Sweet Pea Baking Co.

Conveniently located in the "vegan strip mall" at 12th and Stark in SE Portland is a delicious little vegan bakery called Sweet Pea. Like its surrounding neighborhood, Sweet Pea is refreshingly unpretentious. The hollow ambience is a bit spartan, the single set of display cases deceptively slim, and the Web site hasn't been updated since shortly after the place opened last December. Still, none of that matters much once you sink your teeth into the pastries. For me, the best time to stop is on the way to work to pick up a muffin, scone or one of the large cinnamon rolls for breakfast, a box of cupcakes to share with the office, or maybe even a giant monster cookie when you just need a whole day's worth of sugar. How sweet!

Sugar and Food Fight Grocery

Identifying vegan sugar is not easy, and those that are clearly marked — such as the sugar, powdered sugar and brown sugars from Wholesome Sweeteners (also organic and fair-trade certified) — are also clearly expensive (over $4 for 1.5 pounds). Though the flavor's good and the products are easy to bake with, they are also a product of Paraguay and packaged in plastic. But here's what the corporation's Web site says regarding food miles:

We're concerned about more than organic impacts, we're also concerned about sustainability. Because the natural range of organic cane is limited (and in many cases far beyond the boundaries of the United States), our sources for organic sugar are in far-away places. Wholesome uses the most efficient combination of transportation methods (ship, rail and truck) to move our products from the fields and mills to your store's shelves. To help offset our carbon footprint, Wholesome invests in renewable, sustainable energy resources, including wind and solar power.

I picked up several packages today from Food Fight Grocery along with the very last (unsweetened this time) Mimiccreme and a jerky snack. Given all the baking we do, I'll have to consider ordering this in bulk. Food Fight may not be the cheapest place in town, but Portland is so freakin' fortunate to have a 100% vegan shop like this that we try to go there as often as possible. Check 'em out in person, or online.

Yellow D Sugar from Bob's Red Mill

It's always fun to run down to Bob's Red Mill retail store to pick up bulk bags of evaporated cane juice, organic flour, nutritional yeast, gluten flour for seitan and Ghiradelli chocoloate chips. But skip the brown sugar; got this e-mail clarification recently:

The Yellow D Sugar would NOT be considered vegan due to processing. The Evaporated Cane Juice is vegan and is similar to the raw sugars on the market. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Chelsea, Customer Service
Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods
1-800-349-2173

Fubonn

An unusual place to shop, filled with Asian grocery items, many of which are vegan. Today, we purchased some curry paste (which I checked to make sure it had no shrimp) and Vege Beef Slice (TWN) from Vege USA, which we add to pre-packaged noodle mixes as both a protein source and just to make it more interesting.