I don't even know where to begin, my weekend trip (Friday through Saturday) was really wonderful. I have been so busy these past couple of weeks with school full-time (well, one credit short of full-time, but the field work makes up for that ), working 20+ hours a week at the hospital, and trying to keep up with the animal activism scene and I haven't really had time for a break. On top of all of that, the Sacramento horror convention Sinister Creature Con was canceled, which was a big disappointment because I have been going every year since they started in 2015 and it had become a tradition for my boyfriend and me to spend a weekend in Sacramento for the convention, which also coincides with the Sacramento Vegan Chef Challenge. I was getting a little overwhelmed at the beginning of the month knowing I wasn't going to have my weekend vacation filled with horror and good food, until my boyfriend surprised me by suggesting we go to Sacramento anyway for a night so we could at least tour the Vegan Chef Challenge restaurants. I was so happy and excited, and the weekend did not disappoint!
We left Friday morning and arrived in town around 11:30am. We booked an airbnb (our first time) in a cute neighborhood that was the perfect distance from everything (we were barely a mile away from any place we were interested in checking out). I loved the house we stayed in. It was built in the 1930s and described in the airbnb listing as an English cottage style home. The photos I took weren't very good, so I am using some photos from the listing because they really did capture the place well:
the front of the home
the master bedroom with a super comfy bed
Really cute, right?
The decor was also perfect for me because there were lots of animals, including bunnies and birds!
Actually, before we checked-in to our Airbnb, we stopped at our first Vegan Chef Challenge restaurant. If you aren't familiar with the Vegan Chef Challenge, it is a national challenge that runs for about a month in whatever cities decide to try it out. Restaurant chefs are challenged to create a vegan menu at their restaurant for the duration of the contest and compete with other chefs. Although vegan restaurants can compete, the real hope is that non-vegan restaurants will see the value in offering more vegan dishes. From their website:
The Vegan Chef Challenge was brought about to not only show the community how amazing vegan food is but to bring the non-vegan and vegan communities together to share in something they both love... AMAZING FOOD! It is also a great way to show local restaurants the monetary benefits of offering delicious vegan food on their menus. Lastly, the competition part is fun for the chefs because it encourages them, in a fun and exciting way, to push their creativity when creating their menus.
The place we visited first was Burger Patch, an all-vegan burger restaurant serving burgers, chik'n tenders, fries, and shakes. Their Chef Challenge feature is an apple pie shake, which tasted as good as it looked in the photos online. I wasn't hungry enough for a burger, so I ordered the tenders and fries (although I couldn't finish my fries either).
We ate, then checked-in to the Airbnb, and then we relaxed quietly for a while. I think my boyfriend was sitting in the living room on his phone while I laid on one of the twin beds in another room reading a Get Fuzzy comic book I found on the bookshelf. One great thing about the weekend was how laid back and open it felt. We only had a very general plan, which was to eat at Revolution Wines for dinner on Friday, get breakfast at Orphan on Saturday morning, and then eat dinner at The Porch Saturday night, with Instax photos for my side-job somewhere in-between. The only time constraint we had was our checkout time of 11:00am Saturday, so the rest of the time we were open to just doing whatever we felt like. And Friday afternoon we just felt like lounging.
Later in the afternoon we started to take some Instax, but then my batteries died for the first time since I got the camera over 3 years ago. Since we had to go out to get batteries, I asked if we could also stop by an antique store. We went to a placed called The Antique Company, which was a two story building that had a lot of neat stuff.
the ramp upstairs was my favorite part
I ended up buying a pair of black cotton gloves to replace my torn driving gloves. When I was purchasing them the owner gave me a concerned look and asked me, "you're not wearing those for a Halloween costume, are you?" He was very relieved when I told him no.
I think I will end my post here. I have been laying in bed for a couple hours now and need to get up and do some stuff for school and work. I will post some more about my weekend over the next couple of days.