Vegan things

Here are some delicious vegan things in San Diego.

1. Anything at Plumeria. It's in University Heights, and I am fairly certain there are at least two other good vegan restaurants nearby, though I haven't tried 'em yet. Plumeria is exclusively vegetarian, though some of their dishes contain dairy and other animal products. However, most (possibly all) of their dishes can be made vegetarian. I'm getting used to the idea of eating meat substitutes since moving here, mostly because fake duck is just so damn good.

2. Vegan chai donuts at Dark Horse. It's a tiny coffee shop in Normal Heights; I ended up there with a study buddy recently after the larger coffee shop down the street was too packed on a Sunday afternoon. Only a few seats, but not typically very crowded. The iced coffee with almond milk was good, too.

3. An extensive vegetarian menu including amazing homemade tofu at Dao Fu, formally Tao, also in Normal Heights. They don't give you the opportunity not to try their homemade tofu, in fact. You are given an on-the-house salad with the stuff the moment you sit down.

4. A third Normal Heights spot, LeStat's, has several vegan options, including vegetarian cupcakes and vegetarian chili. It's spicy and delicious. And the cupcakes taste like they are created from heaven. There's also a LeStat's in University Heights on Park.

5. North Park's Sipz is pretty much can-do-no-wrong vegan. I always get the same things and split with friends because they are so delicious I can't bring myself to order anything else: kung pao "chicken", the dynamite roll, the caterpillar roll, and sometimes a vegan red velvet cake slice. If you didn't think vegan sushi could be good, I dare you to try theirs. There are other Sipz locations, though I haven't tried them.

6. Many options at the Hillcrest Farmer's market on Sunday mornings, including vegan cheesecake. If you think you're being healthier by eating vegan sweets, beware; this baby is made pretty much wholly of oils from cashews. While delicious, they're not exactly non-fattening.

7. Roots, located on the UCSD campus, is almost surely one of the reasons UCSD consistently gets voted top vegan campus. My favorites: sweet potato fries, the Root burger, and the Hetch Hetchy.

Originally I had thought of making a new themed blog (I'm a fan of themes) in which I'd report on all sorts of restaurants in terms of their vegan-friendliness. It seems that perhaps there is not a large need for this (one can of course use Yelp! to search for veganness within a specific restaurant), so I'm holding off.

In other news, the quarter is drawing to a close, meaning that summer is drawing near! In San Diego, that means we are entering what I have heard named "June Gloom". Unfortunately, the month that is typically nicest in eastern cities is one of the saddest in the south of California. However, it seems to perk up in the afternoons, when the clouds have been clearing (at least recently). This afternoon it was still a bit cloudy when our softball team (which I am a part of almost only in name; I played in just one game this term), the Earthpigs, won the intramural championship game! ...by default, since the opposing team only showed 55 minutes late. No matter, we still won championship t-shirts (a first for me, in sports) and got to eat celebratory Popsicles. Snort snort snort.

Becoming a Californian

Shocking, but the longer I live here in Southern California, the more I'm convinced that I actually live here (and that it's not some elaborate dream I'm involved in or some very serious summer camp that I've decided to undertake as an adult).  More evidence to this conclusion came this week when I finally broke down and made it a priority to procure a legitimate digital piano from the bowels of Craigslist.  In addition the choir I joined as soon as I got here in mid-September performed their concert with full orchestra (C.P.E. Bach's Magnificat -- C.P.E., for short, just like "Ben" for "Benjamin," as our lively director put it).  You can't be owning digital pianos and singing in choirs with full-on orchestras unless you actually live in the damn city.

In further evidence, today involved the acquisition of a whole lotta Californian documentation.  Including (but not limited to) license plates for my car (though they expire before the current plates, grr), registration, a title, and some sad piece of paper that passes for a driver's license (they let me keep my Mass license, though it now has a hole through it, just like my heart).  In good news, I managed to miss exactly six questions on the written driver's test I had to take, which is the maximum number of items you can miss and pass (perfection!).

Ah, yes.  Also in other good news, the probabilistic linguistics class I'm in had a great little bit in the homework assignment that was due today.  In the end I think I misinterpreted part of it, which, if true, actually makes the problem even better.  Essentially we were to compute the power (i.e. the sensitivity to a true difference) for detecting the difference between two datasets pulled from two distributions with true underlying differences in mean and/or variance.  Neat, right!?

In other news, tonight a friend of mine and I bailed on our typical Tuesday-night activity of volleyball (with the world- ... ok, UCSD-famous EARTHPIGS of the cognitive science department) and hiked up (hike = drive in SoCal) to Solana beach to see the Devil Makes Three, one of the only "cool" bands I purport to know anything about, play at a place called BellyUp, which was a great venue (though we nearly got knocked over by some overly zealous-turned-angry moshers).  Band was awesome, as usual -- I saw them (once? twice) at Middle East (pretty sure twice) in Cambridge, which is a tiny venue and really great (typically leads to chatting with the band after, if you are so inclined), and once in Brooklyn back in the days of attempting to escape from Boston to NYC as often as possible (aka my second year of grad school).  Either this crowd was a lot rowdier, or I'm just getting old.