Vintage Shopping and Vegan Dinner on Main Street, Vancouver

Well it’s been two weeks so I figure I should write another one of these blog thingers. I don’t want to get out of the habit or else… Okay so there would be absolutely no consequences but SHUT YOUR FACE! How does one shut their face out of curiosity? Let’s see, what’s new in the past 2 weeks? Well last weekend I went vintage shopping with my friend Nikki. It was pouring rain. Like absolutely storm type weather. But nonetheless we trudged through on our quest to hit up Vancouver’s best vintage shops! Or maybe just those shops that were in walking distance from where we parked on Main Street. Either way it was a difficult and treacherous mission! We toured from store to store and even hit up some Antique furniture shops. I think my favorite shop of the day had to be the Bohemia Gallery at 3243 Main Street, Vancouver (@ 16^th). Two floors of retro fashion fun! And the owner working on the first floor was cute, quirky and helpful to boot! I ended up getting this cute belt:

Although it’s not actually vintage it’s vegan and awesome! In fact I’m wearing it right now! Nikki had a much more successful day with shopping than I did. She scored a cute purse, gorgeous little black lace dress and a couple cute shirts as well!

After our shopping escapades were completed we headed over to Whole Vegetarian Restaurant at 3068 Main Street, Vancouver. Whole used to be called Bo Kong. I’m not really sure if it changed owners or just the name but the menu was still pretty similar. They have a great variety of Chinese food. They don’t use any dairy or eggs in their dishes so pretty much everything is vegan.(*Note: I think they might have honey in a few of their desserts so if you don’t eat honey you might want to ask). I can’t even remember what we ordered but it was a ton of food, fairly inexpensive, and delicious. The staff are quick and friendly too! After dinner we decided we still needed dessert (despite being ridiculously full of wonderful Chinese food). So I took out my handy dandy iPhone and typed in something to the effect of “vegan dessert main street Vancouver”. The first place that came up was Grub at 4328 Main St, Vancouver. Their website said the menu changed daily but they always have a vegetarian option and a vegan option on the menu. They also mentioned they always have a vegan dessert. So we decided to give it a try. We found parking right in front and stepped out to see a tiny whole in the wall of a restaurant that was packed. The waitress asked us if we had reservations and sadly we did not. I decided to ask if we could just get the dessert to go and she said that was fine. They happened to have an empty table so she sat us down and got us some water while we waited. The dessert that night was a chocolate cake with bananas and fudge on top. AMAZING! Definitely the perfect way to end the day.

Week 1: Black Dress, Degus and Vegan Donut Making

It’s official, I’ve completed more than one week of my newly acquired shopping free lifestyle! Celebrations all around! Only 51 more weeks to get through!

I decided to hit up a couple thrift stores yesterday morning in search of a larger secondary cage for one of my degus. I have two girls, Ri Ri and Miss Vida.

Up until about a couple months ago they were best buds. They’d always groom and cuddle together. Very cute. Then…. Ri Ri went crazy. Like totally bat shit insane. And all she ever did was attack poor Miss Vida. The funny thing is Miss Vida is easily double Ri Ri’s size. So I had to put my girls in separate cages to protect Miss Vida from the fury of Ri Ri. Unfortunately, my secondary back up cage isn’t very big. I’ve been switching the girls on a daily basis so that each gets a day in the big cage and a day in the small cage. But I’d really like to find a decent larger second cage. Unfortunately, neither the Value Village or Talize I hit had much in the way of appropriate cages. I tried searching Craigslist but again, no luck. However, my failed attempt turned into two positives for me. First, when I got home yesterday I found that Ri Ri wasn’t acting so crazy. When I put her in an open area with Miss Vida there was no fighting at all! Major improvement! So perhaps I don’t need a large secondary cage after all. Hopefully, this means my girls will work it out.

The second plus for me was finding this cute little black dress. It looks barely worn! I’m a huge fan of basic black dresses that I can do up in a variety of ways. So this was an awesome find. It’s Banana Republic which I’m not a huge fan of. But that’s alright! The dress is cute, so screw the label.

When I got home yesterday I decided I needed to congratulate myself on a job well done. And what better to celebrate than home-made vegan donuts? That’s what I spent a good portion of my Saturday doing.

Working at Tim Hortons’ during my first 2 years of university definitely made me undervalue the amount of effort that goes into making a batch of yeast donuts. At Timmy’s you grabber the frozen yeast donut rings from the freezer, through them on this wire rack that held donuts, put them into the oven and then pressed the button with the picture of the yeast donut (I am not kidding, they actually have buttons with pictures on them…). When the ovens built in timer beeps you take the donuts out and place them on the cooling rack. Then from there it just comes down to decorating. And presto! Completed donuts in 15 – 20 minutes.

Making yeast donuts from scratch proved to be a much more demanding. Let me preface the process by explaining I have never made anything with dry active yeast in my life. Sure I bake a fair deal but at most it’s quick breads, cakes or muffins. That’s about it. I began with a fairly intuitive step; finding a recipe. This was actually more difficult than I had anticipated. I sorted through recipe after recipe of baked donuts, pass, whole wheat / multigrain donuts, really? PASS, and other recipes with random ingredients that I didn’t have and wasn’t entirely sure they were being including (i.e. medium firm tofu). TOFU DOES NOT HAVE TO GO INTO ALL VEG FOODS PEOPLE!

Eventually I found this recipe: http://www.chooseveg.com/display_recipe.asp?recipe=51 Which contained normal everyday ingredients and seemed easy enough. But sheesh donuts are quite the process! Make the dough. Let it rise for an hour. Roll it out. Use a donut cutter to cut your donuts. Ummmm… right a donut cutter… How about a glass! So I used a glass, cut out round donuts, then poked a hole through the center. That gave me this:



I then had to let the freshly cut donuts rise for another hour. So I took my puppy, Peaches, out with Kyle and we went for a run. By the time we got back it was time to fry the donuts! Which sounded a little scary so I had Kyle do it…. It’s kind of a two person job though as the donuts cook so quickly you have to have someone setting up the next ones to be fried and glazing and/or sugaring the freshly fried donuts. Or at least that’s the excuse I’m going to be using for needing his help….

I decided to make 4 kinds of donuts. Cinnamon Sugar, Glazed, Chocolate Dip and Sprinkle Chocolate Dip. The Cinnamon Sugar and Glazed needed to be done while the donuts were still hot.



But for the Chocolate Dip and Sprinkles you have to wait until the donuts cool or else the Chocolate kind of just melts and slides off. Thank you, Tim Hortons’, for teaching me that one! So I took the time while the donuts were cooling to look up a recipe for the Chocolate topping. The first one I found was this gem: http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/859271-Chocolate-topping-for-Donuts Let me sum up this one for you. Take chocolate and melt. Dip donuts in. WTF? That’s not a recipe! Who would need to be told that if the just wanted straight chocolate on top of their donuts?!

The issue with putting straight chocolate on top is it’s really thick and dries hard and heavy. I guess some people don’t mind this but I like the softer, shinier topping you find at most donut stores. I looked for a recipe but everything seemed a lot more time consuming then I was willing to do. So I just melted the chocolate in a pseudo double-broiler (I put a metal bowl on to of a pot of boiling water) then added vegan margarine until the mixture was of a good consistency. Not too think, not too runny. And then I dipped my donuts.



And there you have it! It was a fun donut making adventure. Now I have 2 dozen vegan donuts to eat. I should probably share those around… or not! And not to mention the aftermath the donut making left on my kitchen.



But totally worth it!

Day 3 of 365

Wait. This isn't a leap year is it? No it couldn't be. It's not even an even numbered year!

So far things have been going swimmingly. But alas, Jan. 1 was a holiday and today is the official stat for that holiday. It's not like I’ve had much temptation at this point. I thought I should clarify a little about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Let me start with the cool kids. They told me I’d be waaay cooler if I didn’t buy anything for a year. I was like really? Awesome! And here we are. No wait that’s not how it happened. I actually don’t think I know anyone who’s doing or done what I’m attempting. That’s not to say there aren’t thousands of others doing it. In fact, when I mentioned to my mom that I was thinking about it a few weeks ago she said “Oh, fun! Just like that woman and her family that were just in the paper. Except you’ll be doing it from the point of a young woman trying to stay fashionable whereas, she was doing it as a mom trying to provide for a family of four!” Ya, mom. Exactly, like that. I can try and stay fashionable while she managed to do it while raising a family! Those are totally of equal difficulty…

Well, despite the demotivation of the super-mom who did the secondhand thing for all of 2009 story, I decided to go for it. (Anyways, the mom must be kind of a bitch because she totally pressured the dad and kids into right? Right?? Exactly! There’s no way 8 years old are cool with their mom saying “No new Justin Bieber tees for you this year! It’s Hannah Montana track suits all around!” Kids “Okay, mom, but can we borrow your big purse, some sunglasses, and have you drop us off at the mall to umm… play? Pick us up at 2.”)

I seem to have gotten off track. Back to the reasons for pursuing the secondhand thing. One of the main reasons is I just like to have something to do. It seems like a challenge and should provide me with lots of fun of finding what I need in thrift store and eBay shopping adventures. Hoorah!! A second reason is to me it seems kind of silly that we view shopping as a hobby. It’s like “what do you like to do in your spare time?” “Oh you know read, watch movies, SPEND MY MONEY ON USELESS CRAP I’LL THROW OUT IN 6 MONTHS, the usual.” That seems weird to me. And yet I must say I’ve fallen in and out of the whole shopping hobby numerous times. You find yourself at home on a Saturday afternoon and think, hey, I could just hit up the mall for a bit? It’s a time waster, a way to be immersed in society, and a great way to blow your hard-earned dollars. So for one year I’m not going to partake. The last motivating reason for my choice is one based on a real peeve / moral standpoint, call it what you will. But I HATE when things are wasted. It can be anything really; time, items, lives. It doesn’t much matter what it is. If it has not been put to good use I tend to get pissed off. And it seems everywhere I look people are throwing out good stuff just to buy newer stuff. I’m totally cool if they give it away. Which a lot of people do. But there’s still so many out there that just toss their perfectly good pair of last season’s Bvlgari sunglasses into the trash to make room for this years. I could have those! Okay so that’s a little bit of an exaggerated example but I’m sure you understand. Yes, you only paid $30 for that lamp and dropping it at the thrift store is a bigger pain in the ass than dropping it in your trash can. But give the poor little guy a chance at a new home! He’s just a lamp! Hmmm… perhaps that’s a fourth reason. I totally tend to personify everything. I feel bad for that lamp in the garbage :(.

But I think that’s enough of a rant for today. In summation, I’m doing this because it’s a challenge, shopping shouldn’t be a hobby for anyone but Paris Hilton, and waste pisses me off. I get that buying is good for the economy, but that doesn’t mean we have to be wasteful slobs to do it. I’m not trying to change the world. I just want to know that I’m living my life in a way that I’m comfortable with.

Going Secondhand for 2011

I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks and yesterday I decided what the hell, I'm just going to do it. For a full year I'm going to abstain from buying anything new*. Of course there will have to be some exceptions as I do not plan to become a freegan and dumpster dive for all of 2011. Nothing against you freegans out there... but ya that's just not going to happen. Below is the list of rules and exceptions to my plan:

Rules

1. I must not purchase anything new within 2011 which is not clearly stipulated in the Exceptions section listed below
2. I must not cheat the system by asking other people to buy things for me

Exceptions

1. Food
2. Toiletries
3. Personal clothing items (underwear, socks, etc). I am NOT wearing underwear from Value Village!!!
4. The new Blaqk Audio album
5. Emergency items in which my health and/or safety would be impaired if I did not purcahse these items. I can't think of a good example. Oh maybe if I was on a sinking boat and they were selling life preservers. Okay this seems like an obvious excpetions but I feel it would be an oversight for me to omit it from my list

Well, I think that about sums it up! I intend to blog my progress so we shall see how this goes.