October 15th, 2011
So it turns out that I’m still not feeling 100%. I may have over done it a bit today- Farmer’s Market, Auntie Loo’s Treats vegan bakery birthday celebration and Occupy Ottawa. And now I’m feeling like crap again! But at least I have some yummy vegan baked goods to cheer me up!
Auntie Loo’s Treats was having a 2-year birthday celebration today. There were tons of free samples and an all vegan BBQ by donation to support the Westminster Pet Sanctuary. I had at least one of pretty much all the samples: peanut butter chocolate cupcake, gluten free brownie, banana split cupcake, Earl Grey lemon cupcake and blueberry crumble bar. We also bought a cinnamon bun and a rocky road cupcake to go.
I spent some time talking to the people who run Westminster Pet Sanctuary. It was so nice to hear about the great work that they do and that they are all vegan. We foster kittens for the Humane Society and sometimes it can be frustrating that, although they care all lot about cats and dogs, they often have events that centre around meat – clearly a disconnect there. Anyways, it was nice to support an organization that gets that cats and dogs are no different than pigs and chickens.
Vegan Cupcake Samples!!
Cinnamon Bun and Rocky Road Cupcake (got a little squished in my purse) from Auntie Loo's!
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June 10th, 2011
After hearing rumours of an all-vegan, mostly raw restaurant in Gatineau, I finally made my way across the river for dinner at Le Belle Verte. The atmosphere was nice, distinctly hippie, but not too hippie. They brought out a small plate of kale chips shortly after we arrived which took the edge off my hunger as I tried to decide what to order. The menu is a mix of raw and cooked dishes. The dishes are all very similar with their homemade cashew uncheese and sun dried tomato tapenade appearing in most dishes. I decided on the All Dressed oven baked pizza. The pizza was fairly small but piled high with toppings including tapenade, pesto, tomato, roasted red pepper, onion, cashew uncheese, black olives and “kale bits” on a whole grain thin crispy crust. It was probably the best vegan pizza I’ve had in the Ottawa area! I think even omnivores could eat it without missing the cheese. One of my dinner mates had the Tofu and Mushroom burger. They really liked it and reported that it was very much a tofu burger, not a garden burger or fake meat type burger.
All Dressed Pizza
Tofu Mushroom Burger
We had started eyeing the dessert case even before we decided what to have for dinner. There were a number of raw cookies, different flavors of chocolate tarts and what looked like a chocolate peanut butter torte. In theory we wanted to get different things so that we could share, but we all ended up going for the torte! It ended up being a chocolate peanut butter and banana torte. It was…amazing! One of the riches vegan desserts I’ve had! I would definitely recommend sharing it with a friend. I ate the entire thing and did not feel so great for the rest of the night. I also got two of the raw cookies to go, lemon-poppyseed and gogi-cocoa. I’ve only tried the lemon poppyseed so far. It was good but not great. There were too many poppyseeds in it which made the whole cookies taste a little bitter.
Desserts!
Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Torte
La Belle Verte doesn’t have a website. Their hours are 11-7 Monday to Saturday. They do close early, so keep that in mind if going there for dinner! For those of you who are like me and want to analyze the menu before going, I brought their take out menu home and scanned it! Click here to download (PDF).
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