In Thug Kitchen Party Grub, there are a zillion good-looking dip recipes. One night, I decided to make... All of them at once. I made breaded tofu cubes and cornmeal roasted potatoes to dip, as well as chopped cucumber, pickles, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, crackers and chips. The idea of dip night runs wild through my veins and I can't be stopped. No carrot stick is safe!



I'm glad we had such a fun little family tradition and I'm glad I still recreate it in my own way.

Berries are purple and blue and black! Here are some pictures of my glorious smoothie bowls from this spring that include said berries.

They were able to do exactly what we wanted, and the food came out perfect. Almost everybody loved it. We made special accommodations for our gluten-free guests to have special gluten-free injera prepared for them, and had rice on hand for anyone who wasn't into the injera (???). Basically, if you didn't like it, you had to try pretty hard not to. This food was so goddamn good, and my favorite of all time.




Even some of our pickiest eaters really loved this food. I was especially worried about my brother-in-law liking it, as he has very specific tastes, but he ended up loving it!! So many people came up to me telling me how impressed they were with the food who had never tried Ethiopian food before.

 There were also a very large number of vegans and vegetarians amongst our guests, as we are friends with the most amazing, smart and compassionate people <333. So this all-vegan Ethiopian spread was a welcome variation on your average chicken/beef/fish wedding entrée options. I once attended a wedding where just fish and rabbit were served as the entrée. Needless to say I drank a lot of red wine, danced without mercy and had to leave around 8:30 because of excessive schmamerrness. It wasn't the first wedding I had basically no food to eat at. One time at a wedding I was served the leftover raw vegetables from cocktail hour... and there was NO taco bell nearby.



We had cute little menus that they made up for us, with a little crash-course on how to eat Ethiopian food, and the descriptions of all the dishes. It may have been a lot of our guests' first time having Ethiopian food, so we wanted to give them the best primer possible.


My favorite tradition that I learned about is when you make a bite for someone, and feed it to them! It's called "gorsha" and they always taste better <3.




We love going to Mesob as often as possible. It's probably our favorite restaurant of all time, and we've been going often for the past 7 years! I can't wait to go there on my way back up north!
If you have ever had Ethiopian food, I'd love to know your favorite spot and what your favorite dish is!

Buffalo Cauliflower is a little fusion-y on it's own, but when you put in inside a taco, well, that's super fusion! Bar Bombón makes a good series of tacos, one of which is the buffalo cauliflower taco. I love all vegan tacos equally like children... But this doubly-fused taco is the real gem of the family.


Okay, are you ready for this? Are you strapped in? The vegan sorceror princesses of Peaceful Provisions make this.. creation, and it is even more fused than you can imagine. It is a pretzel-croissant-donut. It is also savory/sweet on top of being all those things. It's a buttery, flaky [crust] croissant dough, that's super enriched, and pretzel-bathed in the salt bath (also in magic vapors), and then fried like a donut! It's frosted with an amazing maple frosting and topped with apple sage sausage! Could you get more fused? BTW, I just guessed at their process, I am just listing what I think they do to this magical creation, I'm not necessarily right though!



Reigning champs of all things fusion, V Street is the winner. My favorite item on the brunch menu, and this is an informed decision because I've tried them all, is the Piri Piri Tofu Shakshouka. The menu description reads: Zhoug Avocado Toast, Long Hots, Spiced Tomato Stew. The tofu is so insanely good, but that is beside the point. The spicy red-chile sauce spikes the tofu, and the cool & buttery, but also spicy, avocado toast balances this dish perfectly. It blends the traditional Shakshouka with the Portugese-turned-African Piri Piri profile, and pairs it with a perfect American Avo Toast. This is the brunch I dream about all week.

Most recently, I whipped up the Buffalo Chickpea Mac & Cheese from Vegan Bowl Attack, which was a welcome variation on plain old regular mac. I loved this and cherished the leftovers for a week.

I might go as far as to say that the Pesto Mac from Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen is my favorite mac. That's a pretty heavy endorsement, because I'm basically a professional mac and cheese eater and cooker. I've made this about 17 times and kind of want to go make it right now.



I've been known to seek out mac where mac is to be had, and surely it is in Brooklyn, NYC. Pretty much every Shop Up I attended, mac was consumed. The most reliable vendor for a sturdy mac, I feel, is Freakin' Vegans. Plus, they have empanadas, and which is better-- mac & cheese with empanadas, or mac & cheese without any empanadas? I think I've answered for everyone already.


Once the Mac Daddy Bowl debuted on Champs' menu, it became physically impossible for me to ever order anything but that whenever I went (extremely often). Try as I might, rehearsed saying "Drunken Cowgirl" aloud beforehand, whispered, "Soltero Bowl" under my breath as others ordered, nothing but "I'll have the Mac Daddy Bowl" would ever leave my lips when it was time to order. I just learned not to fight the urge after a while. I mean, who's strong enough to fight an urge like that?


This is another time I made pesto mac. It's the best. It just is.

It was unbelievable how green the countryside was! I almost felt like I was in Ireland. The heat and humidity quickly reminded me that no, I am most certainly not in Ireland, and also: Croccodiles!







We stopped at Jacó Beach, a little ways away from it you can catch a nice view of the town and take some pictures.


Our first dinner was this amazing vegan lasagna! It was probably my favorite dinner of the trip and it was definitely better than most meals that I've paid far too much for in NYC. There was not a lot of salt in the meals at the resort, and I kind of liked it that way! Though I cook with salt at home, it's nice to just taste the flavor of the vegetables. It makes you appreciate them a little bit more. Am I crazy?

They served us dessert with every lunch and dinner too! This is a chocolate coconut parfait, and it was amazing! Not too sweet, but not bitter. Exactly the kind of dessert you can feel good about.


This is the dining area. I wasn't kidding when I said it's right in the middle of the jungle!


There was a little area to sit and look over some maps or do some research on what kind of local sight-seeing you can do.



It's actually winter there in August, when we went. I didn't realize that, nor did I read up about their wet season, think about hurricanes, or do any research at all for my upcoming trip. I had wedding tasks to manage and lots of other unplanned things to deal with and worry about. So, like I was saying, it was the winter there, or the "wet season" where it rains a lot and is really cloudy most of the day. Tourism dies way down during this time of year and businesses run sales to attract clients. We actually saved quite a bit of cash by coming this time of year, even if by coincidence. We would get up for breakfast for 8, then go off to our scheduled tour for the day, either be fed there or be back for lunch at 2, then relax in our room for a little while until dinner at 6:30. After dinner we were pretty much out of batteries, what with all our adventure sports and events, and went to sleep very very early. Even though it was the "winter" it was pretty sunny all morning until mid afternoon on every day and then we'd get rain in the evenings. It is the rainforest, after all.. We managed to have a fantastic week of weather and came back very tan.


With breakfast we got a papaya and orange smoothie and coffee! Costa Rican coffee is so delicious, and also very ethical! There was so much information everywhere about the fairly traded coffee and how it is ethically produced. There was literature at every coffee shop we went to outlining the details of the process and programs that help keep the trading ethical. Some of the info I found online and This site details a little bit of what I saw while I was there.

 Oh! And the hotel obviously had soy milk for coffee too! It was great black, but I'm so spoiled in NYC that I've become a little dependent on creamy coffee.


The first morning we got some delicious oatmeal with banana, cinnamon and raisins. It was a giant bowl of it but I ate it all! We also were served a giant plate of pineapple and papaya!







Just down from the dining area, there's a path that leads down to the waterfalls. It was pretty amazing to be able to take a quick hike down to them and listen to the peaceful sounds of the jungle.




Almost every day we took a short cab ride to Dominical Beach. The waves were super gigantic and there was a long stretch of beach you could walk along.





The little beach town was cute and everyone was friendly. People had set up little tourist shops to sell tapestries like these, and there were a bunch of similar shops with t-shirts and towels and the touristy type keepsake.

The official beer of Costa Rica is Imperial. It tastes a lot like the kinds of mexican beers you can get in the US, maybe like a Modelo Especial. I love drinking the beer that's local to wherever I am. It's great to have something you can't get anywhere else. Another cool thing about Imperial is that they fully recycle all their bottles. They don't just take the glass back, melt it down and mold something new out of the glass. They collect the Imperial bottles, steamwash them, refill, and resell them. That way, there's no waste. The company that owns Imperial, Florida Bebidas, also does this for it's other products as well! We found that the entire country of Costa Rica is very green. Not only is it a breathtaking green landscape, but all the people are so concerned for the well-being of the environment. They are very serious about recycling, and the conservation of wildlife. They also take great measures to ensure fair trade of their crops, like their coffee. It's such a difference from how people view the environment in the US. This morning, I watched a FedEx driver toss a balled-up wad of trash from his breakfast into the road while he waited at a light and I walked by alongside, wanting so bad to pick it up and throw it back at him. If the people of Costa Rica can get on board with conservation, most certainly we, in the United States, can too.




I forgot to take a picture of my lunch one day, but they made us burrito wraps with beans and avocado, and they served us these apricot-date balls for dessert.


So all of a sudden there was this gigantic spider above the dining area. I pointed up to it and the owner of the hotel told me that it was the Golden Orb Spider and that their webs are actually a silky gold color. I liked that they let her stay up there, instead of tearing it down or killing it. She certainly didn't bother us while we ate, though it was good to be assured that by a native.


Starfruit was abundant there, which I love. This is starfruit juice!


Dinner this particular evening was brown rice over grilled pineapple and a citrus tofu stir-fry.


Dessert was a raw chocolate-orange tart. The desserts were on point.








The second waterfall is a little smaller and you can swim in the pool it creates. We swam out and through the waterfalls together and it was so fun! That's me sitting on the rock on the right!



While we were having lunch at the little cafe, a huge parrot came and perched on the roof beam. He was so colorful and I kept wanting to call him Señor Toucan, even though he isn't a toucan.



Someone gave him a tortilla and he picked it up and started eating it like a taco. The way he held it was so funny, he looked just like a little person!


We got back to our hotel in time for second lunch! They made us a raw pizza, but I'm not sure what the crust was made out of. It had a deep earthy flavor that was tough to swallow. I loved the hummus and mushrooms, so I just grabbed those with the lettuce leaves and dipped them in the turmeric sauce.



This furry little dude, I guess he wasn't very little, came to visit us while we flipped through some travel magazines.


After (second) lunch we went to Dominical beach and grabbed some beers at a coffee shop and indulged ourselves in some wi-fi for a while. There was also a little health food shop in the beach village that had raw peanut butter chocolate pie by the slice. You can't really pass that up..

We just sat and talked for a while, and met with our friend, Ashley, who was staying at our hotel too. She was a great person to meet, and I'm so glad that through the course of events our paths crossed. It's great to meet vegans from around other parts of the country. She was from South Carolina, and said they are starting to open up new vegan shops and add lots of vegan options to menus. If veganism is spreading in South Carolina, I hope the rest of the country takes the hint and does the same!


It was getting to be close to 5pm by this time, and being winter there, it gets dark around 6. We hopped in our cab, and I chatted with our driver, who I'd made decent friends with by then too! He began and ended every interaction with me with "Pura Vida!" and made a peace sign. I liked him.


Not too much later it was dinner time again. New day, new juice. This one was watermelon!

We had soup each night, but I think this was the first one I took a picture of. It was zucchini soup! It had great clean zucchini flavor, and super light on the salt! I was really getting used to this no salt thing and started getting on board the no-salt train!


Dinner was Paella with tofu, and a beet tartar salad. I loved this dinner so much!!


Dessert was a raw black cherry tart with bananas and cinnamon. Dare I say I loved dessert more?


We had an early morning tour the next day, so we had just a few minutes for breakfast. They made us breakfast tacos!! Such a delicious tofu scramble with nice tomato flavor, and amazing hashbrowns. I wish I could eat this every morning.


We took our cab to Domincal Beach to sign up for white water rafting. We got there a few minutes before the surf shop giving the tour opened up so we just walked along the village until we saw a big van with a yellow raft strapped to the roof roll by. They saw us, and yelled out the window, "You ready for rafting?" And of course we were! I loved our guide for this tour. He kept complimenting me on my Spanish and saying that most "blanquitas" don't even try to speak it, so he was impressed. We took a long ride out to the Savegre River, and kept stopping along the way to show us different plants and teach us what they are used for, and explained all about the economy and the way of life of the people of Costa Rica. I thought it was great and made the ride really interesting.




I never quite got over how beautifully green Costa Rica is. Seriously.







While the guides were getting the raft all ready to go in the water, we met a friend :) Most dogs in Costa Rica are strays. It was the same way in Puerto Rico. This one was very sweet and friendly.


We got all suited-up and our guide gave us the safety low-down and told us all about what to do in case of emergency. Can I remind you that I have never done any kind of adventure sport and just kind of showed up for these things?? While he was explaining what to do if you are thrown out of the raft and left behind, I started getting a little bit nervous.



We moseyed around Dominical Beach for a while before heading back to our hotel, figuring we had missed second lunch, but we were fed twice by the tour already, so I grabbed a coconut or "pipa" and sat by the beach for a few before we went back.


Juice that night was strawberry-melon. It was very mild, but very refreshing.

Potato Leek Soup! I make potato leek soup about a hundred times during the winter at home, so we were super thrilled to get this homey bowl of soup so far away from our little place in New York.


Dessert did not disappoint. This was a raw chocolate tart with berries & cream sauce.


We had a tour planned for later in the afternoon, so after breakfast we went to the beach to poke around and get a little wi-fi fix.




Part of our package included a "Romantic Lunch" by the waterfall, and so we did that after our beach trip. They put out some beautiful flowers on the patio by the waterfalls and got us some nice red wine. We started with a broccoli tofu quiche.


Lunch was a nice big platter of fruits and fresh baked goods. My favorite was the mangosteen!! There was also papaya, mango, pineapple, strawberries, watermelon, kiwi, and grapes, They made some fresh zucchini bread and some chocolate truffles and raw chocolate coconut cookies. We were too full to move after this lunch.


We saw four different sloths, some monkeys, a toucan, and lots of ants and insects. It was so cool to learn so much about the jungle while hiking through it.



 I wish we could have taken pictures of us ziplining but we didn't want to take my phone (our camera) up on the wire with us in case it dropped. It seemed too risky. I really wish we could have gotten some pictures, because it was such an amazing experience! I saw a sloth hanging out eating a leaf and hanging upside down while I swished through the jungle. You can see it from a whole different perspective when you ride across on a wire!

My favorite juice of the trip was the Guanábana juice. It was rich and frothy like coconut, but it had some nice sweet notes like a pineapple, but also a smooth taste like a banana. I must have more guanábana!!!


That evening the soup was  tomato-white bean. It was so delicious and I think it was my favorite soup we had during our time there!

Dinner was a Moroccan Tagine with fresh veggies and some tofu-stuffed mushrooms with a cous cous pilaf. I loved this dish!! I ate my mushrooms first and then eagerly eyed Alex's. He was too slow. I got all the mushrooms!

We had raw carrot cake for dessert! It was cinnamony and delicious.

Of course we had our juice and coffee the next morning while we pondered what we would do with our last day in Costa Rica.


These are amazing yuca cakes with some more of that delicious tofu scramble from breakfast-taco day. I thought they were potato, but then one of our hosts asked me how I like the yuca, and I was so surprised! I loved it! I had thought it was potato the whole time I was eating it, but now I will go home and make some yuca cakes!


After breakfast we hung out by the waterfalls until it was time for our surfing lesson!


Like I said, I really don't do adventure sports, so I am not sure what had gotten into me on this trip, but the more we did, the more we wanted to try! We went to the same surf shop that took us rafting and got the same guide as well! He was great, and really fun to surf with.


Surfing proved to be the biggest challenge for me. For starters, the board is too heavy for me to carry. There are tinier boards but they aren't good for beginners. I had a really tough time maneuvering it, but my guide helped me position myself and gave me a push when a wave came. I was able to stand up and ride the waves almost every time!! It was really fun! Alex had luck as well, and since he was a little stronger, he could get up and turn around all on his own. I was totally exhausted from all the paddling and it took a lot of effort to balance enough to stand up! I also had scraped my knees up like crazy from sliding on the board. I had some serious surfing scars later, but my guide reminded me, "No pain, No gain."


Bet you'd think we couldn't surf because we're not from California? Our guide says he's surfed all over the world, and if you can surf here in Dominical, you can surf anywhere. He said the water in California is too cold and the waves too small. Only a serious surfer says that! We surfed while the tide started to come in, and by the time it was fully high tide, it was certainly no place for beginners. The current is stronger than any I've ever seen. The waves are so gigantic that Alex stood and filmed them for about 20 minutes. It's kind of something you have to be there to see, but man do I have a lot of wave-footage!


We took our cab ride back home, away from Dominical Beach for the last time :(


We were sad to leave, but at least we had this nice mango juice to come back to!

 We had pasta for lunch!! It was the first pasta I had since beginning the salad/smoothie diet I implemented on myself during the month before my wedding. Let me tell you about it. This pasta with pesto was the most delicious thing in the world. Pasta is my spirit food. I am a grouch without it.
I am so happy we were reunited.


For dessert we had these little raw cannoli bites with coconut cream!



We hung out in our room for a while after lunch, went in our jacuzzi, packed up our bags and got some reading in before dinner.

I don't recall the exact flavor, but I think this was a pineapple/papaya hybrid juice.

The soup was a nice butternut squash bisque. I am not sure if butternut squash is native to Costa Rica, but I sure enjoyed it!

We had Seitan Stroganoff for dinner with brown rice and mixed veggies. I love stroganoff, you guys. I think I need to make the tofu one from Isa Does It ASAP.


Our last dessert was a homemade coconut ice cream over a vanilla poached pear with fresh fruit. A very nice way to say goodbye.


Our cab arrived early the next morning so we only had a few minutes to put as much fruit as we could into our mouths before setting off for our very long journey home.


We snapped a few more scenic shots of the countryside as we rode away.


We had to stop and see the crocodiles one more time on the way back!!