DC VegFest 2015

The DC VegFest is basically an expo of all the food products out there for vegans and a chance to eat from your favorite DC restaurants without having to trek all over the city. There are, naturally, fifty bajillion brochures from animal welfare & rights groups, as well as stuff for kids, stuff for people looking to adopt companion animals, and live music. Come for the free samples. There's fancy vegan cheese and casual snacks everywhere.


Yeah Dawg! - the Viva Dog

As a Southerner, a being from the land of hog & hominy, I love hot dogs. This is why I was stoked to see a hot dog sign while I was waiting to enter the venue.

 Their hot dog was pretty firm, not "Tofurkey sausage firm," but this is a hot dog and this should be expected to be softer. Coconut "bacon" was crispy, and thus good for texture, but I wished it was smokey. I liked that they had jalapenos available, which I elected to add to the pineapple.

Heidi-Ho

Vegan NACHO CHEESE. I barely remember what it tasted like, but it was good on a cold day.

Woodland's Vegan Bistro

The country fried steak was savory and sufficiently toothsome. I liked the crispy coating, although traditional country fried steak has a much thicker crust and is usually served with a white gravy. I will say the BBQ sauce was too sweet for my preference.
Their Mac is always delicious. I practically inhale it.

Vegan Treats

The table at Vegan Treat's stand. They came down from Pennsylvania for the event, and people lined up practically the whole length of the venue to buy from them. I don't have that kind of patience, but I saw some people purchased large catering boxes full of sweets. Their confections must be delicious.

Contents of the goodie bag passed out to the first 1,000 entrants to the venue.

Out of these guides, I learned that COK maintains a Veg Guide to DC, which I wish I would've known sooner.

Dining Out: Veg*n Shawarma (West Jerusalem)

Grad school is a time suck. Due to time and budget constraints, you don't get to cook truly interesting things and are mostly relegated to keeping inexpensive recipes in heavy rotation. You sure as hell don't have the money to eat out. Sometimes, though, you get to mix pain and pleasure, and go on a research practicum to Israel/Palestine that includes meals. Initially, you think that finding food to eat will be easy, and you love falafel, so why obsessively plan on how to find specifically veg*n restaurants?

Well, I personally found the falafel in Israel to be lacking--little spice and no herbs. Putting fries in the pita was a welcomed texture change and the local style of pickles were interesting (although not salty enough to suit me). I also became sick to death of eating meze in a kebab-centric culture, as well as tired of only being able to get fire roasted veggies without any seasoning, salt, or general complexity to the "dish." (Simple meals are nice, but I consider a plate of veggies to be a plate of ingredients that need further preparation.)

The Israeli Vegan Diet Guide makes it clear that there are a number of options in Israel, but I was busy with my research project, and didn't have the time to check anything out. Again, grad school = time suck. At the end of the stint there, I did have a day "off" (part of which was supposed to be spent typing up my notes) that a teammate suggested we use to visit a veg*n restaurant in West Jerusalem.

Thus I visited Vegetarian Shawarma for a much needed change of pace. They have a website, but it's only in Hebrew, so I made sure to take a picture of the English menu:

Vegan Schnitzel on Baguette -- The patty was nicely firm, but obviously something you get frozen. (This is technically a fast food restaurant, after all.) The only thing it needed was a bit more sauce, and there was mustard on the table, the taste of which I hadn't had in ages. Gobbled down the whole sandwich.

"Nuggets" -- As my dining companion remarked, it's a very interesting concept of nugget. The thinner pieces were like eating the fried crust off of a morsel of food--and I'm not even remotely complaining about that, since I miss doing so. The thicker pieces were more meat-like and the crust had a good herbed/peppered flavor to it.