Mini-Moon in Mendocino

Pin It Every long absence from the blog deserves an equally long-winded excuse. This is a good one, so hear me out... VB and I got hitched! In the middle of our cross country wedding circuit, we took a break and drove up to Mendocino and Fort Bragg for a quick getaway. But don't call it a honeymoon, because we'd like to reserve that moniker for a bigger, badder vacation. I shall call it.... mini-moon (cue Dr. Evil).

We started off near Healdsburg and then drove up to Medocino and Fort Bragg. Nothing up there but sun, beach, wine and beer. And hippies. All good things in my book. Except the hippies. Well... they're alright too.

Dry Creek General Store. So charming.

Real pop. With sugar and everything.





Hazy Mendocino morning.

Wild blackberries -- lots of large seeds and not particularly palatable. Yes, I ate one.



Hiking in Russian Gulch.





Darwin's advice on eating things found in a forest: "Don't be stoopid." We weren't.

Same advice applies here, despite its resemblance to banana.

Sunset at Fort Bragg.

Beach full of glass washed ashore from years of trash being dumped into the ocean.

Last look at Mendocino

Obligatory cute animal picture. His name is Lou.

Sophie's Kitchen Breaded Vegan Shrimp

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Believe it or not, Sophie's Kitchen Breaded Vegan Shrimp is not the first vegetarian shrimp product that I've had. I think the tricky thing with fake shrimp products is the texture. Shrimp has that weird texture naturally that is difficult to imitate. I'm not sure that any fake shrimp product can ever come close to the real thing. But Sophie's Kitchen Breaded Vegan Shrimp is an interesting attempt at an dairy-free and soy-free imitation shrimp. This is made in Taiwan (yay!) with konjac. For those who are not familiar with konjac, it is a starchy root that solidifies into choking hazard jelly that ends up in various sweet tea and fruit drinks. It has a slightly crunchy texture that is just a bit firmer than jello. In Taiwan, konjac gets turned into various different kinds of fake seafood, including fake sashimi (of all the things that you think would be impossible to imitate...).

The jelly texture is really not similar to shrimp at all, but once the clever folks at Sophie's Kitchen breaded these crescent shaped konjac jelly, you don't notice the difference in texture as much. That said, no one can really confuse this with the real deal. But in the end, I didn't really mind them, especially after dipping them into cocktail sauce. As for the taste, you guessed it, it didn't taste like shrimp... or much of anything else for that matter.

Taste: 1 out of 5 stars
Texture: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 2 out of 5 stars

In A Nut Shell: It doesn't get high marks for similarity to real shrimp, but it didn't taste bad. I rather enjoyed it, actually. But I definitely wouldn't mistake it for real shrimp, which I'm sure is a good thing to some vegetarians out there.

Our Bounty

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Remember a long time ago, we planted some tomatoes? Well, we finally have some fruit to show for it. And they are good lookin'! These are called pineapple heirloom tomatoes and they come in vibrant yellow and orange. We still have a couple on the vine (and one got stolen... it looked that good!) but this is the bulk of our bounty. Oh yeah, a couple of green zebras snuck in there.

Look at the pretty colors! I kept this really simple. Whole wheat pasta tossed with gently cooked tomato, some garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, sugar and chopped parsley. And we have stunningly fresh and simple dinner.