parent can attest to that.

Anyhoo, I find that faux meats are a great way to ease into a veggie way of life and make the transition more smooth, as well as keep the status quo for the first few holiday family meals as a vegan (just try eating white borscht at your first Polish Easter as a vegan without Polish sausage...I dare you).

As for the health argument, I'd rather eat a soy sausage that's been processed to hell than ingest a piece of meat laden with antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides, thanks.

In anticipation of the "Yah but there's pesticides in everything including vegetables" argument, I'll just cut and paste the following from VegSource dot com...

Common belief: U.S. Department of Agriculture protects our health through meat inspection
Reality: fewer than 1 out of every 250,000 slaughtered animals is tested for toxic chemical residues
Percentage of U.S. mother's milk containing significant levels of DDT: 99
Percentage of U.S. vegetarian mother's milk containing significant levels of DDT: 8
Contamination of breast milk, due to chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides in animal products, found in meat-eating mothers vs. non-meat eating mothers: 35 times higher
Amount of Dieldrin ingested by the average breast-fed American infant: 9 times the permissible level

Ok, but that's just from factory farmed animals (which do make up the vast majority of animals we eat). What about eating a cow or a chicken or a pig that's been lovingly or at least respectfully raised and treated super-duper well? One that hasn't lived most of its life in horrific cramped conditions never seeing the light of day standing in a foot of its own shit and the shit of its neighbours? One that hasn't been given any of those nasty hormones and whose flesh isn't saturated with all those nasty chemicals? It's not like a Chicken McNugget. Surely we're better off eating a chunk of this naturally raised animal than some processed veggie-food product?

Yah, not really. From our jaw structure to our relatively alkaline saliva and long intestines, we're just not meant to eat meat. We've proven that we can, historically by inventing some kickass weapons, and more recently by industrializing to a state of mass production and appalling conditions beyond a rational person's ability to believe that these are living, sentient beings we are dealing with (but that's a whole other argument). And along the way we have duped ourselves into believing that this is how it's meant to be, that we are meant to eat animals and animal products. We have become faux meat-eaters.

We were given everything we need to survive and thrive in plant-based foods. Progress is great, but it's questionable when it takes us away from the lifestyle and diet for which we are physiologically created.

I'd rather eat faux-meat than be a faux meat-eater. 

Some people question why vegans would want to "pretend" to eat meat, or eat something that looks like and tries to taste like meat and mimic its texture, if we are so averse to the idea of meat. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, simply knowing that an animal was not killed or exploited so I could enjoy my purse or shoes or burger is good enough for me.

I ate meat for 30 years. It doesn't gross me out (even though as the months go on, the thought of it becomes less and less appealing). And really, why should animal products have a monopoly on the sausage shape or burger shape or breaded nugget shape?  Faux-meats are just a funky form of seasoned tofu or veggies or grains, and it all comes right back to the fact that even though they might resemble meat, THEY ARE NOT MEAT. A sentient being with a personality did not have to suffer and die to nourish me. Eating faux-meats does not support the meat industry. So wherein does the problem lie? Nobody eats meats in their naked form anyway...they all need to be seasoned and marinated in order for us to enjoy them, and those seasonings and marinades easily transfer over to the veggie realm. 

So can't we all just get along? Yes, plant-based, nutrient-rich whole foods are of course better for you than Tofurkey pizzas and Tofutti Cuties. I'm glad we got that out of the way. If you're a vegan who doesn't eat faux-meat, awesome! The less processed foods making their way through your system, the better. I might end up there one day.

But to suggest that I'm better off eating the flesh of an animal than a processed faux-meat item? Yah, no. We'll just agree to disagree on that point.

The good news for us faux-meat consumers is that there's plenty to go around, because most meatetarians I know have no problem stating that these faux-meats and cheeses taste like ass, so they won't be partaking any time soon.

It's all good. More for me :)

Mini-rant-that-isn't-really-a-rant over. That's about as good a rant as you'll get from a Canadian, especially one of the passive ones like me.

Happy belated Canada D'eh!

And happy belated Fourth of July to you swell Americans. Thank you for Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo.