Sweet Thursdays Blog Introduction

In the grand scheme, I suppose this blog introduction comes a bit late, the fifth post in, rather than the first, but what you don't know is that I secretly backdated all the previous 4 entries to coincide with the date the original post was made in my personal Livejournal account. It wasn't until after the third post that I decided that perhaps I should use a separate blog to post my musings on vegan baking.

Long story short, I dusted off my little-used blogspot blog, and revamped it, added my thoughts of our previous baking expeditions, and viola, this blog.

A bit about me and the project that inspired me to venture into vegan baking.

A library staff member by day, and an avid writer, reader, watcher of Anime and TV at other times, January found me in Denver for the American Library Association convention along with two of my girlfriends. (Fun factoid - each of them has rented the spare room in our house at one time or another, so they are both former roommates).

The first morning we went to sign in, and find some breakfast. Alison and I were able to grab some pastries at a coffee shop in one of the conference hotels. Lila, who is a vegetarian who also does also not eat eggs (called a Lacto Vegetarian, as I just found out), was unable to find anything at the coffee shop that did not have eggs in it. The clerk could not even verify if the bagels (which usually don’t have eggs) were egg free. We went to the conference center information desk, and asked after vegan dining options (figuring that vegan food would fit the egg-free requirements, and then some). First we had to explain to the information assistant what we meant by vegan.

We were finally pointed in the direction of a supermarket that might have something that was suitable, and given the Einstein Brothers bagel company as a landmark. Bingo. The Einstein Bros became our breakfast spot for the rest of the trip.

As we were walking we got to talking about how difficult the seemingly easy task of finding food had become. Imagine if any of us had been vegan (as our friend Rusty was). Very difficult especially with baked goods – doable, but most vegans can’t just order a baked good at a café or restaurant. At best they have one or two items on the menu that they can eat. That turned us to the idea of creating a café that had two menus, one “traditional” menu, and a parallel menu with the same items, but vegan.

Over time the idea morphed, through several variations, to where it currently stands: Try to open a green, vegan café in our hometown in the not-too-distant (but not too near) future. It idea may change as we go, every time we meet, we toss out new ideas (from menu items, to wardrobe, to decoration of the place, and more). We looked at what skills we’d need for the business side of things, and are considering several business education options. We also realized we would need to find suitable recipes, and since that seemed like the step that would take the longest, was the easiest to get started on, and pretty fun, we settled on trying to meet once a week to bake a new recipe, try out teas, etc.

I was pleased to learn that Alison and Lila are awesome when it comes to baking, and are intuitive about flavor adjustments, and how to fix recipes where I would just sit there in a stupor wondering what went wrong. So we get together, bake, taking turns with the steps, and reading the recipes, and then we sit down to sample our creations. As Lila and Alison toss out ideas on how to make the recipe better, or bring out different flavors, I diligently take notes (something well suited to my personality, actually). It was an easy transition from that to posting the stories of our meetings on a blog.

So that is what this blog is – it will be primarily a recording of our baking days, which we have as a standing date every Thursday, but will also include ideas we have for the café, in general, as we make progress on that front. We are looking forward to the café, however we realized we do have a ways to go to pull together a satisfactory menu, in addition to learning all the practical, business side of things. Given the current state of the economy, perhaps it is wise we are looking at years or more down the line before we introduce our green, vegan café to the world.

If you have questions about the recipes we make, or any part of the process, I invite you to make comments. Likewise, I’m more than happy to accept comments, suggestions on how to fix our baking problems, recipes we must try, etc. All I ask is that you be respectful to me and others who may comment, and I’ll treat you the same.