Vegan MoFo Post #13!
Finally made it to Denver and it was pretty awesome! Mountains and city and vegan food, oh my! First up, of course, was brunch!
We went to a place called City O’ City that my friend took us to that had tons of vegan options. This was tofu scramble with tempeh hash with ridiculously amazing vegan gravy on top. I also got a half order of biscuits and gravy. I am really digging the biscuits and gravy I see all over the menus in the pacific northwest and the south. Germany needs to get on this train because it is delicious! Anyway, City O’ City was pretty great and they also have a bar and lunch and dinner options too, plus lots of seating and good coffee.
After eating ourselves happily full, we went for a walk before my other friend had to meet someone. We discovered this massive bull statue so of course I had to ride it. I also died climbing down though, slippery!
Also, it was totally weird and interesting to see actual coffee shops where people can buy weed in Colorado, as when I moved away from America that was not a thing! Here’s one called Mile High, hah. I like that it’s under a Kung Fu studio.
Stumbled upon this mini little library on the street in a residential neighborhood we walked through, super cute!
Though there were many vegan places on my list for Denver, we had a serious hankering for some home-cooked food and to save some money so we made our own food. These are peanut noodles made with purple sweet potato noodles I bought in Koreatown in LA. They are my new favorite since a friend and Couchsurfer introduced them to me in Berlin. I made a peanut sauce out of peanut butter, rice vinegar, brown sugar, Sriracha and hot water whisked together or try my peanut noodles recipe. It’s an old stand-by, the recipe changes based on what I have at home that moment.
Denver Groceries
Nooch Vegan Market – I made my friend take me here. I’m quite enjoying my tour of America’s vegan grocery stores. This was probably the biggest vegan grocery store I’ve ever been to, besides the Veganz chain in Europe. I got some plain Punk Rawk Labs vegan cheese, my favorite vegan cheese so far besides Dr. Cow (post on American vegan cheeses upcoming!), a chipotle caramel bar, vegan macarons, crackers for the cheese and a VegNews magazine. The macarons were good, but not as good as Sweet Maresa’s that I tried in NYC! The owners were super helpful consoling me on my “which vegan cheese to buy?!” dilemma. The Punk Rawk Labs was so good I went back to get the Smoked flavor later. I want to try them all!
I also spotted this black bean tofu at Nooch, seems totally interesting! Has anyone tried it?!
Denver Bars
Our Mutual Friend Malt and Brew – This was an awesome chill brewery with a little beer garden, yummy craft beer and a living room field a friend invited me to. Recommended!
The Meadowlark – We went here after, large awesome beer garden in the back. I’m sure they probably have good beer, but we got cheap Tecate beer here so I didn’t try it myself.
Charlie’s – We tried to go gay clubbing and ended up here, which turned out to be queer country line-dancing. I cannot country line dance, but it was super fun to watch and switched over to pop at around 10-11pm.
Boulder
We took a day trip to Boulder on Saturday, which is smaller hippyish town about an hour from Denver. They had a MASSIVE farmer’s market there that we only caught the tail end of, but it was great. After wandering around downtown and the creek going through the park, we headed to Leaf Vegetarian Restaurant for happy hour, as they had appetizers and beers at a discounted price. I got these vegan beet pierogies (AMAZING) and the sweet potato and yukon mixes fries. So yum.
My friend also got this hominy, which was sort of like individually fried kernels of corn, hah. I didn’t even know what hominy was before I started this trip, is that bad?
I HAD to try dessert here and I went for this chocolate and peanut butter torte with vanilla vegan ice cream. Chocolate and peanut butter always win!
After dinner I was still a bit hungry so I got this vegan hot dog from a hot dog stand. It said “Veggie Hot Dog”, but I checked with the owner who showed me the label and confirmed it was vegan.
After getting our hot dogs we noticed this born again Christian dude sitting on a pedestal fighting with some teenagers about god really loudly, so we parked ourselves on a bench to watch the action for at least 20 minutes. Pure entertainment right there and sort of seemed like the guy was fighting a loosing battle given that Boulder is a pretty hippy liberal town. At one point a group of hula hoopers in hippy skirts passed by talking to him while spinning their hula hoops. It was better than television.
And that was Colorado! I definitely need to go back as I loved the vibe of this place, city mixed with outdoorsy, craft beer galore. I only managed to scratch the surface!
Next stop…Roswell, New Mexico! Get ready to see ALL THE ALIENS! For more, check the Recipe Index, Posts by Location page or follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!
