Vida Vegan Con: Day One

Um, so I totally lied to y'all when I said I'd blog from Vida Vegan Con. My bad. I was having so much hanging with all my vegan blogger buddies, I totally neglected the blog. So now, I'll be re-capping for the next few days. I have almost 300 pictures! But I promise to narrow pics down to a few a day. The rest of the pictures will be up on Facebook by the weekend. Promise.

Paul and I boarded our Delta flight from Memphis at 8 a.m. on Thursday, August 25th. We had a layover in Minneapolis, and with only an hour to grab food and board our next flight, I managed to find tofu! I got the Kung Pao Tofu from Wok 'n' Roll in the airport. Pretty tasty for airport eats:

When we arrived in Portland, we checked into the hotel and immediately headed to the pre-Vida Vegan Con meet-and-greet. On the way to the bus stop, only a block from the hotel, we found vegan food carts!!!! Portland is a magical place! This row of carts near Portland State University is home to the famous Homegrown Smoker! I ate there on Friday, but more on that later...

The meet-and-greet was at a vegan-friendly bar called Vendetta. Look! It's Vida Vegan Con co-organizer/Get Sconed blogger Jess Scone and vegan burger queen/cookbook author/Just the Food blogger Joni Newman!

Vendetta only had a few vegan options, but I went with this Tofu Sandwich (tofu rubbed with a cilantro-lime seasoning and topped with garlic-habenero sauce). I never say no to habenero! Pretty tasty. Not for the folks who hate plain tofu, but I love plain tofu so...

After dinner, it was picture time! I ran into the kale-loving JL from JL Goes Vegan and the super-rad Krista from Sugar Skull!

And I finally got to meet my long-time cookbook author idol, Dynise from Urban Vegan ... in case you didn't know, she's written a cookbook of the same name.

I spent much of the weekend hanging with these awesome ladies: Cat of The Verdant Life and Amber from Almost Vegan (she made some delicious white chocolate peanut butter to sell in the Vida Vegan Con exhibitor room ... and I bought two jars!).

After dinner and drinks, we all headed to the Curious Comedy Theater for a sneak peek preview of Vegucated, a documentary following three omnis who went vegan for six weeks. It was a fabulous, honest, and touching (did I say "touching"?) film. Read more about it here.

When the screening was over, we spent a few minutes chatting it up with hunky vegan bodybuilder, Robert Cheeke! He's the author of Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness. This man has some serious guns ... way more serious than mine:

The after-party was at Sweet Hereafter, a totally vegan bar!! What? Yes, a vegan bar where all the beer, liquor, wine, and food is totally animal-free!

I was still a little full from my tofu sandwich, but I can't resist a totally-vegan menu. Eating too much became my theme for the weekend, a theme I kicked off with this Pretzel Plate (two soft pretzels with cashew cheese and beer mustard). Yes, there is only one pretzel on this plate because I ate one before I snapped this picture. Suck it.

After the bar, we made our way back to the hotel to prepare for another day in the vegan motherland. More on those adventures tomorrow.