Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

Why? Because it was my birthday! As if I need an excuse!

A dear friend treated me to a birthday eve meal at one of our favorite haunts, New York City's Tea & Sympathy. The mushroom shepherd's pie with peas and carrots, $13.95, and a pot of decaf Earl Grey, $4.50.

A Mrs. Bucket-approved dessert: Victoria sponge cake, $8. Loved the post office tea pot, and thought of Hyacinth's poor postman. She only uses first class stamps, you know!


I always save one vacation day to take my birthday off. Do I want to spend my birthday in my cubicle? No! Instead...

At the Rutherford Pancake House in Rutherford, New Jersey, I shared vegan sliders with a tamarind date sauce, $5.95, and vegan cheese quesadillas with roasted red peppers, spinach and portabella mushrooms and the most sweet potato fries I've seen on one plate! $9.95.

At all-vegan Sweet Avenue Bake Shop, also in Rutherford, a Boston cream cupcake, $3.50. Kind of makes you want to move to Rutherford, doesn't it?

To go: their classic white room cupcake - vanilla cake with vanilla bean frosting, $3. There's something so timeless and comforting about vanilla, isn't there?

Toasting to a California sparkling rose at the The Kitchen in Englewood, New Jersey, which celebrates the cuisine and the era of the 1930s. Love this unique concept, and the BYOB saves a fortune. I don't care if it is organic, I'm not paying $12 for a glass of wine anywhere.


About five complimentary passed appetizers come (they accommodated vegetarian), and I also had a small taste of their daily soup (roasted garlic and cauliflower soup - some of the best soup I've had in recent memory). Then it was time for the entree.

The vegetarian gratin, with butternut squash with faux bacon, caramelized onions and greens, $19. Entrees come with two sides: sweet potatoes with nuts and marshmallows, and collard greens. Classic comfort food, done right.

I know, the apple cranberry crisp is more seasonable, but the caramelized banana napoleon, $8 - just so tempting and delicious.

An aside about how good the food was at The Kitchen - a lively table was next to mine with about a dozen people also there for a birthday celebration. When the food came - silence soon followed. A man at the table declared, "It must be good - the conversation has ceased!" Ever notice how when the food is amazing you zone into your own little world? I also smiled thinking about how food brings us together - yet another reason it is one of life's great pleasures.

Depressed about being another year older? No way. Remember the words in P.S. I Love You expressed by Harry Connick Jr.'s character, "We're so arrogant, aren't we? We're so afraid to age. We do everything we can to prevent it. But we don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old."

I'm privileged to celebrate another birthday, and hope you view your own next birthday and each one after with a happy and grateful heart.

The Word on the Street: Vegan

With more consumers interested in vegan options for a host of reasons (health, animal ethics, and environmental, to name a few), vegan food, as it should, is taking its rightful place in society - closer to the mainstream. Here are some places it's showing up:

At non-vegetarian restaurants, like New York City's Blockheads (various locations). Co-existing alongside meat and dairy dishes on the menu, you'll find tofu, tofu sour cream, and vegan soy cheese.

Two grilled tofu tacos (hold the Monterey Jack cheese) with fresh grilled corn salsa, served with rice and beans, and of course, I requested tofu sour cream. A feast for $8.95, at lunchtime it came with chips and salsa and a drink (my pick: fresh brewed iced tea).


Great vegan good is not just in New York City or Los Angeles (find veg eats near you with help from Happy Cow). In New Jersey, the owners the Rutherford Pancake House have crafted a loyal following, knowing veg enthusiasts will 'follow the tofu' so to speak. The vegan menu has expanded to offer comfort foods like sliders and pizza. But at a diner or pancake house, breakfast food just calls my name.

The vegan Roman tofu scramble: garlic, scallions, tomatoes, peppers, Italian sausage, and mozzarella, $9.95, served with home fries and...

toast with strawberry jam and soy butter. Coffee $1.79, with soy milk (rice milk is also available), and orange juice, $1.99 for a small.


In every media outlet from non-vegan blogs (check out food writer David Lebovitz raving about New York City vegan bakery Babycakes) to The New York Times, which had a headline that said it all: "Tasty Vegan Food? Cupcakes Show It Can Be Done."

My favorite vegan bakery: Sweet Avenue Bake Shop in Rutherford. Behold the sight of their seasonal pumpkin spice cupcakes, $3.50 each.



At street festivals and fairs. Remember the vegan coconut macaroons at the Bastille Day celebration in New York City? Well, my heart went aflutter when, surrounded by people eating turkey legs at the New York Renaissance Fair in Tuxedo Park (more about my visit and eats there later), I saw this sign at a Mediterranean food booth. Super Vegan is not only a fitting name for a wrap, but also a vegan cartoon character! Now if only I could sketch...

In the movies.

Okay, this technically counts as a vegetarian reference, but still!

In the film Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert's (via Julia Roberts) first boyfriend after the end of her marriage is a vegetarian. There's a scene at a dinner party where someone asks him why he became a vegetarian and he mentions seeing cows being slaughtered. At night's end, the same man asks for the slaughterhouse video and that he's interested in learning more about factory farming. In a film largely about personal and spiritual growth and enlightenment, being enlightened about what one puts in their body, and the reality behind, seems only logical. I was thrilled for the reference, and cheered silently in the theater.

And I'm cheering here, out loud for the animals, that slowly but surely, great vegan food is becoming more available and accepted.

These are a Few of My Favorite Things...

I cherish my weekends. Work e-mails are done when I leave at 5 on Fridays. All can wait until Monday morning. This is my time.

How did I fill my Valentine's weekend? With all of my favorite things...most free or frugal-minded.

Free: a film from the library. A romantic comedy seemed fitting for this weekend.

Free: library books. I had a "blind date" with a book, a fun program at my library where you take a gift-wrapped book home. Don't like your date? Return it next time, no hard feelings.

My date, which came with a lollipop. I'll give my date a chance.

Frugal: splitting a dish. I split vegan pancakes with warm cinnamon-scented pears, $7.99, with my mom at the Rutherford Pancake House. Of course most frugal is eating at home.

Frugal: thrifting. I went to the C.A.T.S. Resale Shop, whose windows were adorned with hearts ($1 each), in honor of past and present companion animals who so fill our own hearts with love and happiness.

Free: cat socializing at the shop. I spent some quality time with my friend Dottie...

...and found Sylvester sneaking in one of my own favorite (and free) weekend pastimes: a nap.

Free: going to the park with the dog. I wondered if I was too old to go sledding?

Free: making a snow man. How about a baby one? I'm just the humble photographer, not the artist.

Frugal: not doing major gifts or eating at expensive places on Valentine's Day. "I love you" doesn't mean fancy jewelry, clutter gifts, gadgets or flowers for me and my sweetheart. We indulged in the sweetheart box from Sweet Avenue Bake Shop, four cupcakes, $16.

All yummy, and all vegan: Elysium Wine (chocolate wine cake) with blackberry frosting, spicy hot chocolate, red velvet cake, and pomegranate champagne. My non-vegan boyfriend loved them all, as did I.

Hope your Valentine's Day weekend was filled with people, animals, places and things you love and cherish. All days should be.

Vegan Pancakes and Cupcakes in the Same Day? Oh My My!

But it was my birthday!

I took the day off from work (which I highly recommend doing if it's an option). Two vegans I met at Cupcakefest told me about the Rutherford Pancake House's sizable vegan menu, and I'm so glad I tried it. Thank you, fellow vegans!

I was secretly hoping for hot cocoa with soy whipped cream to recreate the dairy version I'd have at a diner in pre-vegan days, but their cocoa has dairy. A perfectly wonderful and even better consolation: soy cappuccino, $3.49.

Vegan pancakes, $5.95. So light and fluffy! It left me wondering why all the pancakes aren't vegan. Veganize pancakes at home. Eat in your PJs on a blustery Sunday, and go back to bed. I can't wait for the winter hibernation weekends to get underway.

I shared the pancakes and the vegan Popeye tofu scramble, with spinach, avocado, and mushrooms, and served with home fries, whole grain toast, non-dairy spread and grape jelly, $8.95.

A side of vegan sausages, $2. Crispy and humane.


I also spotted a whole vegan lunch special menu, including soy quesadillas and soy grilled cheese with tomatoes. The owner told me vegans make up 15 percent of his business, which is very impressive since we are far fewer than 15 percent of the population.

Run, don't walk, to the Rutherford Pancake House, 40 Park Ave., Rutherford, NJ. Open daily, 7:00 am to 3:00 pm. Open for dinner Thursday to Saturday after 4 pm.

To take home from the nearby Sweet Avenue Bakeshop: The very best vegan cupcakes. Ever.


What did I want for birthday, my loved ones kept asking? A new robe? No, I have a very comfy one. Scarf and hat? Nope, still like the ones I'm using. Slippers? Have them. A coat? Last year's coat is still warm and still stylish this year.

I like non-materialistic gifts, like a ticket to see my beloved The Swell Season at Radio City Music Hall.

My favorite gift of all: my turkey, Rhonda, which arrived from the Farm Sanctuary!

"Let there be music, let there be light, but please don't make a turkey your holiday delight!" she declares. Have you adopted your turkey yet?