A couple of our vegan recipes. Yummm

These are Ryan's specialty. He has been perfecting home-made vegan fries this past month. No butter, cheese, or oils involved in the production of this tasty dish. 

Vegan Lasagna. No meat, and definitely no ricotta cheese. I made this dish for my co-workers and everyone licked the plate clean! 

 

Ragin at High Sierra!

Vegan challenge is over...maybe

Yo! I haven't been a very good blogger this past month. I've been neglecting my blogging duties as a blogger. Regardless, I come to inform you that I have completed the Vegan challenge (mostly). Stories, pictures of some of the vegan dishes Ryan and I concocted, and maybe some recipes will be available shortly. However, right now I'm tired, and would rather go to sleep. Ha.

The Vegan Challenge

So I've been a vegetarian for almost 14 months now. I've attepted veganism a few times now with no avail. So for the next month, I'm going to take the vegan challenge. I'm going to blog about my meals, and probably my frustrations. Send me recipes and encouragement! And sure, if you want to brag about your delicious breakfast of scammbled eggs sprinkled with shredded cheddar cheese and toast with butter and honey, I'll be a good sport.

High Sierra Music Festival Day 1

Alex here, aka the other half of this blog, and the poorer writer of the two bloggers. Hopefully my stories will be so interesting, funny, and possibly weird, that it will make up for my poor grammar, limited vocabulary, and below average writing skills. But you're stuck with me, so here we go!

I'm sort of a ex- festy goer, music festivals that is. I've been to a fair share of fests in my day. Bonnaroo,(the most well known on my list), Wakarusa, Summer Camp, Big Summer Classic, and series of smaller festivals called Schwagstock, (pretty popular in the Missouri area until the land got raided by the authorities). I have a 4 year old boy, Orrin, now, so I don't frequent the festy scene like I used to, and to be honest, that's probably a good thing.  But ever now and then, I like to dip back in, and get the crazy out of my system. My buddy, Andrew, whom I work with as a botanist out west, got wind of High Sierra Music Festival, and after tossing the idea around for about a month, we bought our tickets. Andrew is a 23 year old UConn graduate with long, dark dreads. Needless to say, he's a festival goer too. I was pretty stoked about the tickets. High Sierra is a festival in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, and I was definitely into the lineup. Widespread Panic, Sts9, Beats Antique, Ms. Lauryn Hill, and a slew of blue grass, southern rock, funk, and electronic bands that I'f never heard of , but I was feeling like I could definitely use some new music in my life.

We left Thursday, July 3rd. We had been having some automobile issues with our car (BMW=break my wallet), so we had a rental for the weekend. Once we left Reno and headed into Cali, we were driving through the sticks pretty much. The towns we passed through on the way were like small, mountain, ranching towns. Not anywhere I would want to live, but they had their charms to it. We downed a few jello shots courtesy of Andrew, which made the ride more fun. So anyway, we ride into the festival fair grounds, which is pretty much a park extension of Quincey, CA, the town in which the festival was being held. We were meeting up with a friend of Andrew's and their little Cali crew from UC Davis. This chick he knew met us at the entrance, and we followed her into an area where they'd laid tarps down for us to set up our tents and canopy. Kind of a dick move to everyone else trying to find a place to camp, but it's a dog eat dog world out there. We parked the most awkward park job ever, it kind of reminded me of a Dali painting. We had to do it fast though, because one of my favorite bands, Sts9 was about to play and we had basically an hour to set up camp, down beers, smoke, get glow sticks ready, and get our game faces on. Let me tell you, festivals are like temporary jobs, and getting ready for shows is a freakin process. You need to have all the gear I just mentioned and if you're getting into any shenanigans for the evening, you need to make sure the fun stuff is hidden in a good spot;)

One of Andrew's friends, shows up at our camp site and rolls a spliff. Now I'm not a heavy smoker in that sense, but I like to get a little toasted when the time is right. I thought to myself,  why the hell not, I was at a festival about to go hear an instrumental electronic band, so why not spice things up. I liked the way she rolled spliffs, heavy on the tobacco, light on the grass. Gives you the perfect high. You definitely feel the effects of the THC, without feeling too stoned to function.
Armed with glow sticks and beers stuffed in my backpack, we headed to the main stage area to hear Sts9. Sts9 stands for "Sound Tribe Sector Nine." They are an entirely instrumental band, with a fusion of electronic, ambient, with a some funk and jam sprinkled on top. Now I want to briefy talk about another nic accessory to have at a festival. It's pretty common at festivals to have what are called "rage sticks." Rage sticks are basically a stick adorn with lights and usually some sort of animal or funny saying on top of the stick. I'm not entirely sure what the function of rage sticks are, but they do help you find your friends at shows. For example, our group of people we were trying to up with at the show had a rage stick with a white rat with blinking red eyes. Find the rat, find your friends. Sts9 was a great opener for us. The crowd had a lot of energy, and it was just good vibes through out the whole show. Plus we helped a guy pimp out his dolphin rage stick with glow sticks.

After Sts9, we headed over to a big tent called Vaudville, where a band called Turquoz was playing. They are a funk band from Brooklyn, and they definitely showed the West coast how to bring the funk. Everybody was groovin and gettin down. My legs were sure to pay the next day. Ryan and I headed back to the camp after Turquoz and called it a night.

High Sierra Music Festival Day 2

I woke up with the sun beating down through the tent ceiling. I  had a pretty bad hangover. I unzip the tent and step out into the canopy  to find my buddy Andrew lying on a blanket under the ground in the canopy. I naturally assumed he'd passed out there sometime last night.  I immediately realized I had to move the tapestry to the east side of the canopy to save our asses. That is another essential of festivals: tapestry. Will save your ass from the sun's mighty rays! So Ryan, Andrew, and I bs about the events of the night before, cooked a hardy breakfast of scrammbled eggs, toast, and my personal favorite breakfast item, coffee (thanks to my jetboil and french press). Festivals also require a constant maintenance of ice in the cooler for beer and food, and our reserves were pretty much cold liquid at this point.  So we go on a mission to find ice and a couple other items, which we found, but I also found out they had bomb bloody marys, and thus the day drinking began.  If you haven't noticed thusfar, there is always a mision at a festival, whether it be a mission for the essentials, or fun.

We went to a slew of day shows that day. Shakey graves, this southern rockish band that I could see myself listening to on the road.  The Traveling McCoureys, which is a blue grass bland composed of blue grass legend, Del Mcourey's family and friends. I thoroughly enjoyed that show. Nothing like bluegrass music and beer in the day time. Del actually came out and performed a song too, which was special treat for the audience.  Later that day, after a much needed nap, we went to see Boombox. Boombox is a two man band of musicians/music producers, one guy on the keyboards, one on guitar. Their sound is a mix of disco with a little bit of funk. It will get you grooving, I challenge you! After Boombox, Andrew and I went on a mission to get into some fun for the evening. I won't get into the specifics, but the mission was accomplished hehe. Ms. Lauryn Hill was to perform that evening, which by the way, was the 4th of July.  Lauryn Hill is different from the Lauryn Hill from the Fuji's and her solo album, but she did manage to deliver. Her raps were flowing, and she did even a Bob Marley cover or two. I am not hating on Ms. Hill in any sense, but it was one of my lesser favorite shows at the festival, but it was not a bad show to see by any means. (And the fact that she wasan hour late did not help matters). One cool thing we did at the show was hit up the glow table.  The flow table was littered with a diverse sea of glow toys. Glow whips, glow hula hoops, glow staffs, you name it. Ryan and I have made a consensus that we are not that skilled with glow magic, but it was fun attempting to get creative, and that's what it's all about right? The two of us called it early that night. We still had two more days to rage, and we had to save our energy for Beats Antique, who had the main stage slot the next night.