A Train Journey to Beat Them All: Ulan-Ude to Ulaan Baatar, Mongoliaby Randi / July 19, 2017
Our first stop and only city visited in Mongolia (also the only city in Mongolia, from what I saw of the rest of the country), Ulaan Baatar improved upon the food in the eastern-Asia part of our trip, continued the sad tradition of incredibly polluted air, and worsened the car traffic situation so far. It’s hard to say no to this city since it has so many Loving Huts and even better other vegan restaurants (I know! In Mongolia! So many!), but I think the annoying parts of it outweigh my ability to have good food. Luckily, we were there for Naadam, the national annual festival of the Three Sports of Men, dedicated to Genghis (pronounced Chingis here, and ya know what, I’m gonna call him Chingis because that’s the real Mongolian way) Khan. Naadam (for a separate post) was interesting and something big and fun to do. Without it, Ulaan Baatar is a dilapidated city with some temples and monasteries and museums but I quickly got tired of it. Exhausted, really. Maybe because I couldn’t breathe.
Chingissssss what’s up mannnn
After we landed in Ulaan Baatar at 6:30am, we DIDN’T walk with all our bags to our hostel! A first! We had a car waiting for us, thanks to the tour company we booked our countryside trip with. More on that shitshow in a later post too, but at least they drove us to our hostel. Of course the driver asked when he dropped us off if we had money to pay, even though he was from the tour company who offered the ride a perk of the package. We said no and he just shrugged and said goodbye, so yeah. That’s annoying.
He dropped us at the Modern Mongol hostel, which had a sign on the door saying check-in was from 2pm to 6pm, and reception opens at 9am-11am, some time in there. Um. You cannot have a SIGN ON THE ACTUAL DOOR be the only way you communicate to guests that there will be no one to OPEN THE DOOR. I was so mad I was ready it burn it down. Like they didn’t send an email or say on their pages on booking.com or hostelworld that this was the case. You need to make sure your guests know this information BEFORE they arrive. It was freaking 7am! We had to wait at least 2 hours for a person to let us in? Bullshit. Luckily, another guest let us in, and there was a big lobby sitting area so we set up camp, got out our toiletries and camping towels, plugged in our devices, and showered in the pretty big shared bathroom, all before checking in. (This place had many more showers than toilets. Not the right ratio, guys.) We didn’t even care about how we were making a mess with all our shit all over the place. You don’t tell us the details about checking in (not even checking in to the room! Coming in to the place just to leave our bags!) before we arrive, we don’t care about making the lobby our own. We showered so good. It was lovely. I mean it was a shitty hostel and none of the showers had functioning drains (always bring shower shoes) but still.
The day we arrived was Inauguration Day for Mongolia’s new President! We didn’t really see any of it besides this group of army doers in Sukhbatar Square, the main square in UB. With Naadam starting the very next day, it was a super exciting time for the country and capital!
Unfortunately, our beloved friend (and fellow lawyer/travel blogger) Sivani at Ever the Wayfarer was unable to join us for this Mongolia portion of our trip as planned, and we were very sad to not have her around to show us how to fashion a sink out of a twig and some fabric as we knew she could have once we were sinkless in the countryside. However, sorry Sivani but it’s for the best that you weren’t in Ulaan Baatar with us because our ‘triple’ room barely fit one person. We had to put all of our stuff on the bunkbeds because there was no floor space! You would have been sleeping with all my peanut butter and accidentally vegan cookie finds! (Actually that sounds amazing.) Also, we learned that despite appearances (of the lobby), this hostel was not great. It attracted all the crowds I despise: young teenage blonde girls who facetimed their boyfriends all night every night without regard for how much bandwidth they were using OR how loud they were being (so loud, heard them always); dirty older European backpackers who do their laundry in the sinks (despite their being a machine) as a GROUP ACTIVITY so people who actually need to use the sinks for regular usages are forced to stand behind them and give ‘are you kidding me with this?’ looks at them in the mirror as they take over all 4 sinks; older white female Americans who praise themselves for how liberal they are (while praising Bernie) while repeating the same story over and over about the one time they told a white man not to be racist (it was barely a story; do more, white women); and generic other yoots who have no consideration for how loud they are throughout the night. Oh and old Chinese men who shout at each other in the hallway in the middle of the night. Oh and people who play music in the common areas without headphones like they’re doing the rest of us a service. So, everybody I hate. Also, the wifi at Modern Mongol was so bad it was pretty much nonexistent (which is why we are now two weeks behind ughh I hate it I’m sorry). Hard no on a recommendation.
obviously a picture of the train station should be higher up the post but weebly just does notttt like the wifi here and it’s easier to type this caption than move a picture
Out in the city, I was immediately struck by how bad the air was. It was like how Siberia was very polluted, but the car and traffic situation here is more like Bangkok – long, long lights, exhaust blown right in your face by substandard unregulated engines no matter where you stand, and dangerous drivers. At least in Bangkok there are a lot of overpasses for pedestrians to use on busy streets. This was a bad situation. And despite UB being the coldest capital city in the world (true fact, though we haven’t gotten a clear answer about whether that’s due to extremely low winter temperatures or a low overall yearly average of temperatures), it was hot and dry and burningly sunny most of the time. I felt asthmatic the whole time I was there, like my lungs were screaming and I couldn’t get a deep breath. That’s so awful! It also meant pretty much every time I stepped outside, I was exhausted, not being able to get enough oxygen. I must get a mask for China. I hope all you republicans enjoy when your part of the world has air like this too.
It’s hard to ignore the air when we need that to live, but the city apart from that was okay, I guess. It’s really nothing special, and the best part of it is the various vegan restaurants which we will talk about separately (because there are so many!) It looks clearly third world, and so many city buildings (aside from the skyscrapers) are very dilapidated – and almost every single building in the countryside is decaying or straight up falling apart. Literally half of the country’s 3 million residents live in this city, with the rest spread over the vast open spaces of the countryside. With UB representing so much of the country’s citizenry and most of its wealth, it’s clear that governmental corruption and mismanagement has done all of Mongolia a disservice, to say the least.
Chojin Lama Temple
There are some nice tourist attractions though. We first went to the Chojin Lama Temple Museum, which survived the communist purge of all things religious by being a ‘museum’ of religion. It was really close to the hostel, so an easy first site. That also means it’s right in the middle of the city, adjacent to modern buildings and skyscraper-types. The juxtaposition of this super old temple with the sleek new office buildings was interesting, like how in London the Tower Bridge is like next to the Gherkin. I think I mean the Gherkin; it’s been too long already.
-OH OK – you know how in the Ulan-Ude post I talked about the lama in the monastery outside of town we went to and his body was embalmed for like centuries (or it was a ‘miracle’) but his head was papier-mache and I was like hey where’s your head? OKAY I WAS MISTAKEN. The Ulan-Ude shiny lama corpse was NOT papier-mache (you gotta say it the French way it’s funner) headed; he was fully intact just all head and body that’s been dead forever but still shiny. The papier-mache headed lama was HERE! At the Chogin Lama Temple. I KNOW, we are seeing SO MANY F-ING EMBALMED CORPSES that I’m mixing them up! It’s like I’m back in my internship at the D.A.’s office! JFC if you are mixing up your embalmed mummies you are seeing TOO MANY. And we have more to come in China! Sorry, I will try to keep them straighter but seriously how do you tell mummified lamas apart? (That sounds like the beginning of a joke.) Anyway, guess who has two thumbs and took a PICTUREEEEE? (imagine me pointing to myself with my two thumbs)
forgive me buddha!
The Chogin Lama temple was very pretty, and I enjoyed it because it was our first Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. I was not yet very sick of seeing the same faded colorful fabrics and dingy Buddha statues and crazy scary demon sculptures. I would indeed get sick of all this very, very quickly.
Husband made me do a face hole in the temple grounds, as he always does, so here is my reluctant agreement.
We lucked out with the bright sunny weather for these pictures, but we quickly realized that UB, and Mongolia in general, heat and sun are not playing. They are serious, and they are intense. Coupled with the terrible air quality, the immobilizing burn of the sun was pretty miserable. It rained one day and it felt sooo amazing afterwards. There was actual humidity and I could breathe! It lasted an hour. Whoever talks about how dry heat is so great is making shit up.
After the Chogin Lama temple, we went to the National Museum of Mongolian History, even though I was so f-ing tired and crankpotting and oh yeah, I think I kind of hate museums. It was interesting though. They had good stuff documenting the country’s long, interesting history, from the Stone Age to the modern change from communism to democracy. It’s very centrally located by Sukhbaatar Square, which I’m going to spell differently every time I type it I think, not on purpose just by default. I decided that I deserved to listen to music while museuming because I was still not in a bed and thus super sad about that so I put my headphones in and shuffled some showtunes. It took me until an old Mongolian woman glared at me to realize that I hadn’t pushed the headphone jack into the phone far enough and the current song playing, “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”, was audible to all in the room. I hope no one understood some of those lines. Actually no I hope they did.
After the Chogin Lama temple, we went to the National Museum of Mongolian History, even though I was so f-ing tired and crankpotting and oh yeah, I think I kind of hate museums. It was interesting though. They had good stuff documenting the country’s long, interesting history, from the Stone Age to the modern change from communism to democracy. It’s very centrally located by Sukhbaatar Square, which I’m going to spell differently every time I type it I think, not on purpose just by default. I decided that I deserved to listen to music while museuming because I was still not in a bed and thus super sad about that so I put my headphones in and shuffled some showtunes. It took me until an old Mongolian woman glared at me to realize that I hadn’t pushed the headphone jack into the phone far enough and the current song playing, “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”, was audible to all in the room. I hope no one understood some of those lines. Actually no I hope they did.
I liked this big statue of Chingis Khan (at least I think it’s Chingis…I mean it’s a statue and it’s in a museum in Mongolia, odds are that it’s Chingis) and a few ink drawings about his time, (1162-1227). The ink drawings were like recent, not from then, but still they were cool. Or I saw them in a brief moment of lucidity and that’s why they stuck.
lol right and left wise wangs
Later in our stay, we visited the Gandan Khiid monastery complex, which was kind of far from everything cool (like 45 minute walk from wherever you were, literally, no matter where, like everything in this city actually but worse) and actually not cool itself. It was whatever. Maybe I’m down on it because the bathrooms were locked and the one staff member on the huge grounds was the living embodiment of the shruggie emoji when I said hey the bathrooms are locked. Maybe I’m down on it because the name translates to “The Great Place of Complete Joy” and like no, if you’re not going to let me pee this is nowhere near even partial joy. Anyway, it’s home to the spiritual head of Mongolia, the Khamba Lama. So many lamas! It’s the most important monastery in the country, which I would not have believed looking at it. Originally, the monastery was built on the site in 1785, and newer buildings and temples have been built up since, though we couldn’t go in most of them. The ground is filled with stupas and little temples and shacks that were locked. I couldn’t really get a handle on the place. (I can’t get pictures to load because Weebly is awful and the internet here is too so imagine another temple/monastery.)
Over 800 monks live there, which is crazy because I didn’t see any.
We also visited the Bogd Khan Palace, which is down in the south of the city close to the Naadam stadium. Bogd Khan means ‘holy king’, and the palace is where the last holy king of Mongolia lived. The guidebook says it’s ‘full of ghosts’. The various small pavilions house statues of Buddhas of all sorts (who knew there wasn’t just a Buddha? Apparently anyone can become a Buddha, so we were told. Didn’t know!), lots of paintings of insane scenes of Buddha and friends and demons and all sorts of religious and wacky imagery, and random objects like musical instruments and, like, dishware.
There’s also a winter palace (like the Hermitage!) on the site that is a museum of the bog man’s personal possessions, like a lot of his furs and crowns and like, more dishware. Be warned, as I was not, that many rooms are full of bog stomper’s stuffed animals. I do not mean the cute fluffy kind that we all still sleep with. I mean real animals that were taxidermied. Rooms and rooms of them. All sorts. Big, small, birds, lions, polar bears, it was gross and unnecessary. Skip the winter palace.
Our last museum in UB was the unique Intellectual Museum, a private man’s shrine to puzzles. So there’s this genius but probably kookoopants man who the staff refers to as ‘the founder’ which doesn’t sound culty at all who has been making puzzles since he was a child, so he was like why not put all this in a museum along with all my weird baby dolls? A guide takes you around and shows you how to do a lot of them, and gives them to you to try. It will successfully make you feel like an idiot. They are impossible to do without knowing the tricks and stuff, but the guide will do them all in like 4 seconds and it’s hard to remember that it was her job to learn how. Anyway, there are all sorts, from secret boxes that open their compartments if you pull the right pieces apart, to those silver keys that slide apart if you twist them a certain way but your brain does NOT want to ever remember how to twist them, to strings of metal balls that when aligned properly make a sturdy pyramid (this one I can now do! so proud), to wooden rubix cube type things that will just drive you crazy. In addition, there is an entire floor of all the elaborate, and I mean elaborate, chess boards that The Master made. He either made or designed everything in this museum himself, btw. He is an impressive, prolific, probably socially awkward guy. The chess boards range from tiny marble boards with coral figures to gigantic (like 15 foot) wooden boards that are puzzles to make the table and board, and then each of the figures is its own intricate puzzle. I mean. Crazy. The museum offers visitors a few of these puzzles and chess players to try to put together for cash prizes. They range from $1,000 to $100,000, and I don’t think anyone has ever won, they are so difficult. I bet Sydney Bristow could do it but I am just not a spacial puzzle genius person.
The museum doesn’t let you take pictures, but if you have extra time in UB it’s a decent place to visit. You could get the same idea from buying a few of those wooden puzzle type jawns and trying to solve it for years and years until you go crazy because you just can’t, but it was cool to see all the different kinds and all the beautiful chess boards Our Great Leader made. I would have called it just a puzzle museum though, because calling it the Intellectual Museum makes it seem like the ability to solve this puzzles is what makes someone smart when that isn’t the case you just need to learn the trick to it I’m not upset about it at all.
Taraji P. Park
On one of our UB days, we took a day trip (with Sunpath, the company doing our longer trip to the countryside) to see Terelj National Park, which I refer to as the Taraji P. Henson National Park, obviously. I think this was by far our best day in Mongolia – the best natural beauty in the country, fun sites, and none of the whole living-in-the-desert-and-not-showering bullshit. Taraji was beautiful (she is, girl) but the drive was a little hard. Haha, I would have killed for a drive that hard during our week in the desert. Coming soon.
With our teenage guide (they all are!), we hiked a nice hike to a meditation center slash temple that was pretty cool. On the walk, there are all these numbered signs with different sayings (of the Buddha I guess?), and at one point you are supposed to spin a wheel to see which saying you need to focus on. I got #41 (my favorite Dave Matthews song!), and this is apparently what I need to think about for the next year:
girl you don’t have to tell ME people aren’t clean after the month I’ve had
Do all the parentheses mean you can replace words with new words? like Mad Libs?
view from the meditation center
on our hike
Ger camp in Terelj, like the ones we lived in the folowing week
Taraji also included Turtle Rock, a natural rock formation that looks like a turtle. Cute! Our guide said we could climb up it so we did, which was a bad idea. It is a frightening climb up very steep staggering rocks. We didn’t expect such a challenging climb to be the result of the guide’s casual suggestion. At one point, you have to go through this hole. We watched a few people and then said hell. no.
see the turtle?
nahhhh
The best part of the day trip to Terelj was seeing the GIGANTIC CHINGIS KHAN STATUE! It is 40 meters tall, but seems bigger, with Chingis just freaking enormous and depicted riding a horse so the whole thing is just so flipping big and fun and hilarious.
took this from the horse’s head, which you climb up!
Inside the complex (very nice complex!), there’s a museum that not-so-accurately charts Mongolia’s ‘illustrious’ history, and there’s a boot. The biggest Mongolian boot in the world.
I highly recommend doing the day trip to Terelj and Chingis statue if you find yourself in this country for some reason.
As has been the case all over Asia, we saw some amazing signs, like this club dedicated to our favorite Nicholas Cage movie.
And of course we both immediately realized what our legal professions hold once we return to work:
na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na BAT LAWWWW
So, overall UB was okay. We had some good times, but mostly we were glad to be there for Naadam (next post) and some good vegan restaurants (actual next post). Really, we were excited to end our city time and go out for our week in the countryside and the desert, because we heard that that is where Mongolia really shines. Hoo boy. Next next next post. Stay tuned for that carnival of atrocities.
that’s wonderful dear!
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The Wonders of Inle Lake & Golden Rock, Myanmar (Burma)
A lone fisherman on Inle Lake
The final leg of our journey through Myanmar centered around a relaxing – and then unfortunately horrendous – stay in Inle Lake, followed by a long, arduous, and amazing trek to the pilgrimage site of Golden Rock.
After another bucket-jumper flight to Heho to visit the lake villages, we stopped in Pindaya to see the famous Pindaya caves. The caves are a must-see, because they house more than 8,000 Buddha sculptures!
After another bucket-jumper flight to Heho to visit the lake villages, we stopped in Pindaya to see the famous Pindaya caves. The caves are a must-see, because they house more than 8,000 Buddha sculptures!
This goes on for so long
I kept expecting one to move
The Buddha images in Pindaya caves range in age from modern to several hundred years old. All kinds of people can donate the statues, from important government officials to civilians, so the mix is impressive.
In addition to the inside of the caves, the outside is really fun too. There’s this legend of princesses who, while bathing in the lake, were captured by a giant spider and trapped in the caves. Then, Prince Kummabhaya (Peter, Paul & Mary’s friend) saved them by shooting the spider with his bow and arrow. This legend is depicted at the entrance to the caves:
In addition to the inside of the caves, the outside is really fun too. There’s this legend of princesses who, while bathing in the lake, were captured by a giant spider and trapped in the caves. Then, Prince Kummabhaya (Peter, Paul & Mary’s friend) saved them by shooting the spider with his bow and arrow. This legend is depicted at the entrance to the caves:
That’s me laughing instead of recoiling from the spider. #Vegans
Transport to our hotel
After visiting Pindaya, we finally made our way to Inle Lake and to our hotel, Paradise Inle Resort. Inle Lake is a freshwater area in the Shan State (namesake of the super comfortable shan pants), and most people stay in some type of ‘resort’ while they explore the lake villages by boat during the day. You can only get around by boat – these hotels and villages are single buildings standing in the water (see below). No roads, just water. It’s pretty awesome. Aside from seeing the village markets and a few pagodas, there’s not much to do, hence the ‘resorts’ expect you to eat all your meals there and be there after dark.
A village in Inle Lake
Our hotel. It looks like that green part is land, but it’s not! Floating gardens!
At first, I was kind of upset that we had so many days in the Lakes and there was so little to do, but then…then it was the best thing ever. Because we got sick. REALLY sick. I thought I cholera. Luckily, my travel doctor (you need lots of shots for this country) had said, before the trip, “You’re going to get sick. Really sick. Here’s what you take when you do,” so we had proper medicine. Kind of hilarious, the doctor just hearing “Myanmar” and saying, yeah, no matter what you do, drink only bottled water eat only cooked food, whatever, you’re still going to get sick. And we did. Thank goodness this hotel was the one with television and wifi. It was the perfect place for the worst sickness ever! (Side note: ‘Joyful Noise’ is a fun movie to watch when you are half gone. Also, they blurred Keke Palmer’s cleavage in it! Hahahah! No one else’s cleavage, not Dolly Parton’s or anything, but the teenager’s. So weird!)
A woman removing the thread from lotus leaves 
Women making cheroot |
Thankfully, we recovered and got to see all the Lake sights. We visited lotus weavers, who do everything from pull the thread from lotus leaves to spin the thread into finished products for sales. Everyone was really nice, letting us watch them work. This lady tied some lotus thread around my wrist. It was really sweet.
We visited cheroot makers as well. Cheroot is a type of cigar, filled with all kinds of leaves and herbs and other addicting stuff. They are inexpensive and insanely popular. They are also mentioned in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “On the Road to Mandalay”, which I mentioned before:
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An’ I seed her first a-smokin’ of a whackin’ white cheroot,
An’ a-wastin’ Christian kisses on an ‘eathen idol’s foot
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I like it because you have to say ‘foot’ funny.
Anyway, the next place we visited in the Lakes will probably be your favorite – the Burmese Cat Sanctuary! We played with cats, and it was adorable. And they seemed to be well taken care of. It was also one of the nicest buildings we saw. I’m pretty sure you can stay here, as there were a few nice looking guest rooms. And there’s also a cafe, but we didn’t have a chance to look at the menu. These cats were so friendly. They have the run of the house and the gardens outside. |
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Burmese Cat Sanctuary
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There are so many cool things to see in this area, like these floating gardens:
And the impressively nimble fishermen, who famously stand on one leg, at the stern of the boat, while wrapping the other leg around the oar, handling the net while fishing pretty much hands-free. It’s crazy to watch: |
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A fisherman practicing hands-free yoga-style fishing
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As with all other towns in Burma, the daily markets are the biggest draw. The ones in Inle Lake were my favorite, because they sold this special tofu made from split peas! It’s found only in this region, and I’m so mad I couldn’t get to try it because of all the sickness. And the lack of cooking equipment. I need to go back ASAP just for this tofu.
The markets are usually really crowded, great for meeting people and getting a feel of a certain town. They’re also great for one of my favorite things – taking pictures of adorable children (boyfriend calls me the ‘babysnatcher’). 
Cute child! In a hat! 
Potato rice ball 
That’s my parasol he’s dancing with! |
Split pea tofu 
Cute child friends! Even though I didn’t get to eat the tofu, I did have some nice things once I was able to eat again. The hotel had this amazingly carbtastic potato-rice ball for breakfast, and we also saw women making huge, feather-light rice cakes.
Making rice cakes But the coolest thing that happened during the trip was when we stumbled upon a community’s celebration of young boys’ novitiation – they were about to be sent as novices to study at a monastery, to one day become monks. They saw us standing pretty far away, and without having any shared words they invited us to celebrate with them.
Big party, everyone’s invited! I also got a picture of some English graffiti! Street art is my favorite thing to photograph (see: this site’s home page banner!).
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Graffiti!
The last part of our journey was a visit to Golden Rock, the hard-to-reach pilgrimage site. We flew back to Yangon from Heho, then drove for a long time, and then…and then we were packed onto this truck. And I mean packed. We thought we were going to wait for the next truck, but they squeezed us onto this one. I have never had so little personal space. The guy I was next to was great though; he kept saying “USA!” and “Obama!”. Hilarious. We drove through the mountains in this truck for about 45 minutes, and then it drops you off and you walk another 45 minutes or so to the Golden Rock area. It was quite a day, but so worth it. Look at this:
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How awesome is this! It’s such a precarious perch, and no one understands how it is staying put (except to praise Buddha for it). The effort you have to put in to get here is so worth it. It was a fantastic final sight in Myanmar.
Because of how far it is from everything, you stay overnight in the area. We stayed at a great hotel right outside the entrance, on a street peppered with vendors, a few of whom sell rice balls that are vegan-friendly. Staying overnight lets you see this amazing sight in the daytime, at sunrise, and of course at night, when the grounds light up and the Rock looks like it is truly lit up by some higher force. |
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Well, it wasn’t exactly our last thing. We did have to go back to Yangon for a day or two before flying out of the country. We learned so much on our trip and developed such tolerance for difficult cultural differences that this sign, below, no longer phased us. Well…almost didn’t.
WHICH WAY!!!! WHICH WAY DO I GO!!! AHHHHH!!!!!
Austin Withdrawal Is Rough, Y’all, So I Made ‘Burritos’
A week ago, I was in Austin, Texas, for the third and supposedly-final-but-I don’t-believe-it Vida Vegan Con. Well, actually, a week ago I was landing at Heathrow but that eastbound overnight flight is like two days long and there’s a time change and I don’t even know what day it is today so let’s just say a week ago. Anyway, Vida Vegan Con was amazing. I was a speaker (see the badge on the homepage like rightthere?), sharing all my important knowledge about the law that bloggers need to know. (If you have questions about legal issues you can ask me but remember I’m not your lawyer unless you pay me and sign shit but we can work that out.) I will be writing about this incredible experience and the supportive community it assembles and strengthens more in upcoming posts. Today, we gotta talk about the food. Well, one kind of food: stuff stuffed into tortillas.
That’s actually on a plate; the plate just happened to be exactly tortilla-sized.
Austin is the taco capital of America, possibly the world because a) it’s a mecca for vegan taco establishments and b) the Taco Cleanse was created there. I ate a lot of tacos. One night, I asked my friend what I should eat for dinner, x or tacos, and she was like, “Get x because you’ve had a lot of tacos”, and I was horrified at the thought of having something besides tacos. So that is a good way to make a decision: have someone suggest not having tacos and you’ll realize you want tacos. Phoebe should add that to the ‘North route or South route’ game, x or tacos. Ball of twine or beard of bees.*
Anyway, it’s been over a week (#honesty) since I had tacos in Texas, and that’s enough time for withdrawal symptoms, y’all, I’m saying in my southern drawl obviously. So today I thought, I’m gonna make spicy beans and other crap and put it in a tortilla and feel like I’m in Austin again, even though today I wore a SWEATER and a JACKET outside and was still very chilly and it’s June ffs. I was so windswept and ready to call my outside time that I bought giant burrito-sized tortillas instead of taco-sized tortillas, and they weren’t even corn. Hey, I live in the City, I have limited options given how far I am willing/able to wander before getting lost. (Hint: not very far.) But the giant tortillas I found happened to be Ezekiel’s sprouted grain shebangs, which I love, so that’s good.
Still, we know right off the bat that my taco plan wasn’t going to end up as tacos. Hey, you fail to plan, you know what they say, you make an ass of us. I figured with the giant tortillas, I could make a burrito, even though I’m awful/awesome at wrapping such things because I overstuff them beyond what you thought was possible. And I’m not an authentic cooker of this cuisine in the least: to quote Lucy, “I not a Mexican!”* But it was still going to be delicious, and doggonit, it was.
Anyway, it’s been over a week (#honesty) since I had tacos in Texas, and that’s enough time for withdrawal symptoms, y’all, I’m saying in my southern drawl obviously. So today I thought, I’m gonna make spicy beans and other crap and put it in a tortilla and feel like I’m in Austin again, even though today I wore a SWEATER and a JACKET outside and was still very chilly and it’s June ffs. I was so windswept and ready to call my outside time that I bought giant burrito-sized tortillas instead of taco-sized tortillas, and they weren’t even corn. Hey, I live in the City, I have limited options given how far I am willing/able to wander before getting lost. (Hint: not very far.) But the giant tortillas I found happened to be Ezekiel’s sprouted grain shebangs, which I love, so that’s good.
Still, we know right off the bat that my taco plan wasn’t going to end up as tacos. Hey, you fail to plan, you know what they say, you make an ass of us. I figured with the giant tortillas, I could make a burrito, even though I’m awful/awesome at wrapping such things because I overstuff them beyond what you thought was possible. And I’m not an authentic cooker of this cuisine in the least: to quote Lucy, “I not a Mexican!”* But it was still going to be delicious, and doggonit, it was.
SPICY LENTIL AND MISO TEMPEH TACO/BURRITO/NONSENSE POCKET
For overstuffing into this wondrous crackerpocket, we have an awesome spicy green lentil and vegetable mix, miso baked tempeh, a grain, a lettuce, and spiralized zucchini. Make it all or whatever. We don’t have avocado because eating what’s sold as avocado in England so soon after eating the most incredible avocados in south Texas sounds like a terrible thing to do for one’s mental stability.
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FIRST: Miso Baked Tempeh Ingredients:
Directions:
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I used jarred minced ginger and garlic for this because I got better shit to do, y’all. Also my knives are dull. 
Glamour shot 
The light in my kitchen is above my head so no matter where I stand I cast a shadow. It’s a cruel thing. Also how cute is my Qatari oven mitt? |
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SECOND: Spicy Green Lentils
Ingredients:
Directions:
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This big zucchini fucker rolled off the counter, before I had the good sense to put it on a towel, and rolled right onto my foot, building up momentum on that long fall and it hurt so freaking much. Damn you zucchini. I ate you. 
Stir it upppp 
I am so good at this |
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THIRD: Make a grain
Ingredients:
Directions:
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It’s so good with vegan butter even though it’s not Earth Balance. |
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FOURTH: Spiralize Zucchini
God I love this machine. I must give thanks to Jojo for giving me her unused spiralizer, even though she supported my eventual move to Britain for years and years and then the day THE DAY I finally moved here, she decided to “travel professionally” i.e. leave me on this island without her. THANKS DUDE. (No but really thanks.) |
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ASSEMBLE! Get your giant tortilla or normal sized ones if you are making tacos, and layer all the components like so:
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That’s the coolest photographic thing I’ve ever done. Yay. It’s like the Brady Bunch but for Mexican food. Anyway build it up, add too much of each filling like I do, add avocado if you live in the right place, add cilantro if you remember to buy it, add a cheese sauce maybe. I added some leftover hummus dressing (hummus dressing = watery hummus, btw) and a bit of the Parma! vegan parmesan that came in the Vida Vegan Con Swag Bag O’ Wonder (pictured)! That was such a great little kick.
So then came the best part, when I tried to wrap it up. Um. Because they are imported, Ezekiel wraps and breads are only available frozen in the UK, so I had to heat it in the oven. Do you know what happens to an Ezekiel sprouted grain wrap 15 seconds after it is out of the oven? It hardens. Into a cracker. Oops. No wrapping up for you, mister! The only thing I could do was just fold it over into a giant hard taco sort of thing and you know what, I think I like it better that way. More chance of things falling out, like some sort of game!
So then came the best part, when I tried to wrap it up. Um. Because they are imported, Ezekiel wraps and breads are only available frozen in the UK, so I had to heat it in the oven. Do you know what happens to an Ezekiel sprouted grain wrap 15 seconds after it is out of the oven? It hardens. Into a cracker. Oops. No wrapping up for you, mister! The only thing I could do was just fold it over into a giant hard taco sort of thing and you know what, I think I like it better that way. More chance of things falling out, like some sort of game!
I don’t even know what that metal spike is. I didn’t have a toothpick, not that that would have been strong enough to hold this monster together. But seriously, what is that piece of metal from…
If you follow me on Instagram (link at top), you saw that when I finished this monster, the end fell apart and I dropped it onto the plate AND IT WAS THE BAT SIGNAL! APPARENTLY I AM A VEGAN SUPERHERO. Prettayyyy cool.
*as usual with things that are asterisked in my posts: if you understand a reference or a joke or a quote and you comment that you get it, you get bonus points for any giveaways I do. If you attended my VVC talk, you know that the type of giveaway I always choose to run is a ‘contest’, because I like judging and winning on merit, not chance.
