Day 53: Future Plans / Restaurant Ridiculousness

Today was yet another sushi train day. The options are reasonable: some weird pumpkin and carrot thing that tasted good, some random thing that we think was grilled eggplant, vegetable goyza thingies minus the goyza sauce because alcohol, and then the tiniest slice of ginger which I was trying for the very first and last time tonight. The face I made had my friend falling off of her seat (at least one of us found it humourous). The only other options I remember in the pre-made vegetable area were inari (a fried tofu stuffed with rice), the standard avo in rice, cucumber in rice, and some weird thing that freaked me the hey out. It looks like it’s vegetables wrapped in a thin white sheet of rice, but first the eyes think it looks like a tiny, white, bumpy man part / evil alien egg about to pop (depending which one of us you ask). I literally jumped back when I saw it.

Do you see it? Do you see what I mean?

We came up with the perfect plan. After we move in together, we will purchase a sushi making kit. Once we have mastered the art there-of, we are buying a fully functioning moving model train set. Much sushi will be made, then placed on plates that will then be balanced on the train. Then we sit in the middle of the train set and grab whichever sushi we feel like eating as watch low budget Japanese horror films (the best kind). Ok that last bit about the horror movies I came up with by myself – but it is going to happen. Huzzah home made sushi train!

It will look a little something like this, but in the lounge room. If successful further tracks might be built to have the train reach the kitchen (a sensible next step) followed by the bedrooms and maybe the bath tub and then, if we have one, the balcony (gotta make the neighbourhood jealous).

In semi-related news, I came up with a new name (and a theme) for my/our/the vegan pizza store. PJ Pizzas. Can be spelt Pjzzas. You can set it up like a regular pizza restaurant, but the catch is everyone has to come in PJs or bedtime attire including restaurant staff. Appropriate ones. If you don’t have any, or don’t have any on because you’re a walk in or something like that, then you can rent/buy a onesie from the restaurant to wear over your clothes. The restaurant will have an assortment of styles and sizes for the young and the older – dinosaurs, chickens, even Pikachus and Stitches if we can. Point is, no PJ = no pizza. Feel free to steal this idea if you’re thinking of opening a restaurant of any kind, just remember me if/when your restaurant become super famous and they ask you where you got the PJ idea. You got it from me 😀

In completely other news La Brana was (presumably) lactose intolerant. In case you missed the news this morning, La Brana is the 7000 year old guy found in La Brana region of Spain. His DNA was perfectly preserved and has been tested. He also was very dark skinned yet had peircing blue eyes – making him one of the first of human kind to have mixed african and european features. He ate meat, wore fur, and died with his hunting utensils around him. He died at 30 years old. It has been added to my to-do list to research the average life span and the common diet and lifestyle of cultures back in the day, before modern medicine and modern science told us things and kept us alive. Back when all we had was food and lifestyle to determine our lifespan and the only knowledge and culture we knew was our own, grown from those directly around us. This idea is either really boring, or really brilliant (or really done before by ever other “genius” who has just gone vegan/health conscious and is researching it). Will let you know how that goes. Eventually.

To eating pizza in pikachu pjs in the middle of a public place,

Summer Tay.

P.S. If you were interested in seeing more of the model train set shown above, you can view the full article here.

P.S.S. If you happened to be at sushi train tonight and noticed 2 girls singing and seat dancing to Spice Girls Wannabe followed by Britney Spears Hit Me One More Time, that totally was not my friend and I.  We definitely did not go on a nostalgia trip of our 90’s childhoods in a busy sushi restaurant. You are thinking of some other people.

Day 46: Eggplant Pizza Escapades

Broke the fast with more chocolate cake.

Ended the day with Eggpland Pizza at Pancakes On The Rocks. It was nice to not order chips or wedges. You definitely feel the missing cheese, and definitely add the olives. It tasted good for a once off. Ended up giving my two last pieces for my friends chips anyway, but it was worth it.  As is tradition I bought the hot marshmallow cocoa with the marshmallow on the side for use in bribery for future favours. I used to like it with dairy, but with soy it is 10 million times better. Now it tastes like a decadent lolly thta you cannot get enough of. So good. The best part of the night was when someone paid money to have Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice followed by Mc Hammers Cannot Touch This on the dukebox.

Overall a good night. If you love eggplant, a veganised eggplant pizza here is worth it. If not, there are always wedges. Or a MASSIVE garden salad sans the fetta. It looks good, but I make thos eall the time at home, so I’ll pass and go back to wedges.

Sorry this didn’t post earlier. Having some technical issues and hopefully they will be fixed soon.

Be happy 🙂

Summer Tay.

Day 41: Vegan Options / Shopping Centre Musings

Want to know how many vegan options there are at a mall? 0.

Wedges the colour of soot are not an option. Chips deep-fried in beer (yes that is a thing. I live in Australia ok.) is not an option to me. I want an actual meal to be available. It’s not like they don’t get the foot traffic. So I came up with some ideas on what would make an easy to start and maintain,  likely profitable vegan “mall restaurant”.

Woodfire pizza pieces. Make a massive pizza. Sell each piece for an exhorbrent amount (say $3-$4ea), and add the option of a drink of choice (soft drink, bottled juice or water bottle) and a piece of vegan garlic bread for an extra $2-$3. It wouldn’t need that much space to set up, the drink companies can take care of supplying that side of the business (unlike many health food stores that also offer fresh juices – a fab idea, but very costly, and not as suitable with pizza). Clearly here the focus isn’t so much selling the pizza on it’s healthyness and more on selling it for it’s woodfire and pizza-yness.
I also think Woodfire Pizza Pieces would make an awesome name for the business. You have the W like a fire shaping itself as flames but with leaves at the ends, and the word woodfire all in a firey red written in x font on top, then Pizza Pieces underneath in a different font. Maybe in yellow with a black background, maybe black with a yellow background, I don’t know I’m making this up as I go along…but I like it… this store would be so cool.

Burgers. Make patties out of soy. Make patties out of sweet potato. Make patties out of rice. Any of these would do, or you can make a few with one and a few with another and so on. Get creative with which vegetables and herbs and spices you’re putting in each one. use incredible tasting and incredible looking (and don’t underestimate the importance of the good looking) burger buns. The buns must be so beautifully delicious they attract all the attention and make people say “ooOooo where did you get that? I want some”. This business would do well to also make wedges and if possible soy whipped cream and some chilli sauce? Or, make wedges with mushed avocado for dip the new in thing? Same deal with the drink options. Burgers, depending on how big your buns are (zing!), would cost somewhere around the $6-$12ea mark. Add $4 for wedges, small sauce and a drink on the side. For a container of just wedges and some sauce, I guess depends on the size of container. No more than $10 for the largest. I will hire a tall, dark haired, massively moustached guy named Bob and have him on the front counter as often as possible.

Sandwich bar (+ soups). Have all the standard salady ingredients. Include as many vegetables as possible in your line-up. Have as many bread options as possible. Have salad dressing optiosn available. People can create their own salad or sandwich or pick a pre-made one. This business would do well to sell fresh juices as it ought have extra large quantities of most if not all of the things on hand. This could also do well if you could and chose to add a stove top for creating soups. You have all the ingredients to make some creative soups as well as some traditional and classic ones. You have the bread to accompany it. You also have a lot of foot traffic that for half of the year are nursing colds and fighting the general extreme chill happenning around them. They will love you. But possibly not as much as the centre staff. Whenever they get uncontagently sick – if they are anything like me – they will rock up to work anyway, and they will want soup. Soup is soft and easy to digest, swallowed easily without any chewing and doesn’t over load the mouth on taste nor the nose on smell (two very big things for body control) and sits litely in the tummy. This is also why a lot of older people say they like it. It’s also classy. If I may so myself. I ❤ soup.

So those are my top 3 most likely options for when vegan foods start appearing in our shopping centres. A special note to kebabs and sushi places, as they are the most likely to have a sufficient vegetarian menu and be some of the easiest to convert to vegan. Also a shout out to Hungry Jacks because, even though you sell a lot of disgusting crap, you also sell a vegetarian burger which tastes phenominal. It only requires the subtraction of cheese and it still tastes like the best thing on your menu.

I hope you enjoyed my little rant and I hope you find inspiration and start one or more of these businesses in my suburb and local mall. Or your own suburb and mall. Or somewhere. Just do it, you know you want to 😀

Kudos if you got my reference in there by the way.

Have a lucky day!

Summer Tay.