No, We Didn't Stay in Vermont....

Cherry Berry Muffins

but we really, really didn't want to come back to Ohio. We had an amazing time and ate lots of good food. Here's a brief recap. If you just like that muffin, skip down to the recipe.

We did a lot of traveling on backroads, which means almost any road in Vermont. We'd gotten a couple of food ideas from the internet. Places that were supposed to exist didn't anymore, other places had sprung up, and still others we just ambled in and they happily worked something out with us. We got a great grilled vegetable sandwich in a tiny town called Danby, got to eat at Stone Soup, found a restaurant that was about the size of a closet (really nice people, super cozy) in Bennington called Marigold Kitchen who did soy cheese (and great pizza)...but the highlights would have to be A Single Pebble and Healthy Living. Both of these are in the Burlington area.

At A Single Pebble, we found out that the owner's wife was vegan. Talk about giving you confidence in ordering! I had the Sesame Beef (seitan) one time and General Chou's Chicken (seitan) the other time. Jim had the Salt and Pepper Tofu (we can safely say the one in V'con is better, but this was great) and Ma Po. I actually ate an entire meal with chopsticks, much to my surprise! That midwest habit of using a fork is hard to break. We both decided that this is our favorite restaurant ever, so we had to eat there twice.

Healthy Living, which is really a natural food store, has incredible sandwiches! The paninis there have me lusting about buying a panini press, which I know I don't need. Great seitan, loads of vegan options and very reasonably priced. I also had Berry Nog Smoothie there...words can't express how delicious it was!

We got a quick lunch at The Skinny Pancake in Burlington. They have a Vegan Monster crepe! They happened to be out of tofu on the day we were there, but even without it, this made a great lunch.

I can't leave out Strong Hearts Cafe in Syracuse. We stopped there on our way up and on our way home. It was wonderful to have an option while traveling, especially one so close to the highway. We love the atmosphere and had two good meals there. Get this - you can pick from 5 kinds of seitan for a a sandwich!

I really thought we'd be able to try Wheeler's Ice Cream... but no luck finding it. However, we did hit a Price Chopper and picked up some vegan butterscotch chips! We also went to several farmer's markets and were awed by the beautiful vegetables. If only we'd had a kitchen!

Since I can't really leave this post with no real food, here are the muffins I made for the car ride. It's veganized from King Arthur Flour's Basic Muffins .

Cherry Berry Muffins (with two cool tricks!)
Makes 10 large or a dozen reasonable sized muffins

2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 cup soy milk
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup oil (it's optional in the original, but I use it)
1/2 cup soy yogurt
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
zest from 1/2 a lemon
1 1/2 cups sour cherries and blueberries (mixed)

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. (Yes, really, 500 degrees!)

Lightly oil your muffin tin.

It's your typical muffin method. Mix all the dry ingredients together, then mix the soy milk, vinegar, oil, soy yogurt, lemon juice, zest and vanilla in a separate bowl. Here's a cool trick from the original: right before you mix your liquids into your dry, add the fruit to the dry ingredients and stir. It helps keep them from sinking and disperses them throughout the muffin. Nobody wants a fruit muffin with no fruit! Add the liquids to the dry and mix very lightly. You can have some lumps which are better than tough muffins. Scoop them into the tin and pop in the oven. Now for trick #2: as soon as you put them in, drop the temperature 40o degrees and bake for 15-20 minutes or until done. The purpose of the hot oven is to set the muffins and keep them higher. Try it, it really works!

You can tell, the options are endless with this one. Go wild!

Interestingly, there were a lot of gluten-free options in Vermont. Menus and stores had whole sections dedicated to celiacs. The awareness of veganism is much greater than here in Ohio, but it seems that state loves it's cheese! But it was so nice to try to order in a restaurant and not have the server's eyes cross when we mentioned the V- word. We're heading back in October and are already counting the days. I was surprised how much I missed cooking... so get ready! Loads of testers recipes will be posted soon.