Locali Store

Locali in Hollywood, originally uploaded by erin32mc.

I have heard about Locali for most of this year. Vegan bakers held bake sales there, fellow bloggers listed it as a good place to get Dandies vegan marshmallows and delicious sandwiches.  Plus there were sno cones to be had, free of corn syrup sno cones!

The day before Thanksgiving, the day before my youngest child's birthday, we took a family trip to Griffith Park. Afterwards, we went on another adventure to find Locali. There were a few moments where I thought I must have missed it. I knew the store was on Franklin Avenue, but I didn't have a phone number or exact address. People, always make sure you have an address and phone number! After talking about corn syrup free sno cones with my eldest kid (who is allergic to corn), I needed to find this store. Obviously, we found it!!

 

We walked into a cute little shop with TONS of vegan goodies. From warm sandwiches to homemade popsicles. It had the feel of a fancy 7-11. Lily took one look at the mini popsicles and grabbed the red one (strawberry lemonade) and Henry just wanted to get his hands on a sno cone. After the worker rattled off some flavors from memory (little suggestion here Locali, have a small list of flavors for the customers to choose from), Henry decided on bubblegum. I ordered a warm grilled veggie sandwich with artichoke spread on seeded grain bread. Before our ordered was rung up, I made sure to throw in a vegan brownie and sugar donut muffin from C'est La V bakeshop. The muffin was AMAZING! I wish I would have bought another one.

 

So if you are in the Los Feliz/Hollywood area and need a little treat, head over to Locali.   My kids say you will love it!

Vegan Mofo mug

For the three years, Post Punk Kitchen has promoted vegan blogging as much as you can for the month of October. I have participated in the last two years. My favorite part of the Vegan Mofo is reading everyone else's blogs to see what they got going on. One of the blogs was Vessels and Wares run by Jeanette. I knew of this blog before since I have bought vegan dishes from Jeanette on etsy.com . Both my kids eat their ice cream out of a dish that says "vegan h" and "vegan l". Jeanette did a contest to give away mugs and keychains to celebrate Vegan Mofo. And obviously I was a winner!!!! If you like the way the mug looks, go over to etsy and order some goods from Jeanette. You won't be disappointed.

Yo Gabba Gabba Live in Los Angeles

So on Saturday, Yo Gabba Gabba had a live show at the Shrine Auditorium in Downtown Los Angeles.   I had bought tickets for my daughter and I to attend.  We fought our way through USC traffic, which was an event all on it's own.  Once inside, Lily had the look of confusion on her sweet little face.  We found our seats and I was surprised to find out that we were in the second center row.  About ten feet from the stage.  This was the first moment that I felt a problem could be in our future.

When DJ Lance and the gang made their entrance with lots of lights, sound, and confetti.

The crowd went wild...all but my kid.  She signed all done and pointed to the door.  I asked her to try to watch and all she wanted to do was bury her head.  She nursed her way up until intermission.  I was able to get her to take a peek at the show a few times but not enough to get to her to change her mind.  So when the lights went up, we made our way to the door.

 Lily was back to her happy, smiling self as soon as we exited the Shrine and were on the street.  Now everytime she sees a photo of DJ Lance, she signs all done and says no.  I remind her that we aren't going to see Yo Gabba Gabba again and she smiles.  Sorry DJ Lance, maybe in a few years this will end better.

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie

I finally had enough time after putting the kids to bed at bedtime, to make something out of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I had all the ingredients for the Banana Oatmeal cookies. I'm not great with titles or names, so that probably isn't the name in the book. But it's close enough. I made four dozen of them. Doubled the recipe since I had quite a few ripe bananas that were about to take a turn for the worst.

These cookies were super moist, tasty, and with the oatmeal and walnuts, I felt like I was eating something good for me. And they were good, so that's good for me.

Score at Whole Foods

This morning on the way to work, I stopped at Whole Foods to grab  a few things for lunch.
Bread, vanilla soy yogurt, some cashews from the bulk section, a banana, and Silk pumpkin soy milk
to share with a coworker.  As I waited in line for my turn to put the goods on the conveyer belt, my eyes fell upon a nice surprise.  No, not an interesting article on how to make a Thanksgiving meal in thirty minutes or less.  Go Max Go candy bars!!!  Yes, you read right.   Three styles of candy bars were stocked: Buccaneer, Twilight, and Jokerz (the Mahalo bar was not stocked).  I grabbed one of each. They were $2.19 each.  Which is a little bit of saving compared to $2.39 plus shipping from Vegan Essentials.com . I hate paying for shipping.  I'm planning on taking them home to share with the family but  I already polished off the Jokerz bar.  Let's see if the other two make it home.

Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar

I hate to say that I have had this book in my hands since Monday and I haven't cooked one thing from it!! I should be fined or arrested. I should be forced to give the book to someone who will appreciate it more than I do. Hopefully I won't be working this weekend and I can dive in. Make at least one batch if not two. I'm sure my kids or coworkers won't object. There were some oatmeal cookie recipes that caught my eye and of course I have to give their chocolate chip recipe a try. Nothing better than a chocolate chip cookie and a tall glass of rice milk. Stay tuned for cookie update.

Halloween morning

So obviously Halloween is over. October is a thing of the past or in the far far future. But for this mom, I'm talking about it today. On Saturday morning, we had breakfast, cleaned up, and got starting on our sugar cookies. Every year I make sugar cookies with my kids for the big holidays (Valentine's Day, Halloween, Xmas). I received some Halloween cookie cutters from Happy Bellies from the PPK package swap. We used the sugar cookie recipe from one of Sarah Kramer's cookbooks (the go to sugar cookie recipe) and got down to business. Lily loved the rolling pin. Henry loved getting as many cookies as he could before having to roll the dough out again. We managed to make three dozen cookies. I didn't eat them all, but the ones I did eat were good.