Top 12 Eats in San Francisco and Sausalito

For anyone who knows me, it's no secret that I LOVE food! Over my five weeks in San Francisco and Sausalito, I ate a lot of yummy foods! Here are my top 12!

1. The Plant Cafe California Veggie Burger
I am constantly in search of the best veggie burger, and I found it here! So much deliciousness, with patty made from organic lentils, beets, mushrooms, cashews and bulgur, topped with avocado, grilled onion, tomato and white cheddar cheese!
 
I got it twice, and both times were amazing!! I am definitely going to try to recreate this one!

2. Good Earth Pizza
The slices of pizza from Good Earth Natural Foods Store (picture the next step up from Whole Foods in terms of environmental impact), were always soo delicious! It was always tempting to pick up a slice when we stopped by!

This was called "Medicinal Mushroom", and was vegan, gluten-free, and Ashley's absolute favorite, so I had to try it! It was good!

This one was my absolute favorite, and I loved the amount of veggies!

3. The Plant Cafe Dino Kale Salad
Other than homemade kale chips, I had never been a huge fan of kale, despite it's superfood qualities. However, this salad changed my mind! The flavors were amazing together, with the red quinoa, toasted almonds, avocado, arugula, cherry tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, and tossed in a lemon-cumin vinaigrette! I hope to attempt to recreate my own version of this salad!

4. Sol Food Veggie Deluxe Sandwich
I had this yummy sandwich two ways, both with bread, and one time with tostones, or fried plantains, instead of bread. It was topped with avocado (notice a trend? haha), roasted red pepper, white cheddar cheese, tomato, and a chipotle lime mayo. Here it is pictured with the tostones.

5. Straus Creamery Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

As I am on the search for the perfect veggie burger, I have been on a quest to find the best vanilla ice cream ever as well! This organic, local dairy is incredible, and I ate lots of their yummy products throughout the summer! I also enjoyed topping it with fruit from the farmer's market, 

I even tried topping it with olive oil and himalayan salt (I'm not trying to sound fancy, this is just a pink salt that the person we lived with had in her house), and that was a really cool flavor combination!

6. Farmer's Market produce

While this is general, I loved our weekly visit to the farmer's market in Mill Valley. This picture is from the first week, when I bought the most!

7. Homemade Stovetop Popcorn with Coconut Oil
Prior to this summer, I hadn't made stovetop popcorn, but it was really fun! We used mixed colored corn kernals from the bulk section of Good Earth, and used some of Dr. Bronner's Coconut Oil to cook them in, which gave it a mild coconut flavor!

8. The Plant Cafe Lemon-Blackberry Cupcake
This cupcake was a wonderful surprise! When I saw that the flavor was lemon-blueberry, I didn't know it would be filled! The buttercream frosting itself was incredible!

9. Hemp Pancakes and smoothies!
Following my discovery of hemp, I bought some vanilla hemp milk to make hemp milk pancakes! They were very yummy! Also, I loved making smoothies every morning, and it's something I hope to continue in the future!

10. Good Earth Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookies

11. Whole Foods Vegan Donut
This was a fun discovery on my second to last day in San Fran! I had been craving donuts earlier (well, really craving all sweets haha), and this donut really delivered! I'm always impressed when vegan treats taste no different than their conventional counterparts.

12. Bi-Rite Ice Cream
When my family visited me and while my sister attended a fashion camp in San Francisco, we indulged in this wonderful ice cream and I had a hot fudge sundae with a scoop of lavender-vanilla and a scoop of brown sugar ice cream with a ginger caramel swirl, in honor of my boyfriend's love of brown sugar!

12. Salads!
While my salads never looked this beautiful (I took a picture of Ashley's), I actually really enjoyed making salads, especially with farmer's market heirloom tomatoes, avocado, carrot, shredded white cheddar cheese, and olive oil!

Yum! That was a fun post to write! I think I might love taking pictures of food a little bit too much :)
As always, thanks for reading! Enjoy your day!

Easy Butternut Squash Soup

On cold winter days, I always find myself craving warm and yummy food, so a butternut squash soup was a great decision for some wholesome food to warm up with! This recipe wasn't really modeled after anything, and basically used what we had on hand in the kitchen, but it is very healthy and simple to make. It is also more of a savory soup that a sweeter soup, since I used flavors such as onion and garlic instead of cinnamon, etc. Also, this soup is more on the chunky side, but it could have very easily been blended to achieve a smoother consistency.

Serves 3-4:
Ingredients:
1/2 onion
3 cloves of garlic
olive oil
2 cups vegetable broth
half of a butternut squash
seasoning
splash of milk

Ahead of time, you can roast your butternut squash at 400 degrees Fahrenheit in a pan, sliced in half and laying face down in a little bit of water. It will need to roast for about an hour, but you can't really overcook it. It will get very soft and be extremely easy to work with. You can use a lot of it for the soup and even make other recipes with the extra if you desire!

To begin preparing your soup, dice the onion and chop the garlic. Heat some olive oil in a pot and sauté the diced onion and chopped garlic on low heat. If you want to expedite the garlic cooking process, you can even microwave the chopped garlic in a little olive oil for about a minute prior to adding it to the pot.

Next, add your butternut squash, the vegetable broth, and your seasoning and turn it up to medium heat.  Let it simmer, stirring periodically, until everything is heated through.

Turn off the heat, wait a couple minutes, and then add your splash of milk (mine was sort of a large splash haha), and mix it in. Serve, enjoy, and be cozy!!

Almost happy Friday!

PGC: Vegetarian Recipes 101

In today's world, it seems as though becoming vegetarian or vegan is the trendy thing to do. However, eating vegetarian or vegan, even for just one meal, really helps the environment! For example, if everyone in the United States gave up meat on Mondays, it would save approximately 12 billion gallons of gasoline! (Source: PGC)

I was raised in a very vegetarian friendly environment since my sister was always a vegetarian, so when I finally decided to become vegetarian too, the transition was relatively painless.

Need some scrumptious vegetarian recipes to try? Here is a sample menu to "go veg" for a day!

For breakfast...

For lunch...

For dinner...

Do you like what you see? If so, here are just a few of the amazing vegetarian or vegan blogs in the blogosphere! 

Craving something sweet? Check some of Chocolate Covered Katie's amazing vegan dessert recipes! She has developed creative and delicious recipes for everything!

A blog that features both vegetarian and vegan options is Oh My Veggies! Some of the highlights include pesto quesadillas, roasted butternut squash, and edamame hummus.

For even more vegetarian options, visit Herbivoracious!  Boasting over 127,000 readers, some of the recipe highlights include blueberry bars, rigatoni, and avocado tomatillo salsa.

Best Vegetarian Cookbooks:

1. Passionate Vegetarian

2. The Conscious Cook

3. Vegan Lunch Box

Looking for even more resources? Have unanswered questions? Still skeptical? Hit up this links!

The Vegetarian Resource Group

No Meat Athlete

Vegsource

Have an awesome day!

Going Vegetarian!

Happy Green Tip Tuesday!  Today's tip is to eat less meat, or trying to eat more like a vegetarian!

Growing up, I was raised in a household that ate primarily vegetarian, and while there were times where I wasn't necessarily thrilled about this, I definitely appreciate it now and think my current vegetarianism (with the occasional fish) is a result of this lifestyle.

Why should one go vegetarian?