Portland / Vida Vegan Con #3: Shopping, “Vegucated” and, well, more food

In my last post I shared food porn from lunch Thursday. After lunch our merry group visited the “vegan mini-mall” where I found a great t-shirt, wallet and purse from Herbivore Clothing.

Thursday evening the first “unofficial” Vida Vegan Con event took place:  happy hour followed by a screening of the film “Vegucated” (I am a proud donor to the film!)

The wine was average at Vendetta but I wasn’t there for the wine. I was there to meet bloggers that I admire!

It was so wonderful to meet Bianca, John and Jill (the masterminds behind Vegan Cuts!), Demetirus (@vegand on Twitter and marketing guru behind “Vegucated“) and Janessa of (of Epicurious Vegan — in addition to a VVC organizer!).

The documentary was very good and I am looking forward to seeing it used as a community organizing tool.

After the film screening we went to vegan bar The Sweet Hereafter for a late bite to eat.  I ordered the chickpea salad sandwich (night photo alert, I was a big girl staying out past 11:00 p.m.!)

So good!

Friday morning I woke up for another four mile run (I’ve been on a running roll here!) and then finally met my roommate, who I have loved forever on Twitter and via her blog Go Places (formerly Sweet On), Megan.  We hooked up with Molly and Kristen for a bus ride to lunch.

Megan, JL and Kristen

We ate a food cart on the Northeast side of Portland, Native Bowl, where I had the Couch Bowl (pronounced cooch, if you must know)

They said it was spicy. I like spicy. This was a bit too spicy even for me.  I still ate it.  It was fiery-delicious.

We returned to the hotel to pick up our registration materials for the conference. Finally, Vida Vegan Con was happening!

Check out this SWAG bag!

It was time to get ready for the opening reception…

…but I can’t even get to that right now because I’m off to my final session of the conference “Opinionated Bloggers.”

I’ll be back tomorrow with a glimpse into the opening night reception and, at a minimum, day one of the conference.  Until then, you can check out Gena’s recap of the reception on Choosing Raw.

***

Thanks for your emails and messages on Twitter — my husband and cats are fine in New York. Our town has major flooding but our house was not impacted.  Sadly, they will have a dark night, though, as there is still no power.  My flight home tonight was canceled so I now have two more nights in Portland. Thanks for your kind wishes!

Tagged as: choosing raw, vida vegan con, vidaveganconrecap