Canadians!

My friend Tillie the Canadian (guess where she's from!) came to visit for the weekend. She has Celiac, and I am vegan, but we found a bounty of yummy food to share and enjoy. For breakfasts we enjoyed rice cakes with peanut butter, banana, and cashews. It was messy and yummy.

Tillie (technically only half Canadian)

Saturday we went to the farmer's market in the university district. I often find other FM's in Seattle to be mostly full of cheese (seriously), but the U-dist one was full of wonderful delights. I tried my first Brussels sprout, grown by a very impassioned man (they must be grown with frost!!! he says), and also my first taste of sorrel (which is divine). We bought salad mix, Brussels sprouts greens (which are purple!), and some sorrel. Pictured below, amongst my Regular Crap, is two bottles of locally made hard cider (the regular was for me, but after serving it to Tillie's friends she gave me her berry one. Score!), 1 package Southwestern flavored hazelnuts, the aforementioned greens and salad, some lovely sunflower seed bread, walnut oil, 1 jar tequila caramel (Tillie's, not vegan), and 1 jar peach chipotle pepper jelly which I described to the vendor as "it kicked me in the mouth, but it didn't knock me down, I like that." My camera skills are off, I just thought I should admit it. It's a Known Issue.

Farmer's Market Yummy Goods

Since we were nearby, we made a trip to Sidecar for Pig's Peace, a volunteer-run all vegan store benefitting Pig's Peace animal sanctuary. Picked up some aseptic tofu for the pantry, herb Tofutti, spicy Sunrice tofu (it's an amazing local company, the tofu is like crack), Merry Hempster tattoo balm, Tings (Tillie's), and Jerquee (Tillie's), best of all because I didn't think they were carried at Sidecar are SOY CURLS! I've been wanting to try them out and thought I might have to wait until I make it to Portland again (which is the end of this month).

Nothing like vegan junk food after the Farmer's Market

Best of all, Tillie came to America equipped with a gift, vegan pate! It's consistency is more like a loaf than a spread. It's kind of crumbly and meaty-ish. This is the herb flavor and I think it'll be quite good on all sorts of things. In salads, sandwiches, toast with Tofutti, maybe on pasta? Best of all she abused her mother's connections to get it, that's what I like in my gifts.

Plus the box is pretty

Vegan Pate in the package. Enjoy the three sunflower seeds as decoration.

It was really wonderful having Tillie in town and getting to share all of this wonderful food with her, we did things besides eating, but I believe good food is what links other memories together. Food is the strongest links in the memory chain and gives the sum memory of a life structure. So this weekend will be treasured for years to come, of that I'm sure.

PLUS! Tillie has promised to send her vegan and gluten-free recipe for "Butter Chicken" along, so that will be posted soon.